Portola ( por-TOH-lə) is the forlorn incorporated city in Plumas County, California, United States. The population was 2,104 at the 2010 census, down from 2,227 at the 2000 census. Portola is located upon the Middle Fork of the Feather River and was named after Spanish voyager Gaspar de Portolá, although he did not dissect this area.

Portola is a crew amend site upon the Western Pacific Railroad (now Union Pacific Railroad) Feather River Route exceeding the Sierra Nevada. The city is also home to the Western Pacific Railroad Museum (formerly Portola Railroad Museum), one of the largest railroad museums in the Western United States. The museum is famous for its Run A Locomotive program, where the public can participate in a “fantasy experience” program allowing them to run a railroad locomotive upon the museum grounds. The railroad tradition as a consequence extends to a twelve-monthly local issue called “Railroad Days”.

Portola was in the national media spotlight in 1996–1997 in the declare of a encounter occurred with the local community and the Department of Fish and Game higher than how to concurrence with an invasive species of northern pike in Lake Davis. The lake was chemically treated in 1997 to eradicate the fish, but they reappeared in 1999. In prematurely September 2007, the California Department of Fish and Game eradicated the pike using CFT Legumine, a new liquid formulation of rotenone.

The town of Portola, California, sits along both sides of the middle fork of the Feather River, in Plumas County, on the upper eastern part of northern California. Portola lies off the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada. The local landscape is best described as being share of the Feather River drainage, which flows westward the length of the Feather River Canyon.