Byers’ old Baxter Creek general store that was later moved his Tule ranch and operated by his nephew, Jim McClelland, May 1975
Today, is Lassen County’s birthday, it being created on April 1, 1864. Many people may not realize but the original proposed name for Lassen County, was Byers County. So who was Byers, and why was he to be honored? In 1858, James Davis Byers (1825-1902) purchased some property along Baxter Creek near Janesville. However, he remained a Quincy resident for sometime. In February 1863, Byers served as a Plumas County Deputy Sheriff, and played a significant role in the Sagebrush War. The final result of that conflict led to the creation of Lassen County the following year. Plumas County Assemblyman Robert A. Clark introduced the legislation to create the new county. Clark proposed to name it Byers County, but Byers declined. Byers suggested that it should be named after Peter Lassen, and thus the Lassen name was applied to the new county.
More about Byers in a later post, though by 1880 he was one of the ten wealthiest people in Lassen County.
A view of Susanville’s Memorial Park from Main Street, 1947
The creation of a municipal park was fraught with numerous hurdles. Actually, the park movement began long before the creation of the City of Susanville.
By the 1920s, the ideal location for a park was the meadow land east of Weatherlow Street to Grand Avenue with Main and North Streets rounding out the boundaries. This was problematic for the City of Susanville, since it was outside the city limits. A proposed City and Lassen County Park District seemed a like a solution. Besides the city, the district would encompass subdivisions to the east such as Halltown, Milwood Tract and Lassen Townsite. It was met with fierce opposition by county officials. At the December 1929 Lassen County Board of Supervisors, the matter went to a sound defeat of 4 to 1.
The City never gave up, and when the property was annexed to the City in 1947, the park became a reality.
California, has moved its entire primary election to March (there are some out-of-state subscribers who may not be aware of this fact) so with a week to go, and being bombarded with political ads, check out this campaign propaganda from 1938. Does it sound familiar?
In 1938, Raymond Haight made his second attempt to run for governor of California. He ran as a Progressive, being a centrist between the Republicans and Democrats. On the evening of August 3, 1938, about 250 people assembled outside the Susanville Bank of America to listen to Haight. Haight informed the prospective voters he “would run graft out of the state house in Sacramento, lower taxes, provide security for bona fide citizens of the state, provide security for the aged and above all balance the budget, not by addition of taxes, but cutting the cost of government.”
In January 1908, the Rev. N.M. Parsons of the Methodist Church spearheaded a prohibition movement in Susanville in an effort to clean up the community. The issue had been informally discussed since the early 1880s, when there was a local chapter of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Parsons began his campaign by focusing on the social ills caused by alcohol. He circulated petitions to have the issue placed on the next municipal election ballot, scheduled for April 13. The Town Trustees accepted Parsons’ petitions and would place the matter before the voters. There was one stipulation: it would bean advisory measure as to whether saloons should be banned.
It was a widely debated topic. The city’s 1908 budget was $3,498. There were two main revenue sources. One was property tax assessment and it generated $1,815. The other was the liquor licenses which provided $1,424 to the town’s treasury.
Once those figures were revealed, Parsons; ballot measure was doomed. After all, if the City lost the money generated from liquor licenses, the only alternartive to make up for the loss would be to increase property taxes. That appeared to be the voter’s consensus. The issue generated the highest voter turnout to date with 157 votes cast. The results: 110 votes to remain “wet” and 47 “dry.”
Lassen College on the Lassen Union High School campus.
In 1965, Lassen Community College severed its ties with Lassen Union High School. The college then began the process to locate and build a campus of their own.
During that process college officials decided to expand its territory with neighboring counties of Modoc, Plumas and eastern Sierra. After all, for nearly forty-three years residents of those counties took advantage of the opportunities made available to them at Lassen College.
On June 4, 1968 the voters of those counties, as well as Lassen, would decide if it was to be a four county community college. A college spokesman stated, “We want quality education in this mountain area at a reasonable cost.” The ballot measure ran into trouble with Plumas County, whose residents planned to annex to Peralta College in Alameda County. The major hurdle was the tax issue to fund the costs to build a new campus. While the Lassen voters approved the measure, the neighbors did not.
The Belfast District, 1898. It was to be the center piece of Merrill’s reclamation project.
The federal land patent process often referred as homesteads worked fine until the westward expansion. After crossing the Mississippi River there were dramatic changes in geography and climate. It was President Abraham Lincoln who corrected the situation. In 1862 Lincoln was able to pass three important pieces of legislation since his opposition failed to show up in Congress. These were the creation of the Department of Agricultural, the Pacific Railroad Act and the 1862 Homestead Act. While the Homestead Act did improve matters in the west, it was not a one-size cure all fix. The arid intermountain west presented its own challenges. A unique chain of events occurred when Captain Charles A. Merrill announced in 1873 of his reclamation plan for the Honey Lake Valley by tapping Eagle Lake as its water supply. It should be noted that Merrill was not a novice to land issues. He came to California, in 1864, from his native state of Maine. In 1870, Merrill was involved in a title dispute of a Mexican land grant near Santa Barbara. As a result of that involvement he worked ardently as a land agent for individuals who had capital to invest.
For Merrill to move forward on his Eagle Lake project he would need federal legislation for an easier method to homestead arid lands. Merrill recruited California Congressman J.K. Lutrell to craft such legislation. On March 3, 1875 Congress approved Lutrell’s bill, the Lassen County Desert Land Act. In essence, an individual could claim up to 640 acres of government land, versus the standard 160-acre limit. A person then had two years time to reclaim the land by irrigation and they could purchase the land from the government at $1.25 per acre. The last provision was unique in that one did not have to reside on the land as a requirement. The Lassen County Desert Land Act gave birth to the much more famous Desert Land Act of 1877. The two Acts were nearly identical; expect of course the latter applied to all arid regions of the American west. There was one other major change in the fee structure. Under the Desert Land Act, “the settlers pay twenty-five cents per acre at the time of application, to have three years (versus two) for the purpose of irrigation and to pay one dollar per acre upon making the final proof, i.e. being issued a land patent to the property. The Desert Land Act was immensely popular and large swaths of land in the West were obtained under this Act.
