With the first installment of county property taxes due, let’s take a look back in time. In the first year of the County’s operation, 1864-65, there was a total assessed valuation of $239,558 in land improvements and $439,301 in personal property. The County had an original tax rate of $1.25 on each $100 assessed value for County purposes, plus collected another $1.25 on each assessed value for State purposes. The total collection in taxes amounted to $16, 971.47 of which the County received $8,485.57.
In the County’s first year of operation, the District Attorney attempted to collect $958.95 in back taxes, which represented nearly eleven percent of the County’s budget. The District Attorney filed lawsuits ranging from A.H. Hardin who owed 90 cents in a special assessment levied by the Janesville School District to $164.40, which Isaac Roop owed on his municipal Piute Creek water system.
In one of these tax law suits a unique situation occurred when Constable E.R. Nichols sought to serve William Weatherlow with a summons for $46.30 in back taxes. Nichols noted on his summon as of his attempted service of February 7, 1865 that he was unable to serve Weatherlow as he “. . . cannot be found in the county.” If only Nichols who doubled as County Surveyor, had toured the Susanville Cemetery, he would have located Weatherlow’s grave who died on July 22, 1864 and thereby became a permanent resident of Lassen County. It was not as though Nichols was unaware of who Weatherlow was, as Nichols sued him in 1861 over a mining claim in the Black Rock Desert.