By 1941, a nascent statehood movement began to coalesce into an active and explicit secession campaign seeking to carve from Northern California and Southern Oregon a new State of Jefferson. Yreka, California, home of the secession movement, was named the temporary state capital. Local proponents, Members of the State of Jefferson Citizens Committee, began to stop traffic along Highway 99 at armed roadblocks to pass out political broadsides — their...

John Wayne stars as a federal agent determined to break up the corrupt Wyoming-territory political machine run by Charles K. Plummer. Plummer is a politician by day and the head of a corrupt vigilante army by night, bent on killing anyone who opposes his reign. George 'Gabby' Hayes co-stars as Major Carter, a newspaper journalist in town with his lovely daughter to cover the eventual election for the statehood of Wyoming.