Paradise Valley is a small agricultural area and town that lies at the base of the Santa Rosa Mountains. Although the valley was traversed in 1828, the first settlement did not appear until 1863 when prospectors arrived in the northern end of the valley. Local legend has it that the prospectors came over the mountain and looked down onto the beautiful valley and exclaimed, "What a paradise!"
By the early 1870's there was a blacksmith with livery, two stores, a flour mill, and three hotels and several boarding houses. Although the collapse of mining did not turn Paradise into a ghost town, b. . .
