USA > California > Merced County > A 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 > Part 35
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Physical Properties :
Canals. $ 820,900
Drains 701,900
Water Rights :
Grass Lands
4,628,000
Seepage Water 334,000
San Luis Canal Company :
Physical Properties : Canals
1,362,000
Firebaugh System :
Canals and Pumping Plants
509,100
Water Rights
263,000
San Joaquin & Kings River Canal & Irrigation Company : Canals.
2,810,400
Water Rights
2,421,000
Chowchilla Farms, Inc. :
Blythe Canal : Physical Property, Water Right.
172,750
Chowchilla Canal :
Physical Property
153,500
Water Rights
289,600
East Side Canal & Irrigation Company :
Physical Property and Water Rights
404,300
Gravelly Ford Canal :
Inchoate Water Right.
157,000
Sullivan's Ditch
10,700
Damage to Riparian Lands
1,027,000
Total $16,065,150
Power Plant
2,000,000
Dam and Reservoir
6,450,000
Distribution System and Other Expenses.
8,484,850
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HISTORY OF MERCED COUNTY
(This last figure secured by deducting other items from $33,000,- 000. Detail to appear in final report.)
The report shows a total of 548,550 acres, of which 415,300 is intended to be included in the project for immediate work and 130,- 200 acres deferred. The total of 548,500 acres is made up of : Madera, 183,700; River, 46,800; Stevinson, 20,000; Slough, 11,900; Canal, including Central and West Side, 179,000 ; Firebaugh, 53,200; Ortigalita, 25,900; Santa Nella, 8400; Quinto, 5300; Outside Exten- sion, 14,300. There is $4,600,000 included for irrigation works in Madera, and nearly $1,500,000 for other irrigation works, about half of which is for outside enlargements, and for drainage, the need of which was one of the main reasons which led the farm centers of the West Side to move to organize the West Side District; there is $840,800 for the Central and West Side divisions, and $104,800 for the Stevinson.
The directors of the big San Joaquin River Water Storage Dis- trict are J. Leroy Nickel Sr., J. Leroy Nickel Jr., D. B. Harris, A. O. Robertson, W. E. Bunker, J. F. Clyne, Charles G. Murray, George Boles, and W. A. Sutherland.
The attorneys have worked out the priorities of the various water rights, a matter of no small difficulty. The engineers have worked out an estimate of the cost per acre to the various sections included in the district, as follows: For the present West Side irrigated territory, both old and new canal territory, about $56.25 an acre; for the addi- tional territory outside the canal, northern section, $93.50; for the Quinto section, $93.70; for the Stevinson district, $63.75; for the Firebaugh district, $86.00; for the Madera district, $74.25.
Modifications in the above cost figures made before submission to the surveyor general call for a total cost of $31,497,561.48, divided into two parts. In the first part are included property and water rights to be bought : Water rights, $9,738,350; physical properties, $5,911,- 100; miscellaneous properties, $322,610.46. In the second part, for works to be built, are included: Irrigation works, $6,215,310.31; drainage work, $1,220,354.71; storage works, $6,073,836; power works, $2,016,000. Total for first part, $15,972,060.46 ; second part, $15,525,501.02. Total, $31,497,561.48.
Within a day or two of the time when this is being written, comes a report that the surveyor general has disapproved the project as · reported to him. How serious a set-back this may prove, it is im- possible to say. It is the purpose of that portion of the storage dis- trict act which provides for this submission to the surveyor general, to have him pass upon the feasibility of the project from an engineer- ing and a financial point of view. The fact that there is here a vast area of land which can benefit from irrigation, and the second fact
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HISTORY OF MERCED COUNTY
that there is in the San Joaquin River a large supply of water to irri- gate it with, make it certain that a way will be worked out to apply the water to the land. After the long years of litigation which have marked the earlier history of the various conflicting claims to the water of the river, there is a great deal of hope for an amicable solution of the matter in the fact that the San Joaquin River Water Storage Dis- trict has been formed; it is the first attempt of any magnitude to work out the problem as a whole. It may be said here that it is not pro- posed to attempt to do away with rights which have long existed. The priorities, as stated above, have been worked out, and the plan con- templates simply providing new storage water in addition to the old flow of the river water for which the various rights have attached, keeping the priorities alive and effective when the water has fallen each season to the flow of the river, or in case of seasons of unusually light rainfall, if such occur, when no water has been stored.
