California’s Largest Wildfire Leaves Historic Town in Ashes

View of a burned out commercial building following the Dixie Fire, a wildfire that tore through the town of Greenville, Calif., on Aug. 5, 2021. Fred Greaves/Reuters

GREENVILLE, Calif.—The main thoroughfare in a historic California gold-rush town was in smoldering ruins on Thursday, hours after the state’s largest wildfire engulfed the hamlet of Greenville in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Fire crews were still working on Thursday to extinguish fires in Greenville, about 160 miles north of Sacramento, after the Dixie Fire roared through on the previous night.