Place:Yreka, Siskiyou, California, United States

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source: Family History Library Catalog

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Yreka is the county seat of Siskiyou County, California, United States, near the Shasta River; the city has an area of about , most of it land. As of the 2020 United States Census, the population was 7,807, reflecting a meager increase from 7,765 counted in the 2010 Census. Yreka is home to the College of the Siskiyous, Klamath National Forest Interpretive Museum and the Siskiyou County Museum.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

In March 1851, Abraham Thompson, a mule train packer, discovered gold near Rocky Gulch while traveling along the Siskiyou Trail from southern Oregon. By April 1851, 2,000 miners had arrived in "Thompson's Dry Diggings" to test their luck, and by June 1851, a gold rush "boomtown" of tents, shanties, and a few rough cabins had sprung up. Several name changes occurred until the little city was called Yreka. The name comes from the Shasta language , for which Mount Shasta is named. The word means "north mountain" or "white mountain".

Mark Twain tells a different story:

Poet Joaquin Miller described Yreka in 1853–54 as a bustling place with "a tide of people up and down and across other streets, as strong as if a city on the East Coast". Incorporation proceedings were completed on April 21, 1857.^[1]

Lynchings

There have been two documented lynchings in Yreka. The first took place on August 26, 1895, when four men—William Null, Garland Stemler, Luis Moreno, and Lawrence Johnson—awaiting trial for various charges of murder and robbery, were simultaneously hanged by a lynch mob from a railroad tie suspended from two adjacent trees.

The second lynching occurred on July 28, 1935. Clyde Johnson and Robert Miller Barr robbed a local business and its patrons in Castella, California. They then stole a car from a patron and drove north to Dunsmuir, California, where they planned to abandon the car and make a getaway by train. Soon after they abandoned the car north of Dunsmuir, they were stopped by California Highway Patrolman George "Molly" Malone and Dunsmuir honorary Chief of Police, 38-year-old Frank R. "Jack" Daw. Johnson pulled out a Luger pistol and wounded both policemen. Malone recovered, but Daw died the next day. Johnson was caught a few hours later by a dragnet and taken into custody. Barr, who was holding the $35 that they got from the robbery, panicked during the shootout and ran off into the woods, then escaped on a freight train. Daw was a beloved figure in Dunsmuir. His title of Chief of Police was given to him because of his cool head and experience as a World War I veteran. The night of Daw's funeral a dozen cars from Dunsmuir, carrying approximately 50 masked men, drove north to Yreka to lynch Johnson. On August 3, 1935, at 1:30 a.m., the vigilante mob reached the Yreka jail and lightly knocked on the door. Deputy Marin Lange, the only guard on duty at the jail, opened the door slightly and was quickly overtaken. He was driven nine miles east of Yreka where he was released, barefoot. The mob searched the jail, found Johnson, drove him away in one of the cars and hanged him from a pine tree.^[2] Barr was arrested over a year later, on September 4, 1936, in Los Angeles on a burglary charge. During his time on the run, he got a part as an extra in the Nelson Eddy/Jeanette MacDonald film Rose Marie, scenes of which were filmed near Lake Tahoe. He is credited in the film under his real name.

Yreka rebellion

On November 27, 1941, a group of young men gained national media attention when, brandishing hunting rifles for dramatic effect, they stopped traffic on U.S. Route 99 south of Yreka, and handed out copies of a Proclamation of Independence, stating that the State of Jefferson was in "patriotic rebellion against the States of California and Oregon" and would continue to "secede every Thursday until further notice."

The secession movement ended quickly, though not before Del Norte County District Attorney John Leon Childs of Crescent City was inaugurated as governor of the State of Jefferson on December 4, 1941.

The first blow was the death of Mayor Gable on December 2, followed by the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7. Those in favor of secession focused their efforts on the war effort, which crippled the movement.

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