They don't have much in Smartsville. No sewage system. No cable TV. You know, life's necessities. Folks must go all the way to Marysville to the west, or Grass Valley to the east, just to buy a quart of milk or fast-food burger. Schools? The nearest is seven miles away.

Hassles, all.

That's the problem with these quaint and bucolic Gold Rush boomtowns-gone-bust that dot the Sierra foothills, these tucked-away enclaves where the elevation often exceeds the population and the community's best days are more than a century behind them. Life can be darned inconvenient.

And yet, what this Yuba County outpost does have is a single and distinct point of pride, a reason to puff out its community chest: The town's beloved, all-important, long-abandoned sibilant consonant is back, by God, where it belongs.

In August 2008, after years – nay, decades – of struggle against the Man, longtime residents, aided by a dedicated Sacramento history buff, finally persuaded the U.S. Board of Geographic Names to right an egregious historical wrong and restore the middle "s" to the town's name.

No longer did Smartsvilleans have to suffer the indignity imposed by the hegemonic Postal Service, which in 1910 unilaterally changed the name to "Smartville" in a misguided attempt at grammatical correctness.

So, now that the town founded in 1856 by hotelier James Smart no longer has an identity crisis – "We've got our smarts back," cracked local Deanna Evango – perhaps it can succeed in restoring a pulse to a 1.2-mile main drag that once served as a transportation hub, watering hole and homestead for those panning and pining for a certain valuable, shiny mineral.

Smartsville residents are no dummies, though. They know name recognition alone won't translate into economic growth, a population rise or even the merest blip of a tourist boom. And, frankly, some townsfolk may not be too keen on giving up their self-contained lifestyles even for the neon lure of a convenience store and a gas pump.

"I like it here," said Evango, talking with neighbor Mark Zamora over her back fence. "You don't have gunshots and police helicopters and stop lights every other block. People I don't know will drive by and wave at me. You don't get that everywhere."

"But, you know," Zamora interjected, "it is nice to have high-speed Internet. We just got it three months ago. That was a big celebration. Man, you would've thought they were launching the space shuttle out of here, people were so excited."

Change does, indeed, come slowly in Smartsville. But resident Kit Burton, a one-man de facto chamber of commerce when he isn't commuting to Marysville for his job as a civil engineer, believes Smartsville's glory days can return.

For a decade, Burton has led a push to rebuild the husk of the town's Catholic church, which dates to 1871 and has seen better centuries. Enough money was raised, a cool $25,000, to restore the roof in 2002.

Exterior walls, though, remain discolored and rain-warped and, inside, considerable structural work is needed, though the curved and domed altar is not beyond saving and the choir loft and confessionals remain mostly intact.

Burton confesses that donations are just trickling in, and that it will take at least $100,000 to "get the church to a minimum level of occupancy" for a town community center.

But the church is only one part of plan. Burton imagines a day when not only sewage and water systems are in place, but also stores, cafes and boutiques line "Smartville Road (no second "s" yet, since the county has yet to change the street sign) and some of less aesthetically pleasing dwellings are gentrified without losing the town's rural charm.

"It could be a wave that sweeps over the whole area," he said. "Then we might have something here. We could have a citizen committee – I've already approached the county about this – that would be the first level of (permit approval) for anybody that wants to do something in town. The committee would be elected by the committee, and the county hopefully would heed what we say."

He paused, perhaps sensing a skeptical look on his listener's face.

"You know, the model for this is Nevada City," he said. "To my understanding, in the 1950s, Nevada City wasn't what it's like now. The people got together and did it themselves."

No Pollyanna, though, Burton knows people need tangible reasons to visit. He acknowledges that a few historic sites lining the main drag won't cut it. Other than the skeletal frame of the church up on blocks, and the blood-red restored 1856 Rose Bar School House, Smartsville has not aged well.

Many of the "neat cottages with white picket fences," as Kathleen Smith writes in an Arcadia history book of the town, now are replaced with houses featuring rusted cars up on concrete blocks, couches and stuff strewn in the yards.

James Smart's first hotel is gone. The original general store, a Wells Fargo Express stop, now is divided into apartments. The site of the original Gold Rush saloon is home to Evango and her three dogs – a Rottweiler, pit bull and miniature pinscher.

The sign in her front window, illustrated by a gun barrel, reads: "Never mind the dog, beware of owner." ("I mean it, too," she said, laughing. "I've got a shotgun.")

What, then, makes Burton think big?

To answer that, he and Smith take a visitor in a pickup truck over Temperance Hill (site of the erstwhile Temperance Hall, where, says Smith, "men used to stash their bottles under the porch before going in") on a bumpy dirt road into a scarred bowl of land that a century ago was the sight of hydraulic mining that changed the face of the foothills.

Parked in the mostly denuded valley, looking off into the horizon northeast of Smartsville, Burton spoke of the first stage of what he dreams might be the catalyst of Smartsville's resurgence.

Just over the hill, he said, are 530 acres south of the Yuba River that the nonprofit Trust for Public Land is in the process of purchasing and donating to the state Department of Fish and Game as open space.

The way Burton extrapolates it, this could be the start of a state park.

"I'm hoping there will be more donations of land for public use along the Yuba River," Burton said. "If that would be the case, say another 800 to 1,000 acres, that would possibly create a long strip of river property that makes a wonderful park with river rafting and hiking.

"And that long strip from the (Yuba) county line to the Parks Bar Bridge, where Highway 20 crosses, would make a wonderful park. And that would have access only from Smartsville."

He acknowledges that his grand plan includes a lot of "ifs" and "would bes," but don't knock a guy for dreaming.

In a recent installment of Burton's weekly column (titled "Big S") about Smartsville in the Penn Valley Courier, he envisioned the town "reconstructed on a Gold Rush theme, including narrow streets with covered sidewalks, shops, restaurants and strolling tourists. ... Historic structures, most of them rebuilt on the sites of the original buildings, will be identified by plaques for the enjoyment and education of out-of­town visitors. Many, such as hotels and offices, will be utilized commercially for the same purposes as their original predecessors."

For other Smartsvilleans, it's enough of a start that the second "s" is back in its rightful spot. Now if they can only get everyone to remember to use it.

"The only bummer about the new 's' – or, I mean, the old 's' back again – is that you enter it on something like Google or Facebook and they still want to call it Smartville," Evango said.

"Hey," Zamora said across the fence, "there used to be a gal, Leana's mom, you know, the Silvas? Anyway, she used to go around putting the 's' back on all the street signs. It was great."

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Next Exit is an occasional series about out-of-the-way Northern California towns that most folks miss while in a hurry to get somewhere else. If you have a town you'd like us to know about, please call (916) 321-1145 or email smcmanis@sacbee.com.

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