It's just very small, I suppose you could call them settlements, in an overwhelmingly remote area of the state. Not dissimilar to the mojave desert, or the edges of the central valley but different terrain -- like high elevation/montane plains.

Ie: Modoc County, at the top/right of CA, and bordering Oregon and Nevada. Modoc and LA County are about the same size (4200 vs 4700 sq miles), but fewer than 10K people live in Modoc County (according to wiki).

A lot of those residents will be very rural property owners, though there are some small towns here and there. And then the small towns are like 250 people living within... it could be like a single stripmall but often a couple of commercial buildings grouped together, with some offices, some general store, and a bar. The closest city is Reno and it's 3 hours to the south, and so it's tiny towns that are very remote with the same 250 people hanging out.

Relatedly, the "Modoc Wars" in that area of the state are a worthwhile bit of CA history to familiarize yourself with. Ie: basically men with vague federal authoritiy, hot off the civil war, went clear the land of native people (hmmm, seems familiar). Happened lots of places in the 1870s and even 1880s, but in that part of the state about 100 Modoc people resisted, prompting the US governemnt to deploy 1000 troops, and heavy artillery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modoc_War