Editing Big Bend, California (section)

===Euro-American settlers===
The Big Bend area is so remote and isolated that the Madesi was one of the last [[indigenous peoples of California]] to be invaded and pushed out of their ancestral homeland.

As white settlers began to come to Big Bend in the 1860s, few Madesi were left in the area, and the newcomers began to claim the conquered land as their own. By the 1890s, Big Bend was becoming a small quiet town of white settlers, centered around the hot springs. It was originally called '''Elena''' (1890) by the Euro-Americans settlers, and then changed to '''Henderson''', (1906) before they began calling it "Big Bend" (1922).

Early white settlers built a log hotel with a post office and a saloon just above the main hot springs. Many visitors around the turn of the 20th-century came to Big Bend to soak in the hot springs, seeking the reputed healing qualities of the hot mineral water baths.

Big Bend grew slowly until the late 1930s, when [[Pacific Gas and Electric Company]] began construction on the {{C|Dams on the Pit River|Pit Five Hydroelectric Dam}} and Pit Five Power House.<ref>120 FERC ¶ 62,001 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FEDERAL ENERGY REGULATORY COMMISSION Pacific Gas and Electric Company Project No. 233-081 Shasta County, California ORDER ISSUING NEW LICENSE (July 2, 2007) Issued by FERC OSEC 07/02/2007 in Docket#: P-233-081</ref> The dam construction brought thousands of jobs and people to Big Bend. This included engineers, builders, tunnel diggers (around 2000 hard-rock miners), and service workers to the area.  Big Bend saw a "boom and bust" cycle, and the population was declining by the late 1940s, after the dam work was completed. Although the maintenance of the hydroelectric facilities and a large commercial logging industry still require numerous employees, almost all of the people working in such jobs live outside of Big Bend, contributing further to the population decline.

The population of Big Bend was only 102 people in the 2010 census, apparently the lowest number of residents since the 1860s.<ref>Big Bend, California</ref>