It should be noted there was a dark side to it. This was from the Lassen County Desert Land Act’s non-residence provision that was included in the Desert Land Act. In the first decade there was a significant amount of fraud. It enabled land speculation companies to acquire thousands of acres of land by hiring dummy entry men to file on said land. Locally, this was particularly the case in eastern Honey Lake Valley and the Madeline Plains. Later amendments to the Act reduced the fraudulent activity.
In 2017 when I conducted the Lassen County Courthouse Centennial Cemetery Tour I wanted to include the grave of Lassen County Clerk Maud Tombs. I was prudent in the grave selection, because I had no idea what the attendance would be. If it was large, which it was, I wanted the selected graves easily accessible and eliminate as much possible potential hazardous features such as grave copings. Maud’s unfortunately did not fit into the easy accessible category.
Maud Edna Long was born on May 2, 1875, in Susanville, the eldest of ten children of John and Margaret Long. By the time she was born, her family already had an influence in the region’s history. The town of Longville in Humbug Valley, Plumas County, was named for her grandfather, William B. Long back in 1861.
On August 3, 1897, Maud married George L. Tomb. He was a native of New York and came to Susanville in 1890, no doubt influenced by the Pardee family, relatives of his. In 1898, George entered the politcal arena and ran for Lassen County Clerk and won. In 1902, he ran for a second term and was elected. Going for a third term, the voters rejected him and he was replaced by George Bassett. For whatever reasons, in early 1907, George sold his furniture/undertaking business and moved his wife Maud, and two daughters, Nadene and Gladys to Red Bluff. It did not take long for Maud to discover her husband’s dark side, a gambling problem. Before 1907 concluded Maud left him and returned to Susanville with their two daughters. Upon her return there was a distinct little name change in her last name, an “s” was added and she was now Maud Tombs.
In 1918, Maud decided to run for Lassen County Clerk against the incumbent George Bassett who had defeated her husband. Joining her on the ballot was Robert Kyle of Westwood and Elmer Winchell of Standish. The primary held on August 27 showed it was a race between Bassett with 73 votes and Maud with 66, the other two candidates combined only garnered 25 votes. The general election was a close race, and a problematic one on reaching out to the voters due to the outbreak of the Spanish influenza. Maud won the election with 991 votes with Bassett trailing at 976. Maud would go on to be elected seven more times. In 1951, she was succeeded by her daughter Nadene Wemple who would serve four terms as Lassen County Clerk.
Two final notes. Maud was the first woman elected to a county wide office. Secondly, for over a century a woman has always been elected county clerk.
In many respects the case of Manuel Cardenas versus the Red River Lumber Company appeared to be like so many others before seeking damages from injuries sustained. In 1936, Cardenas sued Red River for $50,000 from loss of his right eye due to an attack by him by Deputy Constable David Bohannon, a Red River employee. Thomas C. Ryan, a San Francisco attorney who represented Cardenas stated at the opening of the trial “Red River owns and controls Westwood.” Many folks thought that way, but feared publicly to say it. The Susanville business community had a code name for Red River—the Red octopus. It was a reference Red River’s tenactles were everywhere in Lassen County. Anyhow, Red River’s attorney, Hardin “Finn” Barry of Susanville retorted, “Every commercial business is operated by private business.” This was a recent event, as part of a reorganization of the company. Had this event occurred ten years ago, Ryan’s words would ring true. In the end, Cardenas was awarded $3,000.
L.D. McDow Residence. Courtesy of George McDow, Jr.
It would take nearly a half century for Susanville, as a municipality, before it was able to expand its boundaries. Of course, politics played a pivotal role and the city’s most formible opponet was the Red River Lumber Company which owned the Milwood Tract east of the city limits.
Annexation efforts tried and failed with Red River’s influence. In the summer of 1928, the residence of J.A. Metz, who lived in the original McDow home in the Milwood Tract was destroyed by fire. Since it was outside the city limits there was no fire protection in Milwood and adjoining subdivisions. The fire prompted a petition drive for annexation. It was met with opposition and they were able to stop the movement in its tracts.
In 1930, an annexation campaign was resurrected. A committee was appointed to investigate the many issues and report back to a public meeting scheduled for March 10. It was decided to take a poll in the Halltown and Milwood Districts to obtain the residents’ pulse on the measure. For the proponents it was not good news. The initial poll showed 156 against annexation to 47 for it. End of discussion and remained that way for nearly a decade.
In its earliest days, Johnstonville suffered an identity crisis. In the mid to late 1850s, a whenever a warm spring/ summer rain storm hit that area and its aftermath caused a swarm of frogs/toads to appear and someone gave that district the name of Toadtown. In 1864, when Lassen County Board of Supervisors were busy with the formation of the county, they named the voting precinct there Toad Town. At the same time, the board named the school district there Susan River. There were some people who did not like the monicker of Toad Town. A dated petition of November 12,1864 signed by 41 individuals asked the Board of Supervisors to change the name to Johnsonville, the “t” omitted. Another peculiar thing about this petition besides the spelling, was the majority of the people who signed it, lived in Susanville. On December. 7, 1864, meeting of the Board of Supervisors they approved the petition as submitted, changing the Toad Town Voting Precinct to Johnsonville. As to the Susan River School, they did not change the name to Johnstonville until 1878.
