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Up The Road: The State Of The State Of Jefferson

Bruce Fingerhood
/
Flickr Creative Commons

 

We head Up the Road this week into the heart of the State of Jefferson and its once—and possibly future—capital, Yreka, and then continue on toward Oregon. It’s a good trip, one to work up a plan for, given that far northern California and southern Oregon also comprise the State of Jefferson, which almost came to be in the 1940s.

There’s something profoundly different about a place proud to be in a constant state of rebellion. That place would be California, which has generated more than 200 different independence proposals since statehood in 1850. The first serious attempts to break away came from thoroughly dissed Los Angeles, still a dusty cow town when the streets of San Francisco were almost literally paved with gold, after the gold rush.

But for relentless rebellion, no place beats far northern California. In 1852, it proposed a separate State of Shasta, a bid for more military protection, better roads and mail service, and lower taxes. That bill died in legislative committee. In 1853 came the call to form the State of Klamath, running roughly from Cape Mendocino north to the Umpqua River. The following year, a meeting in Jacksonville, Oregon, convened to plan statehood for Jackson, a proposal revisited in 1855.

Secession came up again in the 20th century. On Nov. 27, 1941, the first and original State of Jefferson officially seceded from Oregon and California. Jefferson citizens blocked Hwy. 99 and announced to passersby and legislators alike that the territory would secede every Thursday until further notice—or until they got good roads.

That short-lived State of Jefferson extended from the Pacific over to the high plateau in Nevada, north to Roseburg, Oregon, and south to Redding, California—roughly the same borders of the current Jefferson proposal. The new state’s capital was Yreka, and its symbol was a gold pan. In the center of the gold pan on the state seal was a double-X, indicating just how the people there felt about California and Oregon: double-crossed.

On December 4, Judge John L. Childs of Crescent City was named Jefferson’s acting governor. His inauguration was staged on the lawn of the courthouse in Yreka. Signs posted for the benefit of Time, Life, and film crews in attendance read:

“Our roads are not passable, barely jackassable; if our roads you would travel, bring your own gravel.”

The plan was to release film footage of that inaugural event, the formation of America’s 49th state, on December 8. But that never happened, because on December 7, the day before, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the U.S. was launched like a missile into World War II. Even in the State of Jefferson, priorities suddenly shifted.

But Jefferson’s rebellion wasn’t ineffective. The far north now has graveled and paved roads, including a major interstate freeway—today’s I-5—and Stanton Delaplane of the San Francisco Chronicle won a Pulitzer Prize for his news coverage.

As for touring the State of Jefferson: Take your time exploring Siskiyou County and Yreka, where worthy attractions include those surviving horsehead hitching posts downtown; the courthouse, of course, though lowlifes have since stolen all the gold nuggets once displayed there; and the Siskiyou County Museum on Main. From Yreka head out on the State of Jefferson Scenic Byway to O'Brien, Oregon. At the turnout near the California-Oregon border, take in those Klamath River Valley views.

Is that landscape jackassable, or what?

Kim Weir is the founder of Up the Road, a nonprofit public-interest journalism project. She researches, writes, and hosts Up the Road, a radio show and mini-podcast about California co-produced by North State Public Radio. Kim got her start as a travel journalist in 1990 with the publication of the first and original Moon Handbooks Northern California, a surprise best-seller. Six other Moon books on California soon followed. She is a member, by invitation, of the venerable Society of American Travel Writers (SATW). Kim earned a BA in environmental studies and analysis, with an emphasis on botany and ecology, and also holds an MFA in creative writing. She lives in Paradise.
Matt Fidler is a producer and sound designer with over 15 years’ experience producing nationally distributed public radio programs. He has worked for shows such as Freakonomics Radio, Selected Shorts, Studio 360, The New Yorker Radio Hour and The Takeaway. In 2017, Matt launched the language podcast Very Bad Words, hitting the #28 spot in the iTunes podcast charts.