Isolated settlements in their earliest days had many obstacles to overcome and one item that was hard to come by was cash. This problem was only excabberated during the Civil War years of the 1860s in this region.

The Honey Lakers were a resourceful lot. One crop that grew well was rutabagas. In April 1860 when Honey Lake Valley’s first newspaper, Richmond Times, made its debut they offered a subscription price of 200 pounds of rutabagas. There is one recorded court case in which the lowly rutabaga was accepted as legal tender. In 1866, A. Dillon sued Antone Storff over the payment of labor and sundry supplies. Dillon accepted Storff’s partial payment in the form of rutabagas.

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