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CALIFORNIANA
ATENEX
R
SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY
3 1223 90193 5487
USINE
LITERISTOROY
BOOK NO.
ACCESSION
*979.458 008
251022
NOT TO BE TAKEN FROM THE LIBRARY
Form No. 37 - 5M
E.
-
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2014
https://archive.org/details/historyofmercedc00outc
HISTORY OF MERCED COUNTY CALIFORNIA
WITH A
Biographical Review OF The Leading Men and Women of the County Who Have Been Identified with Its Growth and Development from the Early Days to the Present
HISTORY BY JOHN OUTCALT
ILLUSTRATED COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME
HISTORIC RECORD COMPANY LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 1925
+ . 979.458 Ou8
251022
A HISTORY OF MERCED COUNTY CALIFORNIA
BEING
An Account in Brief Outline of the Period from the Days of the Spanish Occupation down to the Present Time
BY JOHN OUTCALT
ILLUSTRATED
Copyright Applied for by JOHN OUTCALT 1925
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Snelling Court House. First Court House in
Facing page
33
Merced County
Society of the Future. January 1, 1895
Facing page
89
Murray's Mill. Facing page 129 Harvesting Scene Showing Thirty-eight Animals on Combined Harvester Facing page 193
Street Scene, Merced, 1923
Facing page 261
The Old School Building at Snelling Facing page 317
TABLE OF CONTENTS (Numbers refer to pages.)
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 4
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 5
PREFACE 11
HISTORY OF MERCED COUNTY
CHAPTER I
INDIANS, SPANIARDS, AND MEXICANS.
33
Location, topography, streams, plains. Gabriel Moraga discovers and names the Merced River and Mariposa Creek. Later expeditions ยท into the San Joaquin Valley. Mission Indians and horses. Pursuit of the thieves. Governor Sola's "Great Expedition." The search for mis- sion sites. Proposed site on the Merced. Ortega and Pico expedition. Luis Arguello. Pedro Mesa. Mexican replaces Spanish rule. The Spanish heritage.
CHAPTER II
AMERICAN EXPLORERS.
42
Jedediah Strong Smith leads the first American expedition into the Valley. Traps and camps on the "Wimilche." Crosses the Sierra Nevada to Salt Lake. Back again. Troubles with the Mexican gov- ernment. Goes out to the north. Destruction of his expedition by the Indians. James Ohio Pattie and Sylvester Pattie. Ewing Young's expedition. Trapping in the Valley. The Hudson's Bay Company trappers in the Valley. Elk, antelope, and beaver. Wild horses. Joseph Reddeford Walker. Leaves Bonneville's expedition. Did he camp at Yosemite? Walker's Pass. Guides for emigrant trains.
CHAPTER III
FIRST AMERICAN SETTLERS TO CALIFORNIA
51
Sutter's Fort and Dr. John Marsh's ranch. Marsh's letter to Lewis Cass. Description of California. Ambitions of England and Russia. The failing Mexican rule. Warning for the United States to be on guard. Limits of Marsh's information on Indians and geography. The eastern boundary of Mexican settlement to Coast Range. The Bartleson-Bidwell party. Interest in California among people in the East. Bidwell's account. Mexican alarm at the increasing number of emigrants. McMahon, Grigsby, and Fremont-Walker parties. Pio Pico commissions Gantt and Marsh to capture Indians. Small num- bers of Spaniards and Mexicans.
CHAPTER IV
JOHN C. FREMONT
65
His expedition of 1842 to the Rocky Mountains. Expedition of 1843-1844. Jessie Benton Fremont. The mountain howitzer. Reaches Fort Vancouver. The search for Mary Lake and the Buena-
6
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ventura River. Decides to cross the Sierra Nevada in winter. Crosses and reaches Sutter's Fort. The return by Walker's Pass. The trip through the San Joaquin Valley. Crosses the Merced near the Stevin- son Ranch. Observations on the plants and animals of the Valley. Elk, grizzlies, wild fowl, wild horses. Their great numbers on the West Side. Indian signal smokes. Speculations on Fremont's purpose and instructions. Buys a grant from Alvarado. Attempts to locate the grant near Stevinson. Near Le Grand. "Fremont's Ranch" on the township maps. Location and confirmation in Mariposa County. Fre- mont as the earliest settler in the county.
