'Secessionists' to celebrate

The glorious Republic of Rough and Ready lasted just three months in 1850, born out of frustration over a mining tax and abandoned – legend has it – after bartenders in neighboring towns started refusing to serve liquor to "foreigners."

The gold miners loved liberty. They just loved libations more.

Today, thousands will honor that independent spirit at Secession Days, an annual celebration featuring jug bands and re-enactments from the Nevada County town's rebellious history.

Revelers will be heartened to know that Northern California's revolutionary flame didn't burn out when Rough and Ready rejoined the union. In fact, a pair of modern-day secession movements are growing in size and ambition, sounding the refrain that California and the country have gone hopelessly wrong and the only real way to change is to fly under your own flag.

Granted, all 29 efforts to divide California since 1850 have failed, according to former Siskiyou County Assemblyman Stan Statham, who once tried dividing California three ways by geography. (Logland, Fogland and Smogland, anyone?)

And we all know what happened last time a geographic region tried to break up the union.

Still, Northern Californian activists such as Brian Peterson look at Sacramento's $15 billion budget deficit, depressing levels of corruption and growing spool of regulations and say no idea is too radical.

On days off from his landscaping job in Yreka, Peterson fights for the freedom of Jefferson, a fictional 51st state to be carved from modern-day California and Oregon, stretching from about 70 miles north of Sacramento to midway up Oregon.

He's resurrecting a fight that flourished in 1941, when citizens fed up with poor roads attracted national attention and actually inaugurated their own governor before the bombing of Pearl Harbor quenched the fervor.

The idea behind Jefferson is that Northern California and Southern Oregon have more in common with each other – economically, ecologically and culturally – than with their respective states' power centers and a new government would represent them better.

"I get calls all the time, from guys who are tired of all the regulations and high gas prices," Peterson said. "Everybody's being squeezed because there's less work, and every time you try to start something your hands are tied. … There's just something wrong with the whole country."

Over the past five years, Peterson's roster of supporters has grown from 100 to 537. The local Grange agreed to back the cause. And sales are up of pro-Jefferson bumper stickers and T-shirts, distinguished by a "XX" logo to represent being "double-crossed" by Sacramento and Salem.

"Oh, it's genuine, believe me," said Tony Intiso, a candidate for the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors who supports the concept of Jefferson – "more local control" – though not necessarily a new state. "And growing every day."

A bit farther north, a separate band of radicals plot something even more ambitious – an entirely new country called Cascadia, encompassing British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and California's Redwood Empire.

Based in Seattle, the Cascadian Independence Project has founded chapters on a dozen college campuses and boasts an informational MySpace page with 2,221 friends calling for a "sustainable society that values and protects our unique ecosystem."

The independence campaigns tend to mix freedom cries with regional marketing campaigns and keep a sense of humor. Designs for a new Cascadian government, for instance, include a "Bureau for Sasquatch Affairs."

But Statham, now heading the California Broadcasters Association in Sacramento, said the disillusionment and frustration these groups tap into is real. That's why he drew up his new map of California and in 1994 managed to pass a resolution in the Assembly allowing citizens to weigh in. His effort came up a vote short in the Senate.

"It's just a good idea," Statham said. "It feels like it's revolutionary but it's not. It's like raising a family: Your kids get big and grow up and eventually you have to kick them out."

Peterson acknowledges his dreams of statehood probably won't come true. If anything, he hopes to attract attention to the economic plight of the north, battered by the decline of the timber industry.

"Imagine if 10 counties voted and said, 'Hey, we wanted to secede. Here's our border. Deal with it.' Then someone down there would take some notice, right?" Peterson asked.

All this revolutionary talk goes over just fine in Rough and Ready, which is today little more than a crossroads with a post office and an abandoned blacksmith shop about five miles from Grass Valley. During the Gold Rush, the town teemed with 3,000 miners fuming over lawlessness and the mining tax.

So townspeople took a vote, drafted a constitution and sent a rider on horseback to deliver the message. But before higher authorities even got the word, the miners had changed their minds. Townspeople cite the booze ban. Some historians credit a wave of Fourth of July patriotism.

Whatever the case, long-timers like Everette Burkard remain proud of the Rough and Ready spirit. He says it lingers today in battles against development and environmental regulations.

And it will surely be on display Saturday.

"You can't necessarily go along with what everybody else goes along with," Burkard said.

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• Call The Bee's Todd Milbourn, (916) 321-1063.