An Oh-So-Alpine Story (and an unlikely hero)
Back in 1978, tiny Alpine County made history – for the very best and the very worst of reasons.
Jimmy Carter was President, if you’ll remember. The Vietnam War was barely three years in the rearview mirror. The Watergate scandal was still fresh in people’s minds, while stagflation was torpedoing the economy. And Cold War fears were feeding very real paranoia about nuclear war.
Alpine in 1978 was tiny – even tinier than today. Total county population hovered around 850 souls, just 171 of whom occupied the official county seat of Markleeville.
Tiny communities can a wonderful blessing. But being tiny can be its own curse. In Alpine’s case, the bad part was that people began to imagine taking it over. And in 1978, it almost happened.
Enter a character named Francis Gillings. A staunch Constitutionalist and anti-tax crusader, Gillings was fresh off a confrontation in San Joaquin County, California where, in the summer of 1975, he’d pitted his “San Joaquin Sheriff’s Posse Comitatus” against the actual local sheriffs and Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers, who had been trying to unionize the grape fields.
To Gillings, this was an effort to deprive farm owners of their property rights. He threatened to shoot any UFW rep setting foot on the land he was “protecting.” And on September 2, 1975, when local deputies attempted to arrest Gillings on an outstanding traffic warrant, he racked his shotgun and pointed it at an officer. The gun went off, narrowly missing the deputy’s ear, before officers wrestled the shotgun away. A jury had convicted Gillings of “assault with a deadly weapon” on August 9, 1976.
But Gillings and his associates remained firm believers that government needed to be reined in. Ironically enough, their vision for accomplishing that goal was assembling a group to grab those reins themselves. And Alpine was just small enough to have reins within reach.
Their immediate target: the June 6, 1978 election. Alpine’s long-time sheriff, Stu Merrill, was retiring. Gillings and friends had just the guy in mind for a new “tax-fighting” sheriff: John (Joe) E. Buras. They hoped to eventually elect favored candidates for district attorney and three supervisors, as well.
There were only about 550 registered voters in the whole of Alpine at the time. So consternation mushroomed when the county clerk noticed a sudden influx of over one hundred new registration forms that spring – the majority listing residences that seemed “questionable.”
The influx of new Alpine voters had apparently been orchestrated thanks to a group called Sierra Alpine Associates, owner of a 600-acre parcel in Markleeville. There the group hoped to erect “Constitution City,” where some 170 like-minded families would live. Advertisements touted “a county where only patriots will be in charge.” Gillings’ connection to the group was a matter of debate. But he did seem to be a supporter of the Posse Comitatus concept that local sheriffs were the ultimate decision-makers about what was (and wasn’t) constitutional.
Buras, the group’s candidate for Alpine Sheriff, was quoted as saying change would “descend upon this town so fast they won’t know what happened.” Gillings reportedly had opined that “the country might shape up a bit if citizens hanged a few public officials.” When asked about that supposed remark, Buras claimed he’d never actually heard Gillings say that. “But I am willing to make it,” Buras said, adding that hanging might be the only way to remove officials who violated their oath.
Constitution City’s backers claimed the development would be a big benefit to the county, as some $32 million in home construction would be spent in Alpine within the next five years. Sadly, Nazi propaganda also began circulating about the same time as the group appeared, though both Gillings and Buras denied having anything to do with that.
Gillings and Buras featured most prominently in newspaper coverage of the “take-over” effort, but they were hardly alone. One Dave (or Zenas) E. Davidson was also reportedly a member of the same loose group. Davidson ran a Markleeville business called “Dave’s Survival School,” and conducted survival war games in the area. Perhaps to actually make ends meet, he took a side job as a swing shift janitor for a large local company, where he was described as “obviously a little different.” Davidson came to work dressed in camo clothing, never carried identification of any kind, and claimed two different Social Security numbers. Opposed to the income tax, he listed eight dependents on his job application as a way to skate taxes. And he claimed an odd work background that included stints as a trucker, training at police and sheriff’s academies, and 24 other specialized schools. He said he used to run Dave’s Detective Agency in Kalispell, Montana, though Kalispell authorities had no record of his supposed detective business there. At work, Davidson helped himself to the company copier to run off tax protest literature and used the phone when he was supposed to be cleaning. And as you can imagine, the company was less than happy to find him passing out conspiracy-theory “briefing” notes claiming President Ford was going to step down so a Rockefeller could replace him; predicting bombings, sniper attacks, and a forced national ID system; and claiming that Chinese and Mexican troops were poised to swoop in and take over the western United States.