CHAPTER V
MOTHER MARIPOSA
79
Establishment of Mariposa County. Early boundaries-Coast Range to Nevada line, and south to San Bernardino. Agua Fria the first county seat. Early towns: Agua Fria, Carson City, Hornitos, Horseshoe Bend, Coulterville, Barrett's, Quartzberg. The Indian War of 1851. Dr. Bunnell's book. James D. Savage's trading post on the South Fork. Indian attack. The discovery of Yosemite. Battles on the Fresno and the Chowchilla. The Indians defeated and removed to a reservation. Merced people who came from Mariposa.
CHAPTER VI
THE FOUNDERS OF THE COUNTY
89
Estimated population of the county in 1855. Location of the pop- ulation. Twelve living pioneers of that year. The township and section surveys of the fifties. Settlers shown upon the maps. Montgomery, Scott, and Lewis found Snelling. James Waters. Dr. Joshua Grif- fith. List of pioneers. J. W. Robertson, N. B. Stoneroad, E. T. Givens, W. C. Turner, W. L. Means, A. W. and J. J. Stevinson, Erastus Kelsey, William and Henry Nelson, T. C. Deane, "Grizzly Adams," Thomas Price, S. L. Givens, Thomas Givens, E. W. Buffum, N. S. Stockton, The Merced Express list, G. W. Halstead, John Keys, Nicholas Turner, John Ruddle, Allen Ruddle, Mrs. Ruddle, Antone Lagomarsino, J. W. Morgan, Lee Hamlin, Mrs. Sensabaugh, George P. Kelsey, Mrs. Penelope Rogers, W. C. Wilson, Isaac A. Ward, William Johnson, D. E. Lewis, James Cunningham, J. B. Cocanour, W. J. Barfield, E. G. Rector, G. W. Halstead Jr., B. F. Howell, J. L. Ivett, William Penrose, Harvey J. Ostrander, John L. McFarlane, John Phillips, A. W. Clough, Charles S. Peck, John and P. B. Ben- nett, Dr. J. W. Fitzhugh, John W. Bost, the Snelling family, the old Snelling cemetery.
CHAPTER VII
ORGANIZATION AND BOUNDARIES.
113
The Act of April 19, 1855, creating Merced County. Provisions of the act. The Board of Commissioners. Provision for the assump- tion of a share of the Mariposa County debt. Boundary: Early county extended south to Converse's Ferry and the northeast corner of San Luis Obispo County. The creation of Fresno County in 1856 and the loss of territory to Merced. Amendments of acts on boundary. Sur- veys of boundaries. People vs. Henderson. The first county seat on Mariposa Creek. The county seat moved to Snelling's Ranch. Memo-
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
randum of the location of the first county seat. Minutes of the first meeting of the board of supervisors.
CHAPTER VIII
THE ASSESSMENT ROLL FOR 1857 129
The assessment book, size and character. How the assessments were taken. What the roll shows about the location of the property assessed and the location of the population. The names and the assess- ments. The missing pages. The index and the names it supplies.
CHAPTER IX
EARLY DAYS IN THE COUNTY 151
What the 1857 assessment roll shows. Settlement confined to the stream bottoms. The cattle business the main industry. Simple methods of living. Grain-raising and flour mills. Spanish and Ameri- can cattle. Judges of the Plains. The free range on the plains. The names on the assessment roll and the nationalities they show. Firearms. Dogs. Peter Fee's diary, and the varied daily life it shows. Fremont has a small revolution. Close relations with Mariposa County. Small scale of county affairs. Voting precincts. Churches. Schools.
