Alturas and Modoc County: The End of the State

Alturas, California, is a long way from everything.

Modoc County covers nearly four thousand square miles of high-desert juniper and rimrock east of the Cascades, where the volcanic plateau runs flat toward the Nevada border and the nearest interstate is an hour away in any direction. The county holds approximately eight thousand people, making it one of the least-populated counties in California by most measures. Alturas is the county seat, and it is further from any other California county seat than any other county seat in the state.

Modoc County was created in eighteen seventy-four, the year after the Modoc War ended and the surviving Modoc were transported to Oklahoma. The county kept their name. The people for whom it was named were gone. That timing is documented: the county was carved from Siskiyou County in eighteen seventy-four, one year after Captain Jack's execution and the exile of the surviving Modoc to Indian Territory.

The Modoc were not permitted to return to California until partial restoration of federal recognition in nineteen seventy-eight, more than a century after the county bearing their name was created.

The county is economically distressed in ways that have not fundamentally changed since the State of Jefferson movement in nineteen forty-one: resource industries in decline, public services below state averages, roads that close in winter.

The name on the county sign is their name. The people it refers to were not invited to stay.