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Northern Shasta County is situated in the forested Cascade Range, and southern Shasta County is situated in the agricultural
Sacramento Valley. The Shasta County Farm Bureau reported that the top five crops in 2007 were timber, forest products, hay,
stockers and feeders (cattle), and strawberries. (The two preceding Shasta County photographs attempt to illustrate the mixture of splendor
and squalor that is California agriculture.)
When California became a state in 1850, Shasta County was one of the original twenty-seven counties. The word Shasta was perhaps derived
from the name of an Indian tribe or perhaps from a Russian word for pure. (Russians were early explorers, trappers and settlers in
northern California.) The name Shasta was applied not only to the county but also to a river, a town and the spectacular
stratovolcano which dominates the landscape of Shasta and Siskiyou Counties.
In 1852, Shasta County ceded territory to its northern neighbor Siskiyou County,
and in 1856, it ceded territory to its southern neighbor Tehama County.
Like all of the Central Valley from Redding to Bakersfield, Shasta County is politically, religiously and socially conservative.
Its citizens voted decisively for George Walker Bush in 2000 and 2004, for John Sidney McCain III in 2008, and for California Proposition 8
which amended the California Constitution to ban same-sex marriages in 2008.
Shasta County, along with all of its neighboring counties, is located in the secessionist
State of Jefferson.
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