HAPPY CAMP, CALIFORNIA (POPULATION 1190) followed a typical Siskiyou County Township timeline: (1) Big Bang, (2) Ice Age, (3) Big Foot, (4) Native Americans¹¹E.g. the Karuk who, as it turns out, continue to use Happy Camp as their Tribal Headquarters., (5) Mountain Men, Fur Trappers, and Frontiersmen, (6) Gold Rush, (7) Timber-based economy, (8) self-identifying with the Mythical State of Jefferson, and (9) a m-a-j-o-r population decrease in the early 1990’s coinciding, incidentally, with increased Timber Regulations. Aside from it’s outstanding Recreative Reputation (R&R), Happy Camp is notable for producing a Canadian Football League All-Star Quarterback, selling a recent $5,000,000.00 Scratcher Lotto Ticket²²The ticket was purchased at Parry’s Market, an apparently-anonymous Facebook account for the town broke the story. and for housing the main offices of the Klamath National Forest’s Happy Camp/Oak Knoll Ranger Districts.

In spite of the fiberglass statue guarding the Forest Lodge parking lot located at 63712 California 96, Chief Tawonka never existed. Which means “We were free until we stopped fighting, now no one has freedom” was either plagiarized and thereby stolen from a different-but-presumably-real-this-time-indian or written by short sweaty southern white man in an office without windows in the basement of the Cheaper Cigarettes Headquarters somewhere in the deep south. The now defunct Cheaper Cigarettes made 82 (or 72, depending on your source) identical statues.