'All alone out here': Californians in rural Trump country brace for cuts

Far from the halls of power in Washington, the forested hamlet of Mount Shasta has long tied its economic fate to a functioning federal government.

Yet even in a county where President Donald Trump’s cuts could hit the region’s economy hard, some are welcoming them. Nearly 60% of voters there supported the president.

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The past two months have been a whirlwind for rural towns across California like Mount Shasta, population 3,200, where federal lands abound and outdoor recreation drives the local economy. Probationary federal workers were abruptly fired, then reinstated under court order, as further reductions in force loom. Local organizations scrambled when the federal government froze some grant funds for wildfire preparation, trail maintenance and other work, then some saw the money trickle in again but with no guarantee it’ll continue.

The Sierra Club and other nonprofits are suing the Trump administration to reverse Forest Service firings.

Business owners and officials in forest towns, overwhelmingly dependent on recreation and tourism, are anxious about whether there will be enough federal workers to keep trails open, campgrounds clean and visitors coming.

Some forest towns, like Mammoth Lakes in the eastern Sierra Nevada, are trying to backfill some anticipated federal losses with their own dollars. But that would be a tough undertaking for many others.

“We are a poor, rural county,” said Siskiyou County Supervisor Ed Valenzuela, who represents Mount Shasta. “Federal funding, it’s not like that money is going to be replicated anywhere else.”

Rural California relies on federal funding

He has cause for concern. The namesake mountain towers above the small town, drawing in thousands of visitors to climb and ski. In surrounding Siskiyou County, over 60% of the land is owned and managed by the U.S. Forest Service. As much as 6% of the county workforce is employed by the federal government, according to Census data.

It’s second only to neighboring Lassen County. Both are among the most Trump-supporting counties in the state. In Siskiyou County, nearly 60% voted for the president in November.

Estimates from state labor agencies show other small, forested counties in Northern California and the Sierra Nevada also have high shares of federal employment. By contrast, though federal agencies employ far more people at offices in urban counties, they’re only responsible for 1-2% of the workforces there.

“Things are magnified in a small community,” said Tonya Dowse, executive director of the Siskiyou Economic Development Council, a nonprofit that receives several federal grants to help small businesses, farmers and towns including Mount Shasta. “Small reductions are felt to a greater extent.”

Federal land makes up the majority of many rural counties, which are already dealing with the likely loss of millions of federal dollars that prop up their school systems and public works departments. Rural hospitals are generally more reliant on the massive low-income health program Medicaid. Their populations are older and poorer, making the Social Security Administration and federally funded safety net programs critical.

A view of the rural Siskiyou County community of Happy Camp on Dec. 13, 2024. Photo by Miguel Gutierrez Jr., CalMatters

Federal officials have not been forthcoming about exactly how many workers have been fired and reinstated in recent weeks, and locals say they’re unsure themselves. The Forest Service in February cut at least 3,400 probationary employees nationwide. The Washington Post reported last week that the administration plans new cuts of between 8% to 50% across federal agencies.

A spokesperson for the Forest Service, who would not provide a name, would say only that probationary employees who were fired in February were placed in March under a “phased plan for return-to-duty.” Thomas Stokesberry, a spokesperson for the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, directed a separate request for a breakdown of staffing cuts to the regional Forest Service press office, which did not respond.

In Mount Shasta, everyone seems to know someone who is affected. John Redmond, a bar owner who is also the mayor, said his regulars who work at the local Forest Service district office haven’t been spending as much since they were fired or heard of cuts. Timothy Keating, a longtime mountain guide, said he depends on a fully staffed Forest Service to approve his operating permits.

Down the street, an outdoor goods store manager named Michelle is also worried about economic fallout. She wouldn’t give her last name out of fear of drawing attention to her husband, a federal employee who she said was anxious about losing his job in the next round of reductions in force.

“A lot of federal workers make up our middle class,” she said. “This can really hurt our local tax base and spending levels.”

Trump's cuts will hit a divided county

Yet others welcome cuts, even if they’ll hit the local economy.