This is the up-to-the-minute news of irrigation in the county. By way of contrast, and bearing somewhat upon the question of claims to be the earliest irrigator, this quotation from the Merced Express of February 19, 1887, carries us back more than three-quarters of a century to what must have been one of the earliest, if not the very earliest, of irrigation projects for the county. The article does not show the source of Mr. Norvell's information upon a matter which was already something like ancient history when he wrote. We give it as it stands :
"Fremont's Farm .- Colonel Fremont formerly owned several leagues of land in the vicinity of Plainsburg. Believing the mining regions of Mariposa to be more valuable, he floated his grant up there. While the Pathfinder held forth on the plains, he had a canal surveyed from the Merced River to his agricultural domain. If Fremont had carried out his original ideas, all this part of the San Joaquin Valley would have been populous twenty years ago. The original Fremont tract is all under cultivation now, producing unfailing crops of the best grain shipped from Merced County."
It is interesting to see how from even the beginning of the grain- farming days men were thinking and planning irrigation-Henry Mil- ler on the West Side, and on the East Side such grain-farmers as C. H. Huffman and John W. Mitchell, and such engineers as William G. Collier and John W. Bost. The end of the grain-farming may be said to have been in sight from its very beginning; and now, while there is still some grain raised in the county, and a considerable number of grain-raisers can be named on both the East Side and the West, the industry is yielding more rapidly to intensive farming than the stock- raising which the grain, we are accustomed to say off-hand, so thor- oughly displaced. It did not do away with it, though it did largely
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HISTORY OF MERCED COUNTY
displace it from the level lands, except for the Miller & Lux ranches, and sent it back to the beginning of the foothills and to the grass lands along the San Joaquin. The county today is a great cattle county, though it is no longer a great grain county. As of January 1, 1924, it was credited with 42,000 dairy cattle, 86,000 stock cattle, 72,000 sheep, and thirty odd thousand hogs. In number of dairy cattle it was exceeded among the counties of the State only by Stanislaus ; in number of stock cattle, only by Kern. This very large cattle industry needs to be emphasized before we pass on to the newer intensive farming which flourishes, for the most part, in two broad belts lying adjacent to the railroads on the West and East Sides, and extending up and down the Merced.
Notable agricultural products of the county today include figs, grapes, peaches, apricots and a variety of other fruits, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, cantaloupes, alfalfa, dairy products, cattle, sheep, and hogs, and their products, and barley still to a considerable extent. During the present spring some activity is being set afoot to encourage the raising of cotton in this county as well as others of the San Joaquin Valley. Along with the growth of intensive farming, the towns are growing. The county has a farm bureau with sixteen centers, and the Merced Chamber of Commerce has this spring been succeeded by the Merced County Chamber of Commerce. It is not inappropriate to mention these agencies here, for they have grown out of intensive settlement, and intensive settlement has followed and is following the development of irrigation.
CHAPTER XXII TOWNS AND SUBDIVISIONS
The building of towns from a very early, and the establishment of subdivisions from a somewhat later period, have served to mark the course of the county's growth; and what is given here is intended as a use of towns and subdivisions as such landmarks rather than for the sake of the individual histories of the smaller units themselves.
The first group of towns may be said to have consisted of Snelling, Merced Falls, and Hopeton, the latter called Forlorn Hope in its earlier days, three little villages along the Merced River bottom.
By reason of the fact that Snelling was the county seat and had the newspaper, a good deal more has been preserved about it than about the other two. We know that John M. Montgomery, Col. Samuel Scott, and Dr. David Wallace Lewis established it in the spring or early summer of 1851, and that the start was a house of entertainment, at first a brush tent, but soon replaced by a more permanent structure. The Snelling family came in the fall of 1851 and bought the place and ran the hotel. The place continued to be called Snelling's Ranch for some years; it was "Snelling's Ranch" which won out in the election to choose a county seat in the fall of 1855, and the name Snelling's, with the apostrophe and "s," is still used by oldtimers. It was Charles V. Snelling who deeded to the county the site for the first court house and jail. As we should expect, Snelling led all other towns of the county in the matter of having a map filed. A blueprint copy in the recorder's office shows that the original map was filed in the office of the county clerk on November 24, 1856, and that there was a recording in the recorder's office at the request of Peter Sharer on September 23, 1869, in Book C of Deeds at page 590.
