Businesses Welcomed in the Small Town of Westwood

Westwood’s business community is well supported by the townspeople. The welcoming streets are named alphabetically by the names of trees. Streets are lined with old wooden homes, reminiscent of its early lumber days’ history. Retail businesses include three convenience stores, two with fuels, Lassen True Value hardware store, Now and Then thrift shop and Old Town Mercantile, an artists’ collective/Shabby Chic home furnishings & decor store which has moved and expanded. The town needs several businesses which have closed over the years due to retirement, etc..

The quaint downtown business district is largely housed in the original bunkhouses and buildings that served the town’s founders, proprietors of the Red River Lumber Company. It welcomes many to its popular downtown restaurants, The Old Mill Cafe and Buffalo Chips Pizza reside in old bunkhouses. Summertime brings back the Sug’r Shack, a frosty stop downtown, across from the other restaurants and Westwood’s seasonal Friday Night Market. At last census, Westwood clocked in at just under 1,600 residents, among 750 households, while in 2000, the census reported 1,998 people among 795 households.

Real estate reports are showing a strong increase in sales, even during the winter months, all good news for Westwood, whose elementary through high school students now share one campus. The real estate news is good, and with it, more listings are showing up on the market. A few commercial sales have transpired as well.

The town is excited about the return of the Old MillCafe to be run by longtime past owners of the Old Mill Cafe. Westwood residents miss their bank, clothing store, gift shop, clothing stores, drug store and more, including their old fashioned butcher shop.

If you want to open a business, would enjoy life on the mountain, including snow and adventure, and helping this community bring back its business district, which attracted tourists and locals from throughout the area, check out the opportunities and challenges of life on the mountain. Info and video at WestwoodLassen.com.