Overview From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lassen_National_Forest

Lassen National Forest is located about 80 miles (130 km) east of Red Bluff, California. It is generally bounded by Sierra Nevada mountain range to the south, the Modoc Plateau to the east and California's Central Valley to the west. The forest is in parts of Lassen, Shasta, Tehama, Plumas, and Butte counties.^[1] Forest headquarters is located in Susanville, California. There are local ranger district offices in Chester, Fall River Mills, and Susanville.^[2]

The forest was formed in 1905 when it was named one of the National Forest Reserves, which evolved into the National Forest system.^[3]

The forest was first named the Lassen Peak Forest Reserve because of Lassen Peak, a volcano which is in the southernmost portion of the Cascade Range volcanoes. Mt. Lassen erupted with explosive force in 1915. The forest surrounds Lassen Volcanic National Park. The forest has two major river systems as well as many lakes, cinder cones and lava flows.

Surveys estimate the forest contains 92,000 acres (370 km²) of old growth. Sierra Nevada mixed conifer forests (Coast Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. menziesii), Ponderosa Pine (Pinus ponderosa), and White Fir (Abies concolor)), Jeffrey Pine (Pinus jeffreyi) forests, Red Fir (Abies magnifica) forests, and Lodgepole Pine (Pinus contorta) forests are the most common types.^[4] It is a major source of lumber products.

Wilderness areas

There are three officially designated wilderness areas within Lassen National Forest that are part of the National Wilderness Preservation System. A small portion of one extends onto land that is managed by the Bureau of Land Management (as indicated).

• Caribou Wilderness
• Ishi Wilderness (partly BLM)
• Thousand Lakes Wilderness

Cultural significance

Lassen National Forest is also the site of significant events in California history: Ishi Wilderness was the refuge of the "last wild Indian",^{[citation needed]} Caribou Wilderness was one of first protected "primitive areas" decades before the federal wilderness system was established, and the volcanic explosion of Mt. Lassen was the first eruption to be witnessed and photographed in the history of the continental United States.

On Labor Day 1911, a Native American was discovered outside the slaughterhouse in Oroville, California. Ishi, as he came to be known, became a celebrity. He lived his remaining years at the University of California's Anthropology Museum on Parnassus Heights in San Francisco, under the sponsorship of anthropologist Alfred Kroeber. The university had no protocol for keeping a living museum exhibit, so Kroeber arranged for Ishi's employment as assistant janitor.

Ishi was Yahi, the southern-most division of the Yana and had spent the majority of his life in hiding in the rugged Deer Creek territory north of Oroville. After his discovery, he would not disclose his name. Ishi, the name given by Kroeber, was the Yahi word for man. Kroeber believed that cultural etiquette prevented Ishi from disclosing his name.

In 1908, a utility company crew surprised the small band of survivors in their camp. Ishi and the three others fled. When Ishi was discovered outside the slaughterhouse, he was alone, his hair burned short in mourning.

Ishi died in Berkeley in 1916 of tuberculosis. In 1984 Congress established the 41,100-acre (16,600 ha)^[5] Ishi Wilderness in the dry, rugged, volcanic terrain, where the last band of Southern Yanas had sought refuge. (Visitors to this wilderness are advised by the United States Forest Service to visit only during cooler months because of a lack of water during the summer.)

A year before Ishi's death, Mt. Lassen exploded. Mt. Lassen is officially recognized as Lassen Peak by the United States Board on Geographic Names. Before the eruption on May 22, 1915, the smoking volcano became a tourist draw. Today, within Lassen Volcanic National Park, the area surrounding the volcano is known as the Devastated Area.

An ancient volcano, known as Mount Tehama is believed to have been much larger than Lassen Peak. Its explosion is responsible for the topography of the national forest and the national park: a volcanic rim, with elevations beginning at 6,000 feet (1,800 m) above sea level.

In the 1920s, the managers of the Forest Service engaged in both an internal and external struggle regarding the agency's mission. Aldo Leopold and Bob Marshall, Forest Service employees, each advocated setting aside some forest areas as wilderness off-limits to mining, logging, road construction and grazing.

The first primitive area was created in 1924 in New Mexico and is now named the Aldo Leopold Wilderness. But creation of primitive areas did not become a forest agency policy until 1929.

Externally, the National Park Service, sought to expand parks from existing public lands, primarily national forest lands. The Forest Service responded by creating primitive areas. Initially these new wilderness areas received no special protections other than the official designation. Caribou Primitive area became a likely candidate for primitive status as it shares the length of its western border with the national park.

