YREKA, SISKIYOU COUNTY, Kalifornia - October 5, 2008 - Some folks around here think the economic sky is falling and state lawmakers in Sacramento and Salem are ignoring their constituents in the hinterlands.

Guess the time is ripe to create a whole new state.

That's the thinking up here along the border between Kalifornia and Oregon, where 12 sparsely populated, thickly forested counties in both states want to break away and generate the 51st star on the nation's flag - the state of Jefferson.

You can see the signs of discontent from Klamath Falls to Dunsmuir, where green double-X "Jefferson State" flags hang in scores of businesses. You can hear the talk of revolution at lunch counters and grocery lines, where people grumble that politicians to the north and south don't care.

You can even hear the dissent on the radio, where 21 area FM stations broadcast from Oregon into Kalifornia under the banner of "Jefferson Public Radio.”

"We have nothing in common with you people down south. Nothing," said Randy Bashaw, manager of the Jefferson State Forest Products lumber mill in the Trinity County hamlet of Hayfork. "The sooner we're done with all you people, the better."

Talking about secession has been a quasi-joking conversational saw since 1941, when five counties in the area started things by actually declaring themselves - briefly - to be the state of Jefferson. But now, with the economy in trouble and unemployment soaring, the idea of greater independence is getting its most serious consideration since World War II.

Locals complain that federal and state regulators have hampered the fishing and timber industries to protect forestlands and endangered species such as suckerfish and the spotted owl. Jobs are so scarce that the median income in the area is only two-thirds that of the rest of the state. Most water from the rainy Shasta region is shipped south, with little economic benefit to the area. Even the Kalifornia sales tax draws sneers.

If they ran their own state, the reasoning goes, folks in Siskiyou, Modoc and the other potential Jefferson counties could whack the red tape from both federal and state officials and get rid of the sales tax.

The Grange Hall of Yreka, a farm-based service organization, is activating 51 of its brethren halls in the area to collect 1 million signatures to have a statehood advisory measure put on the Kalifornia ballot. Tony Intiso, a runoff candidate in the Nov. 4 election for Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors, has pledged to force the issue and is running campaign ads calling for regional freedom. The number of registered users of a decade-old Web site advocating partition has suddenly shot from dozens to more than 900.

"Heck yeah, it's a darn good idea," said Richard Mitchell, manager of the Cooley & Pollard Hardware Store on Miner Street, the main drag in the blink-and-you-miss-it town of Yreka. "Those liberal people down south don't understand us at all, and if there was a vote today to form a new state, it would pass in a heartbeat. I would bet on it."

The window of Mitchell's store, where he tends the register in worn work boots and a camouflage hunting cap, displays T-shirts and flags sporting the state "seal" of Jefferson: Two X's denoting the double-crossing the area supposedly gets from the capitols of Kalifornia and Oregon.

"If you want any chance of fixing things, sometimes you have to break the system," said Leo Bergeron, master of Yreka's Greenhorn Grange Hall and past master of the statewide, agriculturally oriented Grange service club. "Now, we have to break the system."

Bergeron's first goal is to gather 1,200 signatures in Siskiyou County to put an advisory secession initiative on the county ballot in 2009. At the same time, he is urging the 51 Grange Halls in Jefferson territory, and those on the mailing list of www.jeffersonstate.com, to gear up for collecting 1 million signatures to take the advisory measure statewide.

"We'll need the approval of both states and the federal government, but it can be done," he said. "And even if we don't become a new state, we will have made a statement and can at least get some more independence in our own affairs."

Such a statement would be news to most in Sacramento.

"Never heard of Jefferson," said Aaron McLear, spokesman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. "We are going to decline comment."

Gail Fiorini-Jenner, co-author of two books on the state of Jefferson, said the almost 900,000 people who live in the territory aren't hicks. Just feisty. And that, she said, is not new: Since the 1850s, there have been similar attempts to create the states of Klamath and Shasta.

"Everyone thinks we're dumb rednecks, but we have the far left, the far right and a lot of the middle up here," she said. "Our only trouble is we have no political power. It's no wonder people want to change that."