Leavitt is an unincorporated community in Lassen County, California, United States, located alongside the Southern Pacific Railroad, Fernley and Lassen Railway branch, east of Susanville, and 7 miles west of Litchfield, at an elevation of . It is the site of the High Desert State Prison.
History
Benjamin Hanson Leavitt (1834–1918), a pioneer rancher and lumberman who came from the state of Maine, settled in Lassen County in 1864Fairfield's Pioneer History of Lassen County, California, Containing Everything that Can Be Learned About It from the Beginning of the World to the Year of Our Lord 1870, Asa Merrill Fairfield, Published for the Author by the H.S. Crocker Company, San Francisco, 1916 and proposed to build this town on his ranch in 1912. It consisted of one store, a few dwellings and a corral. Benjamin Leavitt was a descendant of Samuel Leavitt of Exeter, New Hampshire.
Benjamin Leavitt engineered the Honey Lake Valley irrigation system, including Leavitt Lake.Lassen County News, Dec. 14, 2004 Leavitt also named nearby Clinton, California, for his hometown of Clinton in Kennebec County, Maine. (Google Books) (The town was renamed Leavitt Lake in 1973 when house construction began there.)Lassen County Office of Education Benjamin Leavitt was married to Celara Cleveland (Edwards) Leavitt, born in Massachusetts.
A post office at Leavitt was established in October 1914, and named after May F. Leavitt, the first postmaster. It was discontinued in December 1920.Salley, Harold E. (1991) History of California Post Offices, 1849–1990, p. 116. The Depot,
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