On October 18, 1852, Captain Edward H. Fitzgerald of the 1st U.S. Dragoons established a military post in the remote Scott Valley, naming it for Colonel Roger Jones, who had served as Adjutant General of the Army for nearly three decades. The fort was meant to protect the mining camps and stage routes that crisscrossed this wild corner of Northern California. Before the Army arrived, the town's earliest permanent building had already been constructed in 1851 by two entrepreneurs named Brown and Kelly. O.C. Wheelock and Captain John B. Pierce soon bought the structure and converted it into a trading post, bar, and brothel catering to soldiers stationed at the fort. The military post would eventually close, but the town that grew around it endured.

The California Gold Rush drew fortune seekers from around the world to the mines surrounding Scott Valley. Nearby camps like Hooperville and Deadwood thrived briefly before dwindling gold deposits, devastating fires, and epidemic illness drove miners away. Those who stayed often reinvented themselves as ranchers. Irish and Portuguese immigrants proved particularly tenacious, using their mining earnings to purchase land in the fertile valley. By the early twentieth century, Portuguese families had extensively settled the northern tributaries of the Scott River, along Moffitt and McAddams creeks. Their descendants still work these lands today, raising cattle in the shadow of Mount Shasta.

The frontier's dark side surfaced on December 14, 1894, when a Native American man named Billy Dean was lynched in nearby Happy Camp. Dean had been accused of shooting a co-worker near Grinder Creek nine days earlier. Constable Fred Dixon was escorting Dean to the Yreka jail for his protection when the pair stopped at a Happy Camp hotel for the night. At two in the morning, a dozen masked men stormed the room, disarmed the constable, and dragged Dean to a construction site where they hanged him from a derrick. His body remained suspended until 11 a.m. The local newspaper's headline read: 'He Is Now A Good Indian.' The brutal killing exemplified the lawlessness and racial violence that plagued the region for decades.

Fort Jones's most prolific resident never sought fame under his own name. Lauran Paine, born Lawrence Kerfman Duby Jr. in 1916, became one of the most productive authors in American literary history, writing over 1,000 books during his lifetime. Hundreds were Western novels published under a bewildering array of pseudonyms: Mark Carrel, Clay Allen, Clint Custer, Buck Standish, and dozens more. Paine made Fort Jones his home for decades, drawing inspiration from the landscapes and frontier history surrounding him. At least one of his stories became a Hollywood motion picture. He died in 2001, leaving behind a body of work that would take a devoted reader years to complete.

Modern Fort Jones is a quiet town of fewer than 700 people, its population having declined in recent decades. The Mediterranean climate brings warm, dry summers to the Scott Valley, and ranching remains the economic backbone of the community. The town is registered as a California Historical Landmark, preserving its connection to the military outpost that gave it a name. The Fort Jones Museum maintains the area's history, telling stories of soldiers and miners, immigrants and ranchers. And each spring, when Marlahan Mustard blooms yellow across the valley, it reminds residents that the past is never entirely past, that seeds planted long ago continue to bear fruit, for better or worse.