Cybersecurity in Three Points, CA

Three Points was homesteaded in 1892 by the Lafferty family, 83-year-old Laura May Lafferty told a reporter in 1991. Her grandmother acted as a midwife, and her father, Ben Cherbbono, was a French Canadian muleskinner who led a team that helped grade the Ridge Route highway in the early part of the 20th century. Gookins Lake in the area was named after her mother’s family, she said.

In those days, Three Points was graced with a one-room schoolhouse, Pine Canyon School, where in 1953 Mrs. Lillie Knighton taught children aged 6 to 14; in midwinter, a “huge pot-bellied stove . . . hissed with heat.” The school also acted as a community center; movies related to classwork were shown each Thursday night, open to adults.

Apart from the school, a tavern variously called the Three Point Cafe, Maxine’s, and Nancy’s Up the Road Cafe, was another center of social life. Bert Gookins was the first owner and builder – sometime in 1912, or maybe 1924, Bert Hart, Gookins’ grandson, recalled. It was a grocery store once, Hart said, and perhaps the restaurant and bar were added in the 1930s or 1940s. The building was occasionally occupied by a traveling dentist who used a foot-powered drill.