Bird and Dinkelspiel Store: Anchor of Birds Landing

The two-story building at this crossroads was raised in eighteen seventy-five and served as the commercial anchor of Birds Landing, the small river settlement that grew up around it along Montezuma Slough. John Bird, one of the store's proprietors, ran a shipping and commission business here, and the spot became a natural gathering point for the scattered farms of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The store offered the kind of reliable supply that convinced people to put down roots in an otherwise isolated landscape.

The store later passed to new owners, but the building survived in nearly its original form. The National Register of Historic Places added it to the rolls in October of nineteen ninety-nine, recognizing its integrity as one of the Delta's rare surviving pioneer commercial buildings.