115 years ago
After hundreds of wildcats and coyotes were poisoned to secure human existence in the Honey Lake Valley, farmers had to constantly battle pesky jackrabbits. Packs of them were known to destroy single crops in less than a week. The newspaper encourages young men to help the farmers by hunting jackrabbits instead of playing baseball.

40 years ago
Law enforcement authorities throughout California and adjacent states joined the attempt to apprehend the murderers of Jesse and Jeanette DeForest and Keith Utterback, of Hoopa. The bodies of the Deforests were found in their ranch home about six miles south of Susanville off Highway 395.

30 years ago
A three-alarm fire gutted The Old Deer Heart Lodge in Westwood. Three units of the Westwood Fire Department and 32 volunteers helped extinguish the blaze, thought by fire investigators to have been sparked by faulty electrical wires.

25 years ago
The planning commission and the Board of Supervisors clashed in their interpretations of the county’s General Plan.

The commission accused the board of expecting approvals of every developing plan while the board stated there were no reasons for the commission to reject the projects.

15 years ago
Local voters will have the final say on the future of Lassen County’s library system.

A ballot measure approved by the Lassen County Board of Supervisors at a special meeting asked voters to approve both the establishment of a county service area and an annual assessment to provide continued library service.

Those who do will be included in County Service Area No. 3 and will pay the assessment.

Voters in those districts who do not want library services will not be included in the county service area and will not be required to pay the assessment.

Approval by two-thirds of the voters is required for passage of a measure.

10 years ago
The Lassen County Board of Supervisors made it clear to the proponents of a youth treatment facility in Herlong they will keep a watchful eye on the project.

The board unanimously approved a subcontract between Right Roads, Inc. and Progress House at its Tuesday, July 23 meeting, to provide alcohol and drug treatment funds for a consortium of counties in the North state area.

Five years ago
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Benjamin Wai Silva’s conviction for a gruesome 1981 murder in Lassen County and ordered the prosecution to retry or re-sentence him.

Silva, 52, was convicted of the abduction, robbery and murder using an automatic weapon of Ridgecrest resident Kevin Thorpe 24 years ago in Madeline.

Last year
Drive-by shootings make the nightly news in metropolitan cities, not small, rural towns like Susanville, Calif.

However, within in five days of a man being shot in the leg by a known assailant, a woman was shot around 9:40 p.m., on Wednesday, Aug. 4, when a car headed down her normally quiet street and one of the passengers shot at her home. The bullet broke her window and grazed her left shoulder.

The victim, not identified for security reasons, told the Susanville Police Department, she was unaware she was shot when the window was broken. She, another woman, a man and two children were seated in the home located on the 400 block of North Roop Street when they heard what sounded like a firecracker coming through the window.

Neighbors also reported hearing what sounded like firecrackers.

When the female victim realized her injury was a gunshot wound, she was transported to Banner Lassen Medical Center. None of the other occupants were injured.

Police Chief Jeff Atkinson said in a statement that the investigation is in its initial stage and his department continues to seek any witnesses to the incident.