LASSEN'S PAST
By Lassen County Historian, Tim I. Purdy
Lassen County has so many interesting facets to explore, and its heritage is no exception. Whether your interest is of emigrant trails, railroads, logging, ghost towns, politics, another area, there can be found in the annuals of Lassen County something of interest for everyone. So whether you are contemplating a visit or moving here, we will provide you with many of the highlights of our past, in what is referred to as the "Land of the Neversweats".
Among the original explorers of the region were fur trappers of the Hudson Bay Company who roamed the northwest region of the county known as Big Valley in the 1820s. Little did these fur trappers know that their network of trails left behind in the 1830s would assist John C. Fremont and his small army of the 1840s. Fremont who was ordered out of the state by Mexican governor Pio Rico, brought his mall band of troops to Big Valley and remained there for a time to plan his Bear Flag revolt and embark on his colorful campaign which would lead to the creation of California.
However, it would take the gold rush of '49 before the region was noticed. The development of the Lassen and Noble Emigrant Trails brought emigrants through the region. (Remnants of these trails still can be seen today and certain sites have historical markers). While traffic continued through the area, it would not be until 1854 when Isaac N. Roop and Company established a trading post in the west end of Honey Lake Valley. This was the humble beginnings of the town of Susanville, the second oldest settlement in the eastern Great Basin. Two years later, a small gold rush occurred just south of Roop's trading post causing the permanent settlement of Honey Lake Valley and Lassen County.
These new residents found that they needed some type of government for their new home and established the Territory of Nataqua. It was perceived that the area was outside the jurisdiction of California and the Utah Territory (Nevada having not been formed yet.) By the early 1860s, with a survey of California boundaries, it was discovered that Honey lake was part of the Golden State and belonged to Plumas County. The citizens were not pleased with the fact, since a part of their independent nature was due to their isolation being cut off from the rest of the State by the Sierra Nevada mountains, nor were they pleased with the fact that now they were being forced to pay taxes. These ensuing events led up to the Sagebrush War, a two-day skirmish fought in Susanville in February 1863 between the residents and the Plumas County Tax Officials. While the residents lost that battle, they did win the war and on April 1, 1864, the County of Lassen was created. The county was named after Peter Lassen. Lassen was a Danish emigrant who came to this state in 1840 and spent his last years prospecting the Honey Lake Valley. He was murdered in 1859 on an expedition in the Black Rock Desert.
By 1880 settlements had sprung up all over Lassen County. Bieber, Hayden Hill, Toadtown, Madeline, Buntingville, and Paradise City to name a few, some of which no longer exist. This time period brought the arrival of the iron horse, namely that of the Nevada-California-Oregon Railway which traversed the eastern side of the County. The railroad, sometimes referred to as the Narrow Crooked & Ornery, was a narrow gauge line that operated from 1880 to 1927. It has the unique distinction of being the nation's longest narrow gauge line in this century.
Though the N-C-O railroad helped develop the high desert region of eastern Lassen, it would be the Fernley & Lassen Railroad built in 1913 that would tap the vast timber resources of the County's western region. Among these developments was the Red River Lumber company's town of Westwood. The Red River Lumber Company was the world's largest electrical sawmill of the times. Two other large mills followed suit and located in Susanville. All three of these companies had extensive railroad logging lines and camps throughout the forest, which finally closed down in 1956. So don't be surprised when you go hiking in the woods and come across sections of old railroad grades with the ties still in place or an abandoned logging camp.
While the large mills are now memories they transformed both Susanville and Westwood into the communities we know today. Yet don't overlook other towns like Janesville, which missed out by one vote of becoming the County seat in 1864, or Standish, established in 1897 as an experimental utopian village. Herlong, which took four different attempts to establish a town at the location since 1892, though it did not evolve until 1942 as a part the Army's ordinance depot. Doyle, the small town with a big heart and the railroad town of Wendel or Bieber in its idyllic setting that once served the needs of the bustling but now ghost town of Hayden Hill.
So come explore undiscovered California for its past, present, and future.
We think you'll enjoy it.
My thanks to Tim I. Purdy for allowing me to post
this history of Lassen County;
and to Mel Ketelsen for providing me with this history!
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