Stanton Delaplane was a cub reporter with the San Francisco Chronicle when he made the trip from the big city on two lane U.S. 99 to Yreka, the interim capital of the rebel state that was stirring headlines throughout the country. The headlines were rumors of the mountain border counties attempting to secede from their mother states to form their own state rich with natural resources begging to be utilized for strategic military purposes.

The other headlines of the day were dispatches from Europe telling how Adolph Hitler and his Blitzkrieg were storming across that continent in a crazy but real attempt at world domination.

Delaplane saw this home-grown back-country people really doing something that had a purpose other than to make a few headlines. His way of yarn telling the Jefferson saga in a series of articles was spun in such a way that it resonated with the folks who handed out the Pulitzer Prizes in 1942.

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