CHAPTER X
A CROSS-SECTION OF MERCED COUNTY LIFE IN 1865 169
Early newspapers. The Banner. Robertson and Wigginton's Herald. Extracts from the news of the times. The strong Democratic flavor of the editorails and the news. Post-war politics. Camp meet- ings. Advertisements. Professional cards. The stories of the missing paper and the horse that came back. Spurious tickets. A trip to Miller- ton. Steamboat disaster. Earthquakes. Homicides. Inadequate mail facilities. Stages. Hunts. Cattle-stealing.
CHAPTER XI
THE SETTLEMENT OF THE PLAINS 193
Steele's Herald and Argus. The coming of the grain-raisers. New settlements. The occupation of the plains. Settlements on Bear and Mariposa Creeks. The town of Dover. Growth of Snelling and Merced Falls. Ferries. Talk of a railroad. More immigrants. Sandy Mush. Robla and McSwain settlements. Conflicts with the cattle men. Taking up of the land. Isaac Friedlander and W. S. Chapman. Merced Falls Woolen Mill. Beyond the Joaquin. Grain on the West Side. Mushroom towns of Stanislaus County. Har- vesters. Warehouses. River navigation ; its limitations.
CHAPTER XII
EARLY DAYS ON THE WEST SIDE. 215
"Los Banos." The Mexican grants on the West Side. Confir- mation by the United States. Sanjon de Santa Rita. San Luis Gon- zaga. Orestimba y las Garcas. Panoche de San Juan y Los Carrisa- litos. W. J. Stockton. Reminiscences of Henry Miller. San Luis
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Ranch house. The slight population in 1872. Hardships of the settlers. Droughts. Poverty. Miller builds his first canal. Bull and bear fights. Old Los Banos and Dog Town. Dos Palos. The Outside Canal. Charles W. Smith. Coming to Badger Flat. Badger Flat to Hill's Ferry in the seventies. Two golden weddings in one house. Recollections of Henry Miller. W. J. Stockton's speech before the Lions' Club.
CHAPTER XIII
THE CATTLE INDUSTRY AND THE NO-FENCE LAW 235
The situation that the first grain farmers found. The cattle business on the free government range. The early cattle barons. "Spanish" and "American" cattle. Rodeos. Judges of the Plains. Cattle in the Sierra Nevadas in summer. Cattle rustlers. Pioneer justice. The tree on the San Joaquin. Hangings near Snelling. A fight on the plains. Marketing the cattle crop. At the mines. At San Francisco, Stockton, and Sacramento. Payment in gold. Over- loading a horse. The early fence laws were cattle men's laws. Pix- ley's barley crop destroyed by cattle. Agreement for settlement. The meeting in the spring of 1869 at Patrick Carroll's ranch. Solution of the problem. The cattle men move off. The Chowchilla Ranch. Montgomery and Chapman. Montgomery's fence.
CHAPTER XIV
THE COMING OF THE RAILROAD AND FOUNDING OF MERCED .... 243
River transportation fails. More railroad talk. The need of the farmers. Lack of transportation prevents the moving of grain. Dover and Hill's Ferry warehouses. Lack of money. Stockton and her railroad projects. The San Joaquin and Tulare Railroad. Other projects. The growth of Plainsburg. Talk of "Jefferson" County on the West Side. The railroad approaches. The railroad bond pro- ject proposed and dropped. Tuolumne and Paradise Cities. The rail- road crosses Stanislaus County. Reaches the Merced. The new town on Bear Creek. First location, before the railroad came. The railroad town. Wagon roads. Laying out the town. The sale of lots. The El Capitan Hotel and the depot. Rapid growth of the town.
CHAPTER XV
MERCED BECOMES THE COUNTY SEAT 261
Agitation for the removal of the county seat. The Argus opposes the move. "Livingstone-Cressey" becomes a candidate. The campaign for the removal. Charges against the railroad. Merced wins. Plans for the court house. The awarding of the contract. The construction of the building. Moving the county seat. The completion of the building. Dedication ceremonies. Report of the committee of in- spection.
