Isaac Roop

Isaac Newton Roop was born March 13, 1822 in Carroll County, Maryland. He married his tutor, Nancy Gardner, on December 24, 1840. He was devastated by her loss ten years later when she died of typhoid fever on June 20, 1850 and became widowed with two sons, John and Isaiah, as well as a daughter Susan. Possibly motivated by grief or desperation, he pulled up stakes for California that same year and tried to rebuild his life.

In 1851 William Nobles started taking settlers over a route through the Sierra Nevadas passing through the Honey Lake valley. Among these settlers included the 29 year old Isaac Roop and his family. In 1853 after nearly pulling his life back together, he was only to have it upset by a tragic fire. It was then that Roop retreated to the Sierra Nevadas and to Honey Lake, where he concentrated on his own backcountry holdings and nearly single-handedly erected the burg of Rooptown which he would later name for his daughter Susan.

In September 1858, Roop became the first provisional territorial governor of the provisional Nevada Territory. At the time, Susanville was thought to be in Nevada, not in California. Isaac was sworn in and become governor in the winter of 1859 in the town of Genoa, Nevada. Roop lived in the contested Roop County, Nevada. After Roop County's dissolution in 1865 Roop returned to Susanville. There, he became Lassen County's district attorney for two terms and stayed in the town that he had built and loved until his death in 1869. His daughter Susan resided in the town as well until her own death in 1921, and both were buried in the town's cemetery. There is a mural depicting father and daughter in downtown Susanville.

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