Built to Boom, Sustained by Sheer Stubbornness
Back in 1864, Alpine County was just about to boom. At least, people thought so.
Rich silver ore had recently been uncovered, after all, and not just at Silver Mountain. Eager prospectors had unearthed encouraging indications at Monitor, Mogul, and Raymond, too. Speculators hinted at the possibility that those fresh Alpine mines could be an extension of the fabulous Comstock Lode. And a flood of eager would-be miners had already hurriedly staked out hundreds of new claims in hopes theirs would be the next big bonanza.
All these high hopes did create an instant bump in the local population. The fall of 1863 saw an astonishing 1,600 votes cast from the region that soon would become Alpine. And by the following spring, one observer optimistically predicted “a low estimate” of 5,000 inhabitants by July for the soon-to-be county.
Deferring to the fervent desire of locals for a new county to call their own (with courts and a seat of government closer to all that action), the California legislature passed the “Alpine Bill” on March 16, 1864. That legislative blessing made Alpine the 46th county in California – beating Lassen’s creation by a mere two weeks.
The fact that it would be a California county at all wasn’t always guaranteed. At first, locals had actually presumed that the “crest of the Sierra” was California’s eastern border. Thus, when Jacob Marklee recorded his land claim in June, 1862, he filed it over in Nevada Territory. And following Marklee’s untimely demise in May, 1863, his half-brother opened a probate case there as well. Silver Mountain-ites, too, originally believed they were residing on the Nevada side of the border. So when they drew up an initial petition to form a county in November, 1862, they sent it to Nevada’s territorial legislature, as well. This erroneous belief about the dividing line was fostered, in part, by the hazy description of Nevada Territory itself, which loosely claimed all territory on the Eastern side of the Sierra crest.
That presumption was thrown out the window for good in July, 1863, when field work was completed for a survey of the actual 120th meridian. To their surprise, local residents of the new mining communities discovered they were actually on the California side. Thus only a few months after the survey work was done, eager miners began circulating a second county petition in the fall of 1863, submittting it to the California legislature.
Tellingly, Alpine County’s very first map was all about its mining districts, carefully flagging dozens of the most prominent claims. But it wasn’t simply mining that had prompted the county’s original formation. In 1864, the Civil War was still raging back east, and while California was a long way from the battlefields, Union concerns, too, played a part. California was officially a Union state, but it had many Southern sympathizers. Dark warnings circulated about possible “risings” in the state by Confederate sympathizers. A new county government in a remote region could go a long way toward ensuring tighter control. Perhaps not surprisingly, all of Alpine County’s first slate of elected officials were described by the local newspaper as “Union men.”
By August, the eager boosters had finally succeeded in creating a brand new county and Alpine’s first official election was held. But the new county embarked on its official existence poor. “Alpine County to-day has comparatively no taxable property,” grumbled the Monitor Gazette in August 1864. “The ways and means to carry on her government will consist of county scrip [IOUs], and manage economically as we may[,] this must run very low.”
The new county’s population, too, never matched its initial high-flying expectations. Five thousand residents? A pipe dream. A few modern sources have pegged Alpine’s initial population as 10,000 but – tellingly – they cite no hard data for that figure. Contemporary voter tallies suggest a more realistic head count for the permanent population was probably between 2,000 and 3,000 for the county’s first year in existence – a high it would never again match in the following 160 years.
Census figures show the new county’s population cratering fast, to just 685 residents six years later (1870). From there, it began a long, slow slide: to 539 citizens in 1880; 509 in 1890; 483 in 1900. During part of the 1920s, all of Alpine County hovered around 240 souls.
In the one hundred years since then, its population has risen – slightly. Today, Alpine County is home to about 1,100 people, one-half to one-third its 1864 populace. To put that in humorous perspective, a modern cruise ship can hold 4,000 to 6,000 passengers.
Turns out that Alpine wasn’t poor only in the financial sense from the very beginning. Sadly, she was land-poor, as well. The county started out as a mere 739 square miles. Today, approximately 96% of that is public land, leaving just 4-5% as private property able to generate property tax.
The reason for such massive federal ownership? Well, both history and geography have played a role in that, as well. When California was granted statehood in 1850, the federal government retained ownership of lands not already covered by earlier land grants. Elsewhere, homesteading moved some of that federal land into private hands. But given the dearth of flat land in Alpine, homesteading was never widespread. Mining claims were filed, but didn’t privatize the underlying land. And the swift collapse of Alpine’s early mining boom didn’t foster settlement either.
Then, beginning in the 1890s, a movement to create national forests led large tracts in the Sierra Nevada to become federally-protected forest land – think Humboldt-Toyiabe and Eldorado National Forests. The addition of Mokelumne Wilderness and Carson-Iceberg Wilderness protections further cemented federal control.
Today, at 94-96% federal ownership, Alpine County has the dubious distinction of having the highest proportion of federal land of any county in California (Inyo comes in next, at around 86%, and Trinity is roughly 75%). That’s not just unusual for California – it’s one of the highest percentages in the United States. A couple of counties in Utah (Wayne and Garfield counties) come close, at 96% and 93% combined federal/state land, respectively (depending on methodology). And Clark County, Nevada lags behind only slightly, at 89%.
The sad result, from Alpine County’s point of view, is that history has left it very little property subject to tax – just 29 square miles of its 739 total. And while federal programs like PILT were created to help mitigate the impact, those funds have continued to dwindle.
Mother Nature, too, was unkind to Alpine from its beginning. The Sierra Nevada range bisects the county, offering stunning mountain views but terrain not conducive to farming, ranching, building, or much else for economic purposes. Think steep, rocky cliff, giant boulders, and towering elevations. As a result, Alpine’s few settlements are scattered across the valley floors and foothills — like Markleeville, Pleasant Valley, Bear Valley, and Mesa Vista.
