The Golden State... soon to be sans "Golden"

The lunacy continues unabated in California. Pop quiz everyone, what was the primary motivator for thousands of Americans risking their lives to come to California in the late 1840s and early 1850s? DING DING DING - If you said "Gold," you are correct.

Next question: The dredge mining of what substance is about to be outlawed in California if the state's Democrat-controlled government has its way? DING DING DING - If you said "Gold," you are correct.

Can you even fathom this? The mining of the very metal that put California on the map, is about to be, for all intents and purposes, outlawed within the state.

I grew up in a tiny town in the northwestern corner of California called Happy Camp. Yeah, yeah, it's a funny name, but there is a story behind that name. You see, Happy Camp is located in a small valley within the Klamath River canyon where Indian Creek empties into the Klamath River. Originally the area was called Murderers Bar. Yikes. However, in 1851 or so, a bunch of gold miners discovered copious amounts of the yellow stuff in the area, and not surprisingly, they celebrated their new-found fortune in their mining camp. It sure was a happy camp.. Aha!

After the easy-to-find gold petered out in the Happy Camp area, the residents moved on to other endeavors; especially logging. However, in the 1980s, the Spotted Owl was used by those same environmentalist wackos to shut down the logging industry in the Happy Camp area. Around the same time, gold mining returned in a big way to the area, especially when an organized group called The New 49ers set up shop in town. After the logging industry went belly-up, these gold miners were a welcome addition to the struggling local economy, along with any tourism that happened along (especially river rafters using Happy Camp as a taking-off point).

With gold mining now about to take a huge hit from our statist legislature who are in the pocket of environmentalist groups who want to control every aspect of our lives, I don't see how the economies of little towns like Happy Camp - already on the ropes as it is - can survive much longer.

It is that kind of history and heritage that has defined our Golden State, and now, in the name of appeasing the environmentalists out there who don't want the little people defiling the forests, a large piece of our state's past is about to be thrown on the dust heap of history.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson