Roop County, Nevada Genealogy

Roop County was created 2 December 1862 by renaming Lake County. Roop County was discontinued and split between California and Nevada 7 February 1865.

At the time the California-Nevada border was in dispute. Utah had claimed most of the Great Basin including the east slope of the Sierra Nevada in 1849. In 1856 they sent 60 Mormon families to Carson Valley to backup their claim. California claimed the border was the present border, dozens of miles east of the crest of the Sierra Nevada. In 1856 residents of Honey Lake Valley (Susanville) began the Nataqua Territory movement that eventually led to the creation of Nevada. The Nataqua Territory convention said their valley was outside California and thereby implied the Sierra Nevada crest was their border. Roop County was one of the names given to the Nataqua (later Nevada) claims which also included the Great Basin parts of present-day California. The land that became Roop County straddled the eventual border and underwent several name changes:


 * Nataqua Territory 26 April 1856
 * Nataqua County, Nevada 8 August 1857
 * Lake County, Nevada 2 March 1861
 * Roop County, Nevada 2 December 1862. The Nevada legislature used this name-change to assert jurisdiction to the crest of the Sierra Nevada.

Nevertheless, on 7 February 1865 the Nevada legislature accepted the findings of an official survey that set the California-Nevada border at the 120th degree west longitude. This split Roop County with the most populated Honey Lake Valley part going to Lassen County, California, but the bulk of the Roop County land was consolidated into Washoe County, Nevada.

For Roop County records see:


 * Lassen County, California Genealogy
 * Washoe County, Nevada Genealogy