Editing Fort Jones, California (section)

===Naming===
Fort Jones is registered as a [[California Historical Landmark]].<ref name=CHL/> It takes its name from the frontier outpost once located less than a mile to the south of the city's corporate limits.  The town was originally named '''Scottsburg''' (c. 1850), but was changed to '''Scottsville''' shortly afterward.  In 1852, the site was again renamed '''Wheelock''', this time in honor of Mr. O. C. Wheelock who, with his partners, established the area's first commercial enterprise.  In 1854, a post office was established and the town was renamed again, becoming known as '''Ottitiewa''', the Indian name for the [[Scott River]] branch of the [[Shasta (tribe)|Shasta tribe]].  The name remained unchanged until 1860 when local citizens successfully petitioned the postal department to change the name to Fort Jones, a name that is retained to the present day.<ref>Frickstad, Walter N.,  A Century of California Post Offices 1848-1954, Philatelic Research Society, Oakland, CA. 1955, pp.184-193.</ref>

The earliest permanent building at the town site was built in 1851 by two Messrs. Brown and Kelly.  It was purchased soon after construction by O. C. Wheelock, Captain John B. Pierce, and two other unknown partners.  Wheelock and his partners established a trading post, a bar, and a brothel at this site, which primarily served the troopers stationed at the fort.  Near the end of the 1850s, the nearby mining camps of [[Hooperville, California|Hooperville]] and [[Deadwood, Siskiyou County, California|Deadwood]] began to disband as a result of the dwindling stores of placer gold, epidemic illness and devastating fires.

The mines around Scott Valley attracted many immigrants from many parts of the United States and the world, attracted to the area by news of the [[California Gold Rush]] of the 1850s.  [[Irish people|Irish]] and [[Portuguese people|Portuguese]] immigrants remained as ranchers in the area after making enough on the gold fields to purchase property tracts in the valley.  In the early years of the twentieth century, the northern Scott River tributaries of Moffitt and McAddams creeks were extensively settled by the Portuguese.  The Irish surname Marlahan lives on after that family received a shipment of British hay seed infected with the seed of a plant known as [[Isatis tinctoria|Dyers Woad]].<ref>Ed Marlahan, 1965</ref>  Those seeds spread their spawn throughout Scott Valley, culturing a plant known in the area as ''Marlahan Mustard''.  The plant has a beautiful, canary plume in the spring which matures to small, black, hard seeds.  Unfortunately, the herbivore beasts of burden will not eat hay in which this plant exists, and ever since it has been a scourge on the ranchers of Scott Valley.

On December 14, 1894, Billy Dean, a Native American, was lynched by unknown persons in the town of [[Happy Camp, California]] while in the custody of Constable Fred Dixon. Dean was accused of shooting co-worker William Baremore near Grinder Creek outside of Happy Camp on December 5, 1894. Constable Dixon and Dean were staying at a hotel in Happy Camp while on their way the [[Yreka, California]] jail, where Dean would be safe from local vigilantes.  Baremore's friends were tailing the pair and waited for their moment.  At two in the morning on December 14, 1894, a dozen masked men stormed the room and disarmed Constable Dixon.  They tied Dean's hands and carried him to the Wheeler Building which was under construction where they strung him up by the neck from a derrick.  His body was left hanging until 11:00&nbsp;a.m. That day's headline in the Scott Valley News boasted, "He Is Now A Good Indian.  Billy Dean Kills a White Man Without Cause and Is Summarily Hoisted to the Happy Hunting Ground."<ref>Kulczyk,David. (2008). California Justice: Shootouts, Lynching and Assassinations in the Golden State. Word Dancer Press. P58 {{ISBN|1-884995-54-3}}</ref>