SACRAMENTO, Calif. — When considering the possibility of a 51st U.S. state, places like Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico are likely some of the first to spring to mind.
But what about a sparser alternative, nestled between California and Nevada, with prime views of Lake Tahoe’s southern shore?
A new proposal, put forth by a resident and supported by at least one former county leader, would have El Dorado County secede from California and become its own state.
The idea is being spearheaded by county resident Sharon Durst, who spoke alongside former county Supervisor Ray Nutting at a community meeting last month, the Mountain Democrat newspaper reported.
Durst also laid out the case for secession in a more than 7,000-word post published May 26 on newsletter platform Substack.
“El Dorado relies mostly on its income from tourism and on the unhappy people from Sacramento, the Bay Area and Los Angeles buying residential or second homes away from the crime-ridden metropolitan areas,” Durst wrote.
“The people of El Dorado County want their former livelihoods restored and their rural way of life respected. Even without its geographical major economic drivers, the people of the county are economically resilient and self-sustaining.”
The post, which opens with sentences mirroring the Declaration of Independence, makes clear that the proposal is to secede from California and become an independent U.S. state rather than secede from the United States.
The new state would be known as the Republic for El Dorado State.
Is the county secession plan legal?
Durst argues the case for secession based on Article 4, Section 3, of the Constitution, which reads, in part: “Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.”
Durst in her Substack post wrote that El Dorado County “is ‘other Property’ under the Power of Congress, not the California Legislature,” and that this language opens the door for the jurisdiction to divorce itself from the Golden State.
However, the immediately preceding paragraph of Article 4, Section 3, says that “no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State” without the consent of the involved state’s Legislature as well as Congress.
In other words, El Dorado County would only be able to depart California with California’s permission and an OK from Capitol Hill, both of which are highly unlikely.
County-level secession is not a new concept, but no single county has ever successfully seceded to become its own state, though a group of counties did split off from then-Confederate Virginia during the Civil War to become West Virginia.
New secession ideas are not unheard of, including in California.
A ballot proposal approved last year in San Bernardino County directed local officials to study the possibility of secession, also with the consideration of making San Bernardino its own state.
In 2015, as politically conservative proponents argued their case for splitting the rural northern third of California into a new state called Jefferson, hundreds turned up at an El Dorado County Board of Supervisors meeting in an attempt to convince the county to join the campaign.
Durst in her post said she intends to circulate a petition among El Dorado County residents to gauge support, then take that petition “directly to the U.S. Congress.” Durst also hopes to garner support through additional community meetings in the near future, the Mountain Democrat reported.
Where is El Dorado County? How big is it?
El Dorado County is located in the Sierra Nevada foothills, just east of Sacramento County. El Dorado’s eastern half includes southern portions of Lake Tahoe as well as the city of South Lake Tahoe, and the county shares its eastern border with the California-Nevada state line.
El Dorado County is about 200 square miles larger than Rhode Island.
But if it were to gain statehood, El Dorado would become by far the least populous U.S. state; El Dorado County had just over 191,000 residents as of the 2020 Census, less than half of Wyoming’s 577,000.
____
