With an almost 80% majority Yuba County voters overturned the Board of Supervisors approval of the Yuba Highlands project back in 2008 That project would have placed 5,100 homes, and additional commercial and business acreage, just north of Spenceville and Beale Air Force Base. Primary access to the project would have traveled south through Spenceville toward Wheatland and beyond.
Friends of Spenceville and many other organizations and public entities organized to successfully oppose the project.
Those lands are now under conservation easements through the work of the Trust for Public Lands.