That part of Oregon and the neighboring area in Northern California is in the area known semi-formally as the "State of Jefferson". The California side has had voting referendums more than once to secede from the rest of the state, and they expect Josephine county and a few other parts of Southern Oregon to join them.
One big issue being that although the state capitol of California is Sacramento, the state is functionally run from the LA basin with San Francisco as an annex. Likewise, Oregon is really run from the strip of I-5 between Portland and Eugene, which includes the State Capitol of Salem in between. Those areas are again, far from that border, and up to recently had very little functional presence of the federal government.
More recently, a small but full service federal courthouse was opened in Grant's Pass and they let everyone know they were "running things now" with plenty of BATF related busts, unwanted farm and fishing regulation, and interference in local government.
There was also a series of very suspicious forest fires in the 2001-2002 time period where I personally got a strong indication from a forest service official that the "survivalist and backwoods types" were being purposefully burned out. That phrase being his words, not mine, and the way he pronounced "survivalists", was pure contempt, like the bigger the fire got, the more vermin got wiped out.
My National Guard unit made an emergency call for volunteers to be trained up to fight the fires, several of us volunteered, and then went through the firefighting training, and then when the actual call for deployment went out, people were picked on the basis of "reliability in following orders" which was the catch phrase for "do what you are told without asking too many questions or making a hassle.
As it was, yeah, the unit "deployed" to the "fire area" alright, and did not fight a single fire. They were tasked with "security" for the firefighters and manning roadblocks to keep people from entering areas designated to burn out, IE, to prevent people from saving their own homes or belongings, and to prevent them from having contact with the firefighters in demanding or requesting the firefighters redeploy to save areas of economic importance to the "backwoods people".
A lot of guys quit the unit after what they saw. I think my "platoon" went from over 30 people down to a dozen as troops quit entirely in disgust or transferred out. Even the Plt Sgt who was a dickhead in his own right was saying that "we are through volunteering for that kind of shit, I'll never look another American in the eye and tell them their home has to burn to save some fucking spotted owl somewhere else".