By Spring, the sudden influx of a new voter registrations became a flash-point for Alpine residents. Most of the new “voters” listed post office boxes for their address, identifying vacant lots and nonexistent motor homes as their legal “residence.”
Sheriff-candidate Buras didn’t see it as a problem. “These people intend to move here. Therefore they have a legal right to register to vote here as long as they don’t register elsewhere,” he claimed.
The local D.A. saw it otherwise. Tall, lanky Chris Smith had only moved to Alpine a few months earlier – one of only two black people in town (the other, a lifeguard at one of the state parks).
Born July 8, 1922 in Hitchcock, Texas (near Galveston), Smith had worked as a cowboy in his youth, roping cattle on a ranch. Drafted at the age of 19, he was sent to Italy and the Philippines during World War II, becoming a lieutenant with a combat engineer group.
A stop-over in Los Angeles on his way home from the war changed his plans. Instead of returning to Texas, he moved to Altadena in 1946. He joined the LA police force, working his way up from beat cop in Watts. In 1956 he was among the first six black officers ever to work at the Wilshire Police Station (transferring in from the downtown Central Jail). He eventually retired as a sergeant in 1967 after twenty years – with experience that included working as a homicide detective.
But Smith hadn’t just worked as a cop. He made the most of split shifts by taking undergrad classes at UCLA, where he graduated in 1952. And he went on to attend law school at USC with help from the GI Bill – all while still working for LAPD. After leaving the police force in 1967, Smith spent a year as a deputy city prosecutor in Pasadena, then nine years with the L.A. County public defender’s office, where he became a senior trial deputy.
By 1977, he was looking for a change. A return to rural life sounded great. “I should have been a rancher instead of a lawyer,” he once told a reporter. When Alpine’s previous D.A. left his post to become a judge, Smith applied for the job. Smith was surprised that he got it. He wasn’t just the first black D.A. of Alpine County. He would later state proudly that he was the first black D.A. in California. And the job he took wasn’t just to prosecute crime; Smith held concurrent titles as Alpine’s county counsel and public administrator. The pay? $1,140 a month for what was billed as a “part-time” job.
Drunk-driving cases were the most common local felonies. Smith figured he’d get out of the rat race and have time to take up writing; he’d once served on a police detail with Joseph Wambaugh, the famous cop-turned-writer. Affable as well as hard-working, Smith wore natty plaid suits to court, reverting to cowboy boots, string tie, and ten-gallon hat the rest of the time.
It quickly turned into a five-day-a-week job. Just months after taking the post as DA, Smith became the sand in the Posse Comitatus’s works. He assembled a Grand Jury, and indicted a dozen of the new “voters” for perjury and election fraud.
Buras, the group’s candidate for sheriff, eventually tried to bow out of the race, claiming he feared for his life if he won. But since ballots had already been printed, he remained legally a candidate. Buras lost on June 6, by a vote of 521 to 12. Much to the relief of long-time residents, Archie Wood (a 21-year veteran of the Sheriff’s department) was elected.
So, what happened to everyone after the election kerfuffle finally died down? Davidson apparently disappeared. When his veiled comments at work began sounding suspiciously like bomb threats, word was quietly dropped to the Douglas Sheriff’s office. “Almost that very day, Dave Davidson took care of the problem himself,” recalled an acquaintance. “He got into an argument with the Alpine County District Attorney and stuck a gun in his face. There was a warrant out for him almost instantly, and no one could find him.”
The Gillings family moved to Sparks and, in later life, continued to support local causes they believed in. A few remnants of the Posse reportedly lingered quietly in Alpine for years.
D.A. Chris Smith returned to the Los Angeles area in 1981, opening a private practice for four years and handling “a little bit of everything.” Four years later, he took a job as assistant city prosecutor for Pasadena in 1986. He told an L.A. Times reporter at the time he was considering running again for L.A. District Attorney (he’d run and lost twice), because “Ira Reiner is doing such a bad job.” In 1989 he was appointed to the California State Bar Court as an administrative judge, hearing cases involving attorney discipline.
Smith would later recall his four years in Alpine – Posse Comitatus fight and all – as “probably the best four years of my life.” Locals still remember him fondly.
Smith apparently never received the acclaim he deserved. Not even an obituary seems to survive to tell his story. According to Social Security records, he died somewhere on February 10, 2006. He was 83 years old.