Coronavirus in rural America (Part L): Back to California (with some ecotourism and rural gentrification)

The Los Angeles Times has run a few stories in recent days about what is happening in rural California as coronavirus-related restrictions on movement are starting to ease.  The bottom line:  It's Memorial Day weekend, and tourist destinations are both concerned about spread of the virus and trying to survive financially.  The first story is out of Bishop, California, population 4,150, in Inyo County, population 18,546.  That's in the eastern Sierra--meaning east of the crest of the Sierra-Nevada and right on the state line with Nevada.  Here's the lede from Louis Sahagun's story:

This is a time of year that many rural towns in the Owens Valley usually celebrate — rodeo and fishing season. 

Normally, tourists from Southern California would be swarming into the eastern Sierra Nevada range, streaming into Old West facades and making cash registers sing. 

But the virus that locals have come to call “The Big Weird” has changed all that. 

Today, the towns of Lone Pine, Independence, Big Pine and Bishop are silent except for the rumbling of passing trucks on U.S. Highway 395. Nearly everything is closed: tackle shops, art galleries, restaurants and saloons with swinging doors.

The kicker in this story--alluded to in the headline " here is that a saloon in Lone Pine has taken dollar bills off the wall--dollar bills that tourists have stapled there over the years--about $2500 of them.  The reason for doing so is imminently practical:  to pay the bills.  Sahagun quotes Sherri Newman, who owns Jake's Saloon:

I asked a few employees and girlfriends to help take them down.  It took two full days to finish the job.  Split five ways, we each got about $500.  That includes a woman who had lost two jobs because of the pandemic; a woman with a mother in hospice care, and a mother of three small children going through a divorce. There was also a single dad who needed the cash.... Now our goal is to hang on to the place through summer.

Lone Pine's population is 2,035, just below the threshold for "urban" by U.S. Census Bureau standards.  It is apparently the jumping off point, within Inyo County, for the trailhead to climb Mount Whitney. 

The other Los Angeles Times story is out of Big Bear Lake, population 5,019 and a mountain resort in neighboring San Bernardino County, population 2 million.  The headline for Leila Miller's story is "Big Bear Lake to stop communicating or enforcing state’s coronavirus stay-at-home order," and the lede follows:

The city of Big Bear Lake has announced it will no longer communicate or enforce Gov. Gavin Newsom’s stay-at-home health order, saying that it has no legal responsibility to impose the state’s restrictions. 

“Businesses and residents should take responsibility for their own actions, should thoughtfully consider the governor’s orders and the risks associated with their specific circumstances [including health, legal, financial and licensing], and act accordingly,” officials said in a news release Thursday evening. 

* * *  

[Big Bear Lake officials] noted that there is sufficient capacity within local and regional healthcare systems, as well as readily available testing and contact tracing. 

Big Bear Lake has had six cases of the virus while there have been close to 4,000 cases and 210 hospitalizations of suspected or confirmed cases in the rest of San Bernardino County, according to the release. 

Thus Big Bear Lake joined other communities and counties in California--many of them rural by one measure or another--who are bucking the governor's order.  One thing that strikes me as interesting about Big Bear Lake's decision is that it looks less appropriate if you focus on San Bernardino County as a whole--because the county's coronavirus metrics don't look good.  But San Bernardino is a massive county--the largest in land area in the contiguous United States--and a decent argument could be made that in a county so vast, county-level data is less salient than community data.  And that more local data supports the city's decision, though it may not justify it, depending on one's risk level.  Miller's story helpfully contrasts what Big Bear Lake is doing with the communities around Lake Tahoe, which are still encouraging tourists to stay away. 

Another LA Times story, this one from a few weeks ago by Laura Newberry, is also out of southeastern California, in particular Lake Havasu, which straddles the state line with Arizona.  With California's beaches closed, many of the state's residents have flocked to Lake Havasu for water-based recreation.  Arizona's restrictions on movement have been less stringent than those here in the Golden State.