CHAPTER XVI
COUNTY OFFICIALS. 275
A chronological list of the county officials of Merced County, elected and appointed, with the dates of their election or appointment, from the time of the organization of the county to the end of 1924.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER XVII
POPULATION 297
Estimate of population of the county at the time of organization. The assessment roll of 1857. The census of 1860. The several suc- ceeding federal censuses. Percentages of growth, decade by decade. Population of Merced County towns and their neighbors. Analysis of the population of the several censuses. The elements of population by sex and by nationalities.
CHAPTER XVIII
TRANSPORTATION 305
L
Light shed on county's history by transportation. Difficulties of early-day transportation. Ox wagons. The early routes of travel. Reasons for their location. Travel from Stockton to the Southern Mines. Freighting and staging. Mail routes. Alvin Fisher. C. H. Huffman. Hughes & Keyes. W. H. Hartley. Stoddard & Hubbard. M. McClenathan. Washburn Brothers. E. M. and D. K. Stoddard. Freighting to the mines. The decay of the freighting. The growth of staging to Yosemite. Railroad transportation. Early ferries. Modern highways. The influence of river transportation on the county's history.
CHAPTER XIX
EDUCATION
317
The first districts and the first superintendent. The very small beginnings. The school situation in 1862. A thousand dollars for the county. The first teachers' institute. Condition of the schools during the war. The growth of schools with the coming of the grain- raisers. The boundaries defined. Creation of new districts. Modern schools. The growth year by year during the last quarter-century. Growth of the high schools. Grammar schools. Present status of the schools. Expenditures for schools.
CHAPTER XX
NEWSPAPERS 327
Steele's Banner. Its stormy history. Destruction by Union soldiers. The ephemeral Democrat and Democratic Record. Robert- son and Wigginton's Herald. Its history. Steele's Herald. Steele's San Joaquin Valley Argus. The Merced People. The Merced Trib- une. Beckwith. Madden. Granice kills Madden. Brief history of the case. The Daily Argus. The Express. The Star. The Journal. The Sun. The Sun-Star. County papers.
CHAPTER XXI
IRRIGATION 333
Early irrigation from the Merced River. The ditches along the river bottom. William G. Collier. The Robla Canal. The Farmers' Canal Company. The Crocker-Huffman Land & Water Company. The Merced Irrigation District. Irrigation from other streams. The San Joaquin. Henry Miller's two canals. The Stevinson Canal. The
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Turlock Irrigation District. Water from the Tuolumne. Water dis- putes. The big San Joaquin River Water Storage District.
CHAPTER XXII 361
TOWNS AND SUBDIVISIONS.
Snelling, Merced Falls and Forlorn Hope. Dover and Chester. Merced. Early owners of the site. Maps. Livingston. Atwater. Old Los Banos and Dog Town. Hill's Ferry. Volta. Los Banos. The Santa Fe towns: Le Grand, Geneva-Whitton-Planada, Cressey, Winton. West Side towns: Dos Palos, Gustine, Ingomar. Irwin City and Hilmar. Delhi. Stevinson. Smaller towns. Subdivisions and colonies. Subdivision with irrigation as a unified movement. In- corporated towns : Merced, Los Banos, Gustine, Atwater, Livingston.
PREFACE
This history of Merced County is presented to the people of the county with some trepidation. I have succeeded in finding out quite a bit about the history of the county and in putting it down here. No one, however, can be better aware than I am that the story is incom- plete in many particulars. There is a very large mass of material to examine for the latter part of the county's history-say from the time when Merced became the county seat. The very abundance of the material for this period makes the task a difficult one. For the earlier period, from the organization of the county and earlier down to the moving of the county seat to Merced, the difficulty is of just the opposite kind-the material which is available is often fragmen- tary, often lacking. In both cases a lack of proportion has sometimes resulted. The treatment of the later part of the county's history, from the time when the raising of grain was well launched down to the present, is necessarily a good deal more sketchy than the treatment of the earlier period. For this no particular apology is offered; I believe the earlier portion needs doing so much more urgently now than this later portion, that I can not feel any regrets for devoting the greater portion of the space to the pioneer years.
