Yuba City, California

Yuba City is a farming city of about 65,000 people in Sutter County, in California's Sacramento Valley. The UC Davis Punjabi and Sikh Diaspora Digital Archive says the greater Yuba City area is home to about 15,000 to 18,000 Punjabi Americans, and locals call it "Chota Punjab", Little Punjab. Punjabi families live on their own farms and ranches rather than in one neighbourhood, with orchards clustered within three miles of the Feather and Yuba rivers, where the soil suits cling peaches, plums, walnuts, grapes and rice.

Key moments

• Early 1900s: Punjabi pioneers begin to arrive. On 27 January 1908 the residents of neighbouring Marysville drove them out of town.
• 1960s: The community grows fast as farm success lets families sponsor relatives from India.
• 1969: Groundbreaking for the first Sikh house of worship in Yuba City, which the UC Davis archive ties to the 500th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak. Brothers Bakhtawar and Udham Singh Purewal give three acres of an almond orchard at Tierra Buena. Until the gurdwara opened, Sikhs had driven nearly 100 miles to the gurdwara at Stockton. The archive calls it the first gurdwara in the United States built in the Indo-Persian style.
• 9 November 1980: The first Yuba City Nagar Kirtan, started by Didar Singh Bains, who had been inspired by a Sikh parade he attended in Canada. It celebrates the installation of Sri Guru Granth Sahib as the Living Guru and follows a 4.5-mile route, led by a float carrying Sri Guru Granth Sahib.
• 31 October to 2 November 2025: The 46th Nagar Kirtan, for which CBS Sacramento reported that roughly 200,000 people were expected.

The people and the crowds

The Tribune reported Didar Singh Bains's death in September 2022. Born in 1939 at Nangal Khurd in Hoshiarpur district, he was known as the "Peach King", arrived in the US with only $8 and worked first as a labourer. The Tribune calls him founder of the Yuba City gurdwara. The UC Davis archive describes the 1969 temple as the work of a committee of Sikh families, and says Bains and Dr Narinder Singh Kapany later gave land or funds. The two accounts can both hold.

Parade figures are estimates and vary by source. Wikipedia lists about 56,000 for 2005 and about 150,000 for 2012, and the UC Davis archive says nearly 100,000 come each year. The archive adds that Sikh families give away 200,000 to 250,000 free meals each year at the festival. Wikipedia also records Kash Gill and Preet Didbal, described as the first Sikh American mayor and the first Sikh American woman mayor, among Yuba City's mayors.

Today: Yuba City is the centre of Sikh farming life in northern California and holds one of the largest annual Sikh gatherings in North America, a public marker of the Panth in the United States.