SACRAMENTO — Rebellion is infectious. Rural people are in revolt against Gov. Gavin Newsom’s statewide virus-fighting rules, which make little sense in burgs such as Bieber.
Bieber has hardly anything in common with the likes of Burbank or Balboa.
“There’s a bar, a restaurant, a hardware store, market, post office, school and a gas station with one pump,” says Republican state Sen. Brian Dahle of Bieber in Lassen County. “No stop light.”
Dahle grows cereal grains and represents 11 mostly mountain counties in the Senate. His wife, Megan Dahle, is a Republican assemblywoman.
In four of the senator’s counties — Modoc, Lassen, Sierra and Alpine — there hasn’t been one case of coronavirus, he says. Zero.
“There is no curve. It’s flat.”
“People are getting fed up” with the governor’s stay-at-home, business-shut-down orders, Dahle says. “They want to open up, get back to normal.
“We’re not like Los Angeles or San Francisco. Let’s get back to cooler heads. Let the people free.”
Modoc, on the Oregon border six miles north of Dahle’s farm, with a population of only 9,570, didn’t wait for the governor to set it free. The county reopened itself Friday.
“Our businesses are dying, and people need to be able to feed their children and pay their rent,” said Heather Hadwick, a Modoc County emergency services official.Good for Modoc. Its “big city” is Alturas, the county seat, with a population of 2,826. Alturas hardly equates with Alhambra or Anaheim in virus risk.
Neither is Coloma anything like Carson or Covina.
Coloma is where gold was discovered in 1848, along the American River in the Sierra foothills east of Sacramento. The find set off the ’49ers’ rush to California in search of riches that mostly never panned out. But we were admitted to statehood the next year.
There’s a state park at the Coloma gold discovery site in El Dorado County. Newsom ordered it and several state recreation areas along historic Highway 49 closed to slow the virus spread.
But it’s spring. Wildflowers are blooming, trout are biting and the weather has been spectacular. Inevitably, people have been ignoring the governor and enjoying the public parks — educating themselves on the gold discovery, hiking, fishing and basking in the Motherlode majesty.
Problem is, Newsom also closed the parking lots — as he did at the coastal beaches. With no public lots open, motorists park on streets — and clog beach community neighborhoods.
Closing parking lots inconveniences motorists, but it doesn’t deter every recreation seeker. Definitely not along Highway 49.
“The governor said it’s OK for people to go out and exercise for their physical and mental health, so people are doing that,” says El Dorado County Sheriff John D’Agostini.
“But the parks are closed and people can’t get into the lots. So they’re parking on the two-lane road. With a lot of traffic, somebody is going to get hit.”