The chapter on the Founders of the County seems to me to be perhaps the one which is most valuable, and at the same time it is perhaps the one which is most incomplete. The list of pioneers there gathered needs to be filled out as completely as the knowledge now held by people still living will permit. I have indulged a hope, as the book has grown, that some sort of county historical society or association may result from it; and if it should result from attempts to supply my omissions and correct my mistakes, it will not on that account be any the less useful.
I can scarcely hope to thank all who have helped me with the work. Henry Nelson, Mrs. John Ruddle, Judge and Mrs. I. J. Buckley, and Mrs. Louisa Stevinson have given valuable information on the early Merced River section; S. L. Givens, Mrs. Penelope Rogers, Jefferson Price, and John Barker, on early days on Bear and Mariposa Creeks; and W. J. Stockton and C. W. Smith, on early West Side history. I am indebted to Charles Rogers, to L. R. Fan- cher and to O. H. Terrell for information on the early grain days on the East Side; to D. K. Stoddard for matter on early transportation, and also on the location of the first county seat; to Miss Neta Porter, of the county clerk's office, who has searched the records for the material in the chapter on county officers; to Miss Essae M. Culver,
12
PREFACE
county librarian, and her staff, for many courtesies in obtaining mate- rial and for the use of the library; to Gust Johnson, of Hilmar, for information on the settlement of that section; and to C. D. Martin for information on the early history of the Crocker-Huffman canal system. Many others have rendered assistance, for which gratitude is here expressed.
Merced, May 23, 1925.
JOHN OUTCALT.
SNELLING COURT HOUSE. FIRST COURT HOUSE IN MERCED COUNTY
HISTORY OF MERCED COUNTY By JOHN OUTCALT
CHAPTER I
INDIANS, SPANIARDS, AND MEXICANS
Merced County extends entirely across the San Joaquin Valley, with its greatest length in an approximately east-northeast and west- southwest direction. It is approximately sixty miles long by thirty wide and contains 1907 square miles. On the east it runs up a few miles into the beginnings of the low foothills of the Sierra Nevada; on the west it reaches to the most easterly summit of the Coast Range. Its lowest point, where the San Joaquin River leaves the county to pass into Stanislaus on the north, is less than a hundred feet above sea level. The greater part of the surface is plain, sloping gently down from both west and east to the San Joaquin, which bisects the county into roughly equal West Side and East Side.
Besides the San Joaquin, the principal stream is the Merced, nearly forty miles of the lower course of which lies within the county's boundaries, roughly parallel to and about six or seven miles from the easterly half of the northern border. These two are the only streams which have their sources in the high mountains and therefore have anything like a year-around water supply. On the East Side south of the Merced, Bear Creek, Mariposa Creek, and the Chowchilla River carry considerable water during the rainy season, but run very low or entirely dry during summer and fall. The two first-named head in the Mariposa County hills at an altitude around two thousand feet. The Chowchilla, which forms the boundary between Merced and Madera Counties for something like twenty-five miles, from the eastern foothills to the vicinity of the main State highway up and down the San Joaquin Valley, is somewhat larger and heads somewhat higher, but is also dry during a considerable portion of the year.
Between these streams other smaller creeks of similar intermit- tent character run down towards the San Joaquin. All, even including the Chowchilla and Bear and Mariposa Creeks, spread out and merge into sloughs as they approach the San Joaquin, so that their lower courses are difficult to trace.
1
34
HISTORY OF MERCED COUNTY
On the West Side similar intermittent streams run down from the eastern summit of the Coast Range to the San Joaquin. They lie for the most part in a region of still smaller rainfall than those of the East Side just mentioned, and run dry even sooner. Of these Los Banos, San Luis, Romero, and Quinto Creeks are the chief.
The Merced reaches the San Joaquin through a depression having bluffs of twenty to forty or fifty feet on each side, and has a consider- able river valley of its own, of rich farming land. The smaller streams flow through the lower country through channels which they have cut through the plain, and it is the rule that the land immediately along their sides is higher than that at a distance. They have built up the land near them by successive deposits of silt, like miniature Niles or Mississippis.
