The Bear River Name

Bear River... do you do river-rafting trips?

We are often asked about the origins of our company name. The name came from Anthony Meadow, Bear River's President. As he tells the story:

"Thirty years ago some friends of mine bought some land above the Bear River, between Auburn and Grass Valley in the Sierra foothills, in the California Gold Country. They started building a house, and I used to come up on the weekends to help them out. When we were done for the day we used to sit out on the porch and talk about starting a company. Since he was an electrical engineer and I was a programmer it was going to be something high-tech. Whatever it was, it was going to be called Bear River something or other. As things turned out, my friend ended up doing other things."

"A few years later when we started Bear River, we decided that we wanted a name that would be memorable. At that time everyone else wanted to sound "high tech" but they all sounded alike to me. I remembered my friend and our earlier discussions and so we became Bear River Associates."

"Occasionally people confuse the name with Bear Creek or Bear Valley, but we're Bear River. And every once in a while someone asks how to spell bear."

Little known fact: there's more than one Bear River (of the liquid kind). In addition to the river in California there are Bear Rivers in the states of Wyoming, Wisconsin, Washington, Utah, Minnesota, Michigan, Maine, Massachusetts, Idaho, Georgia, Colorado and Alaska.