Erosion created a typical mesa shape, flat-topped hills supported by sheer cliff faces, while ongoing shifting of the Earth produced the small faults and ridges found on the surface. When and Where Wildflower displays run from February through early May, with a peak typically in the first two weeks of April, when the site can be crowded on weekends. Travel north from Marysville on Highway 70 and take the Grand Avenue exit in Oroville. Follow Cherokee Road 6.5 miles as it winds up onto the mesa. Once the road reaches the plateau, follow it eastward to a green cattle chute, posted wooden map, and roadside parking just before the road starts descending again.
Access is through one of two entries at the parking area.
There are no marked trails on the property and it is possible to become disoriented among the dips and ridges. Visitors are asked to stay on public land, which is signed along boundary fences. History buffs may want to continue north on Cherokee Road 4.5 miles to the historic townsite of Cherokee, with its old cemetery, huge hydraulic mining pit, and museum that's often but unpredictably open on weekends during the wildflower season. On this sunny winter day it is peaceful and quiet here, but at our feet Bills points out the first signs of a frenzy soon to engulf these igneous slopes tiny green, tightly rolled spears of young wildflowers barely poking out of the soil. In fact, according to Toni Fauver in her new Wildflower Walks and Roads of the Sierra Gold Country , North Table Mountain is the premier wildflower display in the northern Sierra Nevada foothills.