Winters can be long and severe, with deep snowpack at elevation. Vehicular access is difficult in much of the county. The growing season is short. So even in Alpine’s early days, homesteading for farming or ranching was limited. Instead, early economic efforts focused mostly on mining and timber. But recreational use – that’s a different story. Even in the 1860s and ‘70s, Alpine was noted for its fishing!
Scholars have a buzzword for the resulting governmental skew: “tax-base mismatch.” The underlying concept is obvious: even a tiny, tax-poor, topographically-challenged county still needs to carry the full weight of a functional county government. Someone has to issue building permits. Somebody has to prosecute crime. When roads need fixing or public services are required, someone has to answer the phone. Elected officials and county staff all need to get paid. But when widespread federal ownership or broad swaths of uninhabitable land cut the bottom out of the anticipated revenue base, there’s a structural weakness. County government is still needed. But there’s no scale to support it.
By the mid-19th century, many states began to realize that tiny counties were hugely expensive to run. A few (not including California) attempted to prevent this sort of problem in the first place by imposing population requirements before a new county could be formed. Following a wave of new county formations as Texas was settled, for instance, the Texas Constitution of 1876 required any new county to have at least 5,000 inhabitants. Georgia went even further in 1945, after its list of counties reached an astronomical 158, requiring at least 30,000 residents for any proposed further county to be formed.
The opposite tack was taken by a few states like North Dakota and South Dakota, adopting procedures allowing small counties to consolidate with each other, with voter-approval. For the most part, however, no such mergers actually took place.
California, too, finally grew skeptical about petitions for new counties. In the 1869-1870 legislative session, when proposals were submitted for the new counties of “Donner” and “Oristimbo,” those bills were killed or (as a legislative nicety) “indefinitely postponed.”
Small or fiscally-unsustainable counties have actually been dissolved in a few rare cases. Surprisingly, one instance took place in California. Klamath County, in northern California, was created in 1851 but never drew a sizeable population. Remote, financially strapped, and with only few residents scattered over a huge, rugged territory, Klamath was dissolved in May 1874, and its territory split between Humboldt, Siskiyou, and Del Norte.
Counties have been dissolved in a few other places, too. In 1895, Manitou County, Michigan (on islands in Lake Michigan) was dissolved and absorbed into neighboring Leelanau and Charlevoix counties. The total county population at the time Manitou was dissolved: 917 people.
Given Alpine’s proximity to Nevada, multiple efforts have been made through the years to make it part of our neighboring state. The first attempt occurred in 1862-63, when Nevada Territory questioned the location of the 120th meridian (and hence Alpine’s new mines) — a step that prompted the 1863 survey. A second push came in 1866-67, when Nevada officials proposed moving the official boundary to the Sierra crest, a suggestion California firmly rejected. Then in 1874, Nevada petitioned Congress to cede lands on the eastern side of the mountains (including portions of Alpine and Mono counties), citing economic and transportation connections with Carson Valley. It might have been a practical move. But the push-back was too great. That idea, too, went nowhere.
In the commercial sphere, consolidation is a well-accepted norm. But what’s cost-effective is not always practical. California law doesn’t make it easy to dissolve an existing county. Voters of both the dissolving and absorbing counties would need to approve the step, and there’s the sticky matter of how to settle existing debts and liabilities.
Lots of different interests tend to oppose merger with a larger county. (ChatGPT image).
Politics, too, makes it difficult to pull the plug on an existing county, even in the face of severe fiscal challenges. Citizens hate the thought of giving up local autonomy. Bureaucrats fight hard against any change that would eliminate their own position. And what larger entity would want to take on the burdens of a widely-dispersed, difficult-to-manage area with a miniscule tax base to sustain it?!
But, shy of such radical reform, local burdens on counties as small as Alpine are real. Economics is called the ‘dismal science’ for a reason. History and hope may have given Alpine land mass. But Mother Nature made much of it vertical.
Today, there are just 1.5 people per square mile, and roughly 45-50 employers in the entire county, with county government itself as one of the largest.
In many ways, Alpine county is a historical anomaly — a relic, a piece of history. It’s cited in political science textbooks as pushing the limits of governance. ..
Meanwhile, the burdens placed upon it from state mandates grow ever larger. Surprisingly enough, there’s an entire state Commission on State Mandates – precisly because local governments frequently argue those legislative mandates are unfunded. There are rules and requirements involving elections and public works. Planning and environmental compliance, and social services. Emergency management, and finance. Document management and cybersecurity. And the list grows ever larger.
Between those mandates and its tiny population and tax base, the cost of Alpine’s county government is among the highest in the state, per resident (along with Modoc and Sierra). For county payroll alone ($7.46 million for 1,177 residents), the cost per Alpine resident tops $6,000 per year. And that, of course, is only a fraction of the county’s total budget. Depending on the year and the accounting method used, total county spending per resident can reach $12,000 to $20,000 – far above the national average for county governments. By comparison, a typical per-resident county cost in the United States is said to be $2,000 to $4,000. Thus Alpine is sometimes mentioned as one of the most expensive county governments, per resident, in the country.
With property tax able to generate only about 40% of Alpine county’s revenue, the rest is subsidized from state and federal funds. Thus in 2020, the county received a total of $10,336 in state and federal funds per resident – the highest per-resident subsidy in all of California (higher even than Sierra, at $5,196 or Trinity at $3,145).
It’s a problem that history created and time hasn’t quite solved. It’s a problem of scale, and a problem of resources. Costs are mandated. Geography is unyielding. Population is tiny. Inefficiency is baked in.
For over 150 years tiny Alpine County has been cruising toward a collision between history and economics. It will make new history as people struggle to figure it all out.