US 395, Part 17: Modoc County (Likely and Alturas to Oregon State Line)

Modoc county (MOH-dok) is US 395's final routing within California. With 9,350 [2000] inhabitants, it is the most uninhabited of US 395's routings in the state (save Sierra, though US 395 does not linger long there). It was created in 1874 from a piece of Siskyou county to the west, and named for the fierce Indian tribe that inhabited the headwaters of the Pit River in the centre of the county. The etymology of the name is disputed; some believe it to mean 'head of the river,' while others hold it comes from the Klamath word moatakni, meaning southerners, viz., the tribe living to the south of the Klamath Indians. The ferocious reputation of the Modoc was well-deserved and their relentless war against the encroachments of the white man was so pitched that the region was once called the "Bloody Ground of the Pacific." The hostilities would not cease until 1911, when the last of the Modoc were ultimately killed or banished to reservations; the famous Modoc War of 1872 was fought between the US Army and a band that had returned from one of these reservations, led by the charismatic Captain Jack (Kintpuash), who refused to live on the Klamath reservation with their former tribal enemies. Despite their smaller numbers, the Modoc would prove very difficult to dislodge and as a show of strength Captain Jack would kill opposing Gen. Edward Canby in 1873 while ostensibly negotiating a peace treaty. Nevertheless, the Army prevailed and within two months Captain Jack would hang from a tree for his action. The remainder were sent back into exile in Oklahoma, where their descendants live today. Canby was proposed as a name for the new county shortly after its incorporation, but in an interesting historical contrast, was rejected by the residents in favour of the tribe instead.

Modoc's county seat is Alturas (population 2,892 [2000]), along the Pit River, and the county's only incorporated city. Alturas had long since existed in pre-colonial times as the Indian village Kosealekte. The modern city, however, traces its roots back to Dorris Bridge, named for the nearby river crossing in turn named for James Dorris, the first white settler of the region, who built it. Established in 1869, the city was renamed Alturas (Spanish for 'heights') in 1874, and became the new county's seat.

Portions of Peter Lassen's trail (see Part 15) remain in Modoc county, part of his early attempt to create his own inland empire in the mold of John Sutter. More northerly than the Donner, the approximate route of Lassen's trail diverged from the Truckee trail near what is now the Rye Patch Reservoir in Nevada, today's Lassen Meadows, north through the Surprise Valley and from there to Lassen's 6,100' pass (the so-called Fandango Pass) through the Warner Mountains; it then descended down to and along the Pit River and Deer Creek Pass to the upper Sacramento valley and near the town of Vina, along US 99 (now CA 99) between Chico and Red Bluff, where his property lay.

Lassen's trail was no shortcut, and despite the lower elevation, was hardly an easy passage. In addition to the significant detour, especially for settlers heading for Sutter's territory, the Modoc and Paiute were quite hostile to these incursions of the white man into their ancestral lands and the trail was beset by considerably harsher weather and travel conditions. The apocryphal stories of the Fandango Pass' naming illustrate this best; one such tale holds that a band of settlers, happy they had made it through without incident, started to dance (the "fandango") and so unnerved the Modoc, baffled by the sight of white men dancing merrily in the middle of the night, that the Indians massacred every last one of them. By 1850, the trail had acquired a deservedly bad reputation and had largely fallen into disuse. After the development of the 6,350' Cedar Pass 15 miles southerly (where modern CA 299 runs today) and the establishment of William Noble's Emigrant Trail we partially followed through the Honey Lake valley in Part 16, the one that Isaac Roop would travel and a true short cut saving nearly 200 miles, Lassen's trail was finally and ultimately superseded. This new route and its branches would remain primary methods of entry in the region until the railroad finally crossed the Donner Pass along its respective trail in 1867.

US 395 in Modoc county is again mostly one-lane-per-direction with minimal realignment from its historic routing. In Alturas, we will meet US 299 (now CA 299), one of the historic US 99 spurs of which only US 199 survives. As signed in 1934, US 299 started in Arcata, CA, on the Pacific coast and ended in Alturas for a distance of 295 miles; this is shown in the 1955 map inset at left. Modern CA 299, however, crosses through Alturas along US 395 for a short section and then branches off to cross the Cedar Pass through Cedarville towards the Nevada state line, where it trails off into dirt. This extended routing is shown in the inset; a branch comes off in Cedarville southeasterly to become NV 447 along Gerlach and Empire in northern Washoe county. (This branch, Surprise Valley Rd, is very similar to Lassen's route. It extends north as well, becoming Fandango Pass Rd and intersecting US 395.) Despite the Cedar Pass road considerably pre-dating US 299's original alignment, it was not part of its original routing and was not added until US 299 was retired as part of the Great Renumbering in 1964.