TOPICS
LINKS
NOT A MEMBER?
Portions of this website will not be available to you. Why not become a member and help support our causes?
Grange, particularly Grange-PFUSA, is engaged in many of the issues facing rural America. Our organization's roots are deep and strong because our members care.
Membership is inexpensive and indicates that you also care for our rural lifestyle, our neighbors and our communities.
About PFUSA Grange #835
People for the USA
PFUSA Grange's roots are found in People for the USA, an early organization of western activists involved in public lands issues. Federal land management agencies have significant impact upon western rural communities. People for the USA was organized to address federal regulatory issues that negatively impacted rural communities throuhout the western US.
In 1998, Siskiyou County, California came under the gun of the Endangered Species Act, further threatening an already fragile timber industry and agriculture generally. A local chapter of People for the USA was formed by Ric Costales, a local timber faller and a group of men and women determined to protect the rural lifestyle of Siskiyou County.
In 1999, the National People for the USA organization formally closed its doors after loosing industry funding. This closure sent shock waves throughout local and state organizations. A meeting in Las Vegas was held to discuss the future of People for the USA. Frontiers of Freedom, a Washington, DC lobbying group, took the state and local chapters under its wing for a brief period of time.
In 2000, Frontiers of Freedom and People for the USA severed their relationship and the California chapters combined and petitioned the California State Grange organization to form a statewide Grange Chapter. Then State Grange Master Leo Bergeron, was instrumental in forming the PFUSA Grange and incorporating it into the California State Grange organization.
PFUSA Grange's unique status as a statewide chapter puts our official home in the State Grange's Headquarters in Sacramento, although the bulk of our business and activities are currently conducted throughout southern Oregon and northern California.
True to its roots, PFUSA Grange is an activist organization. We actively engage local governments, state and federal agencies in promoting healthy rural communities. We are commonly called upon to organize and engage extreme environmentalists and their programs that are detrimental to our rural communities and lifestyle.
PFUSA Grange works closely within a national network of property rights, public lands, and rural lifestyle organizations, many of which have their roots within the People for the West and People for the USA movement. We're proud of our past and doubly proud to now be Grange.
Among our successes are:
- Removing California lands from the Soda Mountain National Monument designation.
- Defeating the Siskiyou Wild Rivers National Monument designation in southern Oregon.
- Protection of coastal Easter Lilly bulb growers along the Smith River.
- Returning water to the upper Klamath Basin farming communities in 2001.
- Minimizing impacts of Coho Salmon ESA listings on agriculture and communities.
- Delisting of the Oregon Coho Salmon from ESA.
- Numerous individual property rights battles with state and federal agencies.
- Adopting County ordinances protecting agriculture and rural lifestyles.
- Proactive involvement with local Grange Chapter revitalizations.
Today, PFUSA Grange is leading the way to protect the Klamath River dams from destruction. This potential travesty could completely depopulate rural areas of southern Oregon and northern California.