O.Q. "Chris" Johnson, a longtime advocate of states' rights and Independent American Party candidate for Nevada attorney general, died Aug. 11 at Tahoe Pacific Hospital in Sparks, Nev., after a "serious and sudden illness," his son, Chris Johnson, an Elko city councilman, told the Elko Daily Free Press.
He was 71.
Johnson was active in the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion in the 1980s and was one of the organizers of the "Shovel Brigade" that protested federal protection of the threatened bull trout, helping lead efforts to reconstruct by hand a washed-out bridge on the Jarbidge River.
