[1] On April 26, 1856, local residents took advantage of this ambiguity and justified their resistance to tax collectors from Plumas County, California, by proclaiming themselves part of a new "Territory of Nataqua."

[2] The Territory of Nataqua was a frontier land club or claim association, designed to protect the property rights of individual settlers until regular government reached the area.

By 1857 the leaders of Honey Lake were working in close co-operation with other settlers on the eastern slope, in the movement centered in Carson Valley for the severance of the political ties of Utah and California and the creation of a new territory along the western rim of the interior plateau.

The uncertainty of the boundary and the possibility that the eastern slope would be detached from California and added to a new territory encouraged them to hold off their jurisdiction over the area.

[2] In March 1861, Congress created the official Territory of Nevada, with the Honey Lake Valley and the area to its north included within its provisional bounds.