Do you know of West Branch ???

This page is an orphan - a placeholder until we can discover more about West Branch. When we encounter a name that is new to us, we add it to our Gazetteer with the hope that we'll discover more information in the future. Such is the case with West Branch.

Our sources for West Branch (see Mentions and References below) indicate that it was a community with a post office by the same name. Unfortunately our sources aren't clear about the location of West Branch other than they indicate that West Branch would be found somewhere in Butte County, California.

From the Blevins / Hellbock List: The post office opened in 1878 and closed in 1911.

This entry could have originated in error. It might be that a source had a misprint, was simply wrong or we made a transcription error while referencing it. Many of the documents we reference are from the 1800s and the early 1900s, with some easier to read than others.

Part of the difficulty in identifying whether a name is a post office or a community lies with how Post Offices were named. We've prepared an article with our understanding of how post offices were named: Naming of Post Offices.

Communities Also Named West Branch ...

We found nine communities that share the name West Branch.

Within California, the name West Branch is unique.

Beyond California, we know of another nine communities that are located throughout in the United States and Canada. Of these nine communities, seven are located in the United States and two are in Canada.

Communities Elsewhere In North America ...
- Iowa
  - Cedar County
  - Please visit our profile page for the Iowa community of West Branch [Cedar County].
- Michigan
  - Marquette County
  - We found mention of this community, but have little information.<1> For the information that we do have, please visit our profile page for the Michigan community of West Branch [Marquette County].
  - Ogemaw County
  - Please visit our profile page for the Michigan community of West Branch [Ogemaw County].
- New Brunswick
  - Please visit our profile page for the New Brunswick community of West Branch.
- New York
  - Oneida County
  - Please visit our profile page for the New York community of West Branch [Oneida County].
- Nova Scotia
  - Please visit our profile page for the Nova Scotia community of West Branch.
- Pennsylvania
  - Cambria County
  - Please visit our profile page for the Pennsylvania community of West Branch [Cambria County].
- Vermont
  - Lamoille County
  - Please visit our profile page for the Vermont community of West Branch [Lamoille County].
- Washington
  - Spokane County
  - We found mention of this community, but have little information.<1> For the information that we do have, please visit our profile page for the Washington community of West Branch [Spokane County].

Miscellaneous References and Mentions for West Branch ...

We've created the following list to keep track of the sources that proved useful in adding to our knowledge about West Branch:

Found in a comprehensive list of Post Offices that was created by Cameron Blevins and Richard Helbock.<2>

Business Atlas and Shippers' Guide (1895)
Published by Rand McNally & Co.

A note taken from the Shipper's Guide for West Branch - Services available: had a Post Office, no Railroad mentioned

More Orphans in Butte County ...

Can you help?

As we explained above, when we encounter a name that might be a community or a post office we add it to our Gazetteer. If we have little information to go with the name, we call them Orphans. Below are Orphans that we believe to be located in Butte County.

Footnotes ...

<1>

If we encounter the name of what might be a community, our methodology is to add that name to our Gazetteer as a placeholder. As we find more information about that community, it will be added to our Gazetteer.

Just as a reminder: Our definition of a community is rather broad and includes those places (or areas) where several families lived and had a name which identified that place. For example, you might hear somebody say that they are going over to Mile's to see Pete ... Mile's is just a gas station and a couple of homes at the crossroads. While it might not be on the map, everybody in the area knows it by that name.

Places of interest include buildings at a crossroad, several families clustered in a hollow or maybe the location of a way station. It also includes places like mines, lumber camps, ferry crossings, etc. The community might still exist, is now gone or only existed for just a short period of time.

Also keep in mind that West Branch could have been on the original document by mistake, misspelled, the original/alternate name of a community that we've listed elsewhere or was placed in the wrong county. Sometimes a post office or train station would have a different name than the community where it's located, so two names might be referring to the same community - we're working to straighten it all out.

<2>

A copy of their list with background information can be found at:

https://cblevins.github.io/us-post-offices/data-biography/