Sheriff Benjamin Street

Benjamin Street’s parents were part of the westward migration in the 1860s. Benjamin Beauregard Street was born in Campton, California in 1860. The Street family joined the early settlers in Surprise Valley in 1867 and took up ranching near Cedarville. Ben Street married Margaret Lynn Underwood , and they had one daughter. In his tenure as sheriff, Ben Street was faced with dealing with one of the most notorious crimes in Modoc County. The Lookout lynching, in which 5 men accused of theft were hanged from Lookout bridges, was committed in 1901, before he became sheriff. However the charges weren’t filed until Street took office in January of 1902. The men accused of the lynching were prominent citizens of Lookout, Bieber and Stone Coal Valley areas. After the charges were made, Street and his deputies made the arrests. A long and well publicized trial in Alturas determined the fate of the accused men. On the last day of February in 1902, a jury declared all of the accused innocent. In 1911, Ben Street and his family moved to Stockton, California where Ben operated a livery stable. He and his family eventually moved to Santa Cruz County where he died in 1953.