While the town of Mount Shasta is liberal, its streets of Subarus, crystal shops and bed-and-breakfasts welcoming out-of-town mountaineers give way quickly to vast stretches of the county where ranchers and loggers have long clashed with environmentalists and chafed at state and federal regulations.

Longtime resentment over Forest Service management and the decline of the timber industry have split the county.

Many in Mount Shasta cheered when then-President Joe Biden, in his last days in office in January, designated a new national monument on Forest Service lands outside the town, increasing federal protections there. Other Siskiyou County residents, including Supervisor W. Jess Harris, celebrated when Trump indicated last month he may revoke the designation.

Harris acknowledges the county relies on the federal government for both services and jobs — but he said it doesn’t have to be that way. He hopes federal cuts will reduce grants to environmental nonprofits that he says have hampered private industry.

Regulations like those that restrict logging to protect the spotted owl, listed as a threatened species, have “effectively damaged all of our natural resource industries,” he said. “Our area’s just a prime example of what happens when you kill the industry and become reliant on the government jobs.”

Dan Dorsey, chair of the local Republican Party, said he welcomes reducing federal spending and doesn’t believe the cuts will be drastic.

“I think the idea is to sit back and wait and see where the cuts are going to be made, and do we actually need those programs anymore?” he said. “We have too many -ologists all over the place.”

Other local politicians are caught in the middle.

Assemblywoman Heather Hadwick, a Republican from Alturas, represents 11 rural counties across Northern California, including Siskiyou. She said she’s worried about the economic ripple effects of job losses in small towns, and about funding delays in local wildfire mitigation projects, when now is the season to make those preparations.

Assemblymember Heather Hadwick speaks before lawmakers during an Assembly floor session at the state Capitol in Sacramento on Feb. 20, 2025. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMatters

It’s personal, too. Hadwick’s husband manages a local office of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and she’s seen firsthand how “his people are stressed.” But her district, which she said already holds deep distrust of the government, voted for cuts and spending reviews.

“I think it’s going to be uncomfortable for a while and it’s going to hurt, I know some of those programs that I care about deeply are going to be affected,” she said. “My district is very conservative, and I am very conservative … I’m going to trust in my president and trust what he’s doing is best.”

With both federal uncertainty and local polarization, some are hesitant to speak publicly against the cuts. The leader of one nonprofit in Siskiyou County detailed to CalMatters how the group had a Forest Service grant temporarily frozen, delaying the hiring of contractors. But after meeting with the rest of the organization the leader asked to withdraw their comments, stressing the need to remain “apolitical.”

Other forest towns are preparing

In bluer parts of California, some forest towns are trying to mount a small resistance. Council members in Truckee, near Lake Tahoe, last month passed a resolution denouncing possible federal cuts, citing the impact they would have on the region’s ability to prevent wildfires and accommodate tourists visiting the Tahoe National Forest.

Similar resolutions have passed in a handful of local fire protection districts and in the eastern Sierra Nevada town of Mammoth Lakes.

The town, population 7,200, balloons to nearly quadruple its size on the weekends, from skiers in winter to backpackers, climbers and tourists in spring, summer and fall. It needs the visitors: Nearly three-quarters of Mammoth Lakes’ revenue comes from a bed tax on hotels and Airbnbs, Mayor Chris Bubser said.

Bubser said the city has already hired a new staff member to pick up trash and help maintain local campgrounds in case there aren’t enough Forest Service personnel to do so this summer.

And in March, the Mammoth Lakes Town Council agreed to provide $700,000 in bridge funding for a forest-thinning and wildfire resilience project run by a local nonprofit that spans 58,000 acres of mostly national forest land surrounding the town. The project relies on about $17 million in different federal grants, some of which is frozen, she said. But Bubser said she didn’t want the project to get delayed, risking having contractors leave town if they can’t be hired in time.

“How, as a small-town government, are we supposed to plan and execute when the earth is moving beneath us?” she said. “We have to be prepared for any situation. We’re all alone out here.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.