Residents’ attitudes influenced by history 

   Emphasizing he was speaking in broad generalizations, Mark Clark, an Oregon Institute of Technology history professor, said the existing attitudes were influenced by white settlement, economic development and political evolution.

   In the lower basin, settlement began in the 1850s by gold miners while the upper basin settlement began 10 to 20 years later by ranchers.

   In both areas, white settlers had hostile relationships with native Indian populations. Those relationships eventually led to violent confrontations, such as the Modoc Indian War.

   Other factors, Clark said, included economic development that resulted in the area’s natural resources, including timber and agricultural products, being sent out by railroad.

   “With the railroad they had some place to send those crops,” he said.

   Both ends of the Klamath River Basin, but especially the upper basin, are subject to outside market forces and influenced   by their isolation, which figure in a conservative, populist movement, and a feeling of powerlessness.

   Clark said those feelings, and opposition to state and federal authorities, were manifested and heightened during the 2001 cutoff of irrigation water and resulting protests, including the Bucket Brigade and standoffs at the A Canal head gates.