Except for a dozen-mile strip of scrub timber and brush along the higher part of the western hill portion, and a quarter mile or less of willow, cottonwood, water oak and lesser growth along the San Joaquin and Merced River bottoms, the county as found by civilized man was practically treeless. It just about reached the beginnings of scrub growth along its eastern boundary, there was here and there a little timber along the smaller creeks, in the southeast especially some scattering water oaks dotted the open country at wide intervals, and along the course of the San Joaquin, extending widely beyond the limits of its bordering trees and bushes, was one of those regions which we see frequently referred to in the early accounts as tulares-a place of tules-its bounds coinciding more or less closely with the part of the San Joaquin's plain subject to annual overflow from the snow waters of early summer.
But on the whole the impression the territory conveyed was that of a treeless plain, across which in the old days of horseback travel it was a long, and in the dry season a pretty cheerless journey. With an annual average rainfall at Merced of between ten and eleven inches, and less than that as we go south and west, it was dry and desolate enough for the several months from the early ending of spring until the fall rains, and we can enter into the feelings of Ensign Gabriel Moraga, redoubtable soldier of Spain and the man who more than any other of his race touches the county's history, which led him to confer upon the river the name afterwards applied as well to the county.
It was in the latter half of September, 1806, when on a punitive expedition against "Gentile" Indians of the Valley who had contracted the objectionable habit of running off horses from around San Juan Bautista and San Jose, that this Spanish pioneer entered what is now Merced County, probably by way of the present route of the Pacheco Pass highway and San Luis Creek. With an expedition of twenty- five men, including Father Pedro Munoz, chaplain and diarist, he crossed the San Joaquin somewhere near where the Santa Rita bridge
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35
HISTORY OF MERCED COUNTY
now is, crossed and named the Arroyo de los Mariposas not far from its mouth, and proceeding north and northwest, came after a dry and weary ride to the stream which, supposedly because of the refreshment it afforded his men and animals, he named the "River of Our Lady of Mercy."
From the Merced Moraga proceeded further north and suc- cessively passed the Tuolumne, Stanislaus, Calaveras, and Mokelumne, then turned south and reached the San Joaquin where it flows south- west, now forming the boundary between Madera and Fresno Coun- ties. On the Stanislaus he found the Indian village of Tualamne. At the San Joaquin and again three days later on the Kings-the "Rio de los Reyes," discovered and named by an expedition in the preceding year-Indians told him a tale of white soldiers who had come across the eastern mountains twenty years before and fought a battle. Pos- sibly, Chapman surmises, some not otherwise known and disastrous expedition had formerly been made by Spaniards from New Mexico.
There seems to be no certain record of the name of any Spaniard who entered what is now Merced County before Gabriel Moraga- or even the larger territory which for a brief time was Merced County. Garces and Anza, and Joaquin Moraga, Gabriel's father, at about the time of the American War of Independence, came into the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley, but it does not appear that they stayed in it so far north. Gabriel Moraga himself had been on the San Joaquin the previous year. It is said that Los Banos Creek received its name from the Fathers of San Juan Bautista, who were accustomed to cross the eastern Coast Range summit to the rock pools-the baths-near its head, to refresh themselves; but from what we read of the relations with the inland Indians at the time of Moraga's expedition, it seems probable that this was at a later date.
By this year, 1806, Spain had extended her occupation of Cali- fornia practically as far as she was ever to do, with the exception of San Rafael and Sonoma north of San Francisco Bay. For a clear understanding of the situation as it then existed, we must resolutely banish from our minds the present eastern boundary of California. Substantially the eastern summit of the Coast Range marked Spain's most easterly extension of her occupation. The heyday of the mis- sions was soon to pass; and though we find some mention of the Christianization of the Gentile Indians of the great interior valley as the reason for expeditions thither, it is principally to that noble animal the horse that we owe what was done along that line-to the horse and the desire of the Indian, both neophyte and Gentile, to possess him, and to the restiveness of growing numbers of the neo- phytes, who fled from the discipline of the missions across the moun- tains to their kin in the San Joaquin Valley to the eastward, and for a third cause, to the fear the Spaniards were coming to have of the
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