In 1891, Congress made revisions to land acts, one of which was the foundation for the creation of national forests. It would take considerable time before it had a ripple effect locally. In 1905 witnessed the creation of the Diamond Mountain Forest Reserve by Congress. Initially, it had little impact on the region, as the government was still tweaking the process. In time, the first two biggest impacts were (1) forest lands were removed from the federal land patent process and (2) the agricultural community, i.e., livestock operators were in for a rude awakening when not only grazing permits were implemented, but fees too! In an interesting turn of events, it was the livestock operators from Tehama County, that fell the brunt of the forest reserve, since these properties they had used for years for summer grazing, that found mutual ground. In a co-operative effort the forest reserve and Tehama stockmen, help build a telephone line. This aided the stockmen who could connect with their tenders, and for the forest reserve it was their earliest method for fire reporting.
A footnote: In 1907, the Diamond Mountain Forest Reserve, with boundary changes became the Lassen National Forest. The headquaters was located at Red Bluff.
At one point (I’m not sure if it was right at the beginning or shortly there after) the head quarters was in Mineral and moved to Red Bluff in the winter. The first districts were Coppervale, Bogard, Magalia, Hat Creek and Mineral.