Caribou Primitive Area received greater protection in 1939, when Interior Secretary Harold Ickes sought to convince President Franklin D. Roosevelt to combine the Forest Service and the National Park Service into a new agency under the management of the United States Department of Interior. Roosevelt declined to act, but the threat of moving the Forest Service out of the United States Department of Agriculture resulted in greater protections for national forest wilderness areas. A congressional bill had earlier given the President authority to act on this new Department of Conservation.

In 1964, Caribou was among the first group of federally protected wildernesses created by the first Wilderness Act. The Lassen forest also contains the 16,335-acre (6,611 ha) Thousand Lakes Wilderness,^[7] also created in 1964.

History

Peter Lassen

Peter Lassen will be long remembered with having a hospital, college, street, mountain, creek, national park, county, and national forest each carrying his name. He was ambitious, his timing was perfect, and, like his contemporary pioneer, Johann Augutus Sutter, everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.

Lassen was murdered by an unknown person in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada Territory,^[12] two months after being profiled by Hutching's California Magazine.^[13]

The profile is contained in the February, 1859 edition of Hutching's. Lassen was murdered April 29, 1859. The murderer was never found, but the list of suspects is long: Disgruntled clients of the Lassen Trail or various business associates were among those suspected.

The conclusion of the magazine profile includes this quote from Lassen: "Beware of bad partners, and nine-tenths of the lawyers, and if need be, add the other tenth, and thus eschew law and lawyers altogether." Apparently his killer heeded the advice.

Lassen, Edward Clapper and Americus Wyatt, were on a silver mining expedition, camped in the Black Rock Desert north of Virginia City, Nevada Territory. This was the beginning of the Comstock silver excitement in northern Nevada. Clapper and Lassen were shot and killed as the trio was breaking camp. Wyatt survived and was the only witness. Officially a band of Paiute Native Americans received blame but few pioneers believed the story.

Lassen's body was recovered and buried near his cabin at Honey Lake Valley. Clapper's remains remained in what is now known as Clapper Canyon. A partial skeleton was discovered there by hikers in 1991, and Clapper's remains have since been interred near Lassen's grave.^[12] Susanville, the seat of Lassen County is in the Honey Lake Valley.

Lassen was born on October 31, 1800 in Farum, Denmark and emigrated to Mexican California around 1840 from the Oregon Territory. Like Sutter, he acquired Mexican citizenship (1844) and applied for a land grant (1843)^[14] of 5 square leagues^[15] on the south bank of Deer Creek in what is now Butte County, California. This grant provided access to the Sacramento River, an important issue during the pioneer period for transportation of goods and people.

Lassen lost his estate around 1851 by mortgaging the land to further his business interests. He then migrated to the Honey Lake Valley where he attempted mining, and which is in modern-day Lassen County.

Lassen County was established on April 1, 1864, five years after his death.^[16]

Lassen Peak Reserve

The beginnings of Lassen National Forest began in 1891 with congressional passage of what has become known as the Forest Reserve Act. This bill was actually entitled: "An Act To Repeal Timber Culture Laws And For Other Purposes.".^[17]

The first federal forest reserves were created soon after President William Henry Harrison signed the repeal into law. Section 24 of the act authorized the President of the United States to set aside public lands as forest reserves without further permission from Congress.

In addition to Harrison, President William McKinley set aside forest lands, as did President Theodore Roosevelt, until Congress put a stop to the practice in 1907, by banning additional set asides in six western states.^[18]

California was not among those six states but was later added to the ban.^[19]

Lassen Peak Reserve was not created until 1905, less than a month before Congress approved the Transfer Act, which took the reserves away from the General Land Office and the Department of Interior. Instead, the newly created U.S. Forest Service managed the lands under the Department of Agriculture. The reserves then became the National Forests. In 1908 Lassen absorbed portions of Diamond Mountain National Forest and exchanged lands with Plumas National Forest and Shasta National Forest.^[20]

Lassen National Park was carved from the Lassen National Forest in 1916,^[21] when Congress approved the creation of the National Park Service, administered by the Interior department. Lassen Peak already enjoyed protection as a National Monument, set aside by Roosevelt in 1907.^[22]

The uneasy relationship between the US Forest Service and the National Park Service continued for several decades, perhaps culminating in 1931 when Congress forbade Lassen National Park from expanding its boundaries.^[22]

Earlier, in 1906, Gifford Pinchot, Chief Forester in the Department of Agriculture, sought to move the national parks into the forest service. Pinchot was thwarted by Congressman John F. Lacey, an ardent preservationist. Pinchot's goal was to subject the Parks to logging and other aspects of his scientific management philosophy.^[23]

Later, in 1939, Interior Secretary Harold Ickes proposed the opposite-of combining the national parks and forests into an agency that would take a preservationist approach.^[24]