How Uninhabited Terrain Became a Hotbed for Black Market Marijuana

Illegal cannabis operations have brought serious crime to California’s Siskiyou County, including robberies, theft, and five unsolved homicides, sheriff says.

Illustration by The Epoch Times, Getty Images, Public Domain, John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

SISKIYOU COUNTY, Calif.—The air is thick with the unmistakable pungent stench of cannabis plants in a massive network of illegal grow operations in a rural part of northern California, as Mount Shasta looms on the horizon.

Gated off with chain link and wire fences—some with tattered shreds of privacy screening—the properties northeast of Weed, Calif., near Montague, are a compound of ramshackle huts, old RVs, and cheaply made greenhouses of hoops and plastic.