With the fiscal year that started on July 1, the Josephine County Sheriff’s Office now has exactly one deputy left available for general calls in a county of 83,000 people — down from a high of 22 at full staffing a few years ago. Citizen applications to carry a concealed weapon, meanwhile, rose 49 percent last year, according to county records.

At grocery stores in Grants Pass, stopping and citing shoplifters — sometimes with whole carts of beer or food in tow — have become part of the daily law enforcement routine.

“I hold my breath, every day, for everything,” said Sheriff Gil Gilbertson in an interview in his office, where images of John Wayne lined the walls.

The causes of Josephine County’s plight are convoluted and complex, and echoed in varying degrees across a swath of Oregon timber country that was scarred a century ago by a weird historical wrinkle: the collapse of the Oregon and California, or O&C, Railroad. Around World War I, the railroad’s lands were taken over by the federal government, leaving almost two-thirds of Josephine County, which is about the size of Rhode Island, in federal ownership. And since the federal government pays no property taxes, Congress established a system channeling revenues from the sale of timber, which the county has in abundance.

Image Josephine County has struggled financially as federal timber money has been reduced. Credit... The New York Times

But as federal timber harvests have been reduced, the lush payments that kept property taxes low have fallen to a trickle. And a federal stopgap payment measure to make up for the timber money was phased out last year. County residents, meanwhile, have voted multiple times, most recently in May, against raising their property taxes to resolve the shortfall.