There is a map of the "Town of Hopeton," recorded at the re- quest of E. Eagleson on April 2, 1870. This of course was long after the founding of the town under the name of Forlorn Hope. The early name suggests that it was bestowed by a miner who prob- ably realized that he was too far from the hills; the streets shown on the map suggest somewhat one of the New England Congregation- founded villages. Broad Street paralleled the river, and crossing it were Campbell, Wesley, Salem, Center, and East. The early pres- ence of Elder D. McSwain, of the Christian denomination, and the fact that in the early papers we read of the reproach of Snelling in that Forlorn Hope had two churches while she had none, indicate
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HISTORY OF MERCED COUNTY
that this was the nearest to a Congregation-founded town of any that Merced County had, unless it be Hilmar, sixty years later.
Merced Falls, like Forlorn Hope, could not cope with the county seat in the way of publicity. The county seat, with its newspapers and their civic pride, early laid claim to be the earliest settlement in the county and has pretty consistently stuck to its claim ever since-refer- ring to the arrival of Montgomery and Scott in the fall of 1849 and not to the building of the brush tent in the spring of 1851. There is a strong probability, however, that there was something in way of settlement near Merced Falls earlier. We read of Judge Robertson arriving in January, 1850, at "the old California ferry," about where Young's Ferry afterwards was, and remaining there several months. The mines were well on their way by the fall of 1849, and it is very likely that there was some sort of settlement where the travel to them crossed the Merced; perhaps not yet a ferry, but even a ford would probably mean stopping-place enough so that some one would have settled there. There seems never to have been a map of Merced Falls recorded.
Following these three, and preceding the Central Pacific Rail- road, came Dover and Plainsburg. There is a map of Dover recorded at the request of A. C. Hill, March 9, 1869. It is shown located on the northeast quarter of Section 26, Township 7 South, Range 10 East. It was on the east bank of the San Joaquin, a half mile or a little more below where John Dugain's house is today. There were Front, First, Second, and Third Streets, paralleling the river, and Olive, Vine, Hill, Pine, and Pike crossing them. The names of a few owners are given: Simpson & Scott, Simpson, Soper, and Wilker- son. There were sixteen blocks and an odd piece next to the river, probably where the boat-landing was; it was Simpson & Scott's. H. B. Jolley made the survey. The whole map was started off from a stone 150 feet from the river; and the title men will tell you that the location of this stone, and therefore the exact location of the whole town, is now uncertain. Joseph Heacox remembers that the hotel and stable there were moved up the river to Dickenson's Ferry, or Chester, as the post office was named, after Dovers short-lived glory had departed. It is doubtful if a careful search at the site of Dover now would reveal any trace beyond a few remaining marks of ex- cavation.
Chester, we may remark here, owed its existence not to traffic which sought to follow the river, but to such as wanted to cross it. It was a point on the old road between the East and West Sides. Its name was obtained from a part of George Winchester Dicken- son's middle name, and in its prime it boasted a hotel and stable, a post office, and the ferry.
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HISTORY OF MERCED COUNTY
We have read of the beginnings of Plainsburg in the late sixties, when the influx of grain-growers had begun. The place was formerly designated as Welch's Store; it was so designated on the new mail route established in 1868 from Stockton by way of the towns on the lower Tuolumne, where the grain-growing began a year or so earlier than in Merced County, and so on through "Hopetown" and Snelling, and by P. Y. Welch's store on Mariposa Creek and Appling's store on the Chowchilla, to Millerton. In the next year, 1869, Farley's hotel was established and the name Plainsburg was applied to the place, and there were soon two stores, two blacksmith shops, and other business establishments.
To employ an Irish bull the only map of Plainsburg there is of record is a map of Athlone. It was surveyed by James T. Stratton on April 16, 1873, and recorded on December 2, 1874, and apparently marks one of the steps in the unsuccessful attempt to move Plainsburg over to the Central Pacific shortly after the railroad was built. Jef- ferson Price recalls that his father bought a warehouse from one of the merchants in Plainsburg along about this time, and how the mer- chant wished he had it back when the expected move did not take place. And we find an item in the Argus also which prophesies that in six months Plainsburg will be all moved over to the railroad. Like some of the other prophecies of the Argus about other towns, this one proved inaccurate-signifying, not necessarily that Steele was such a bad prophet, but that he was prophesying in a pretty un- certain field.
The "Town of Plainsburg" shown on this map contains twelve blocks 300 by 400 feet, each containing 16 lots 50 by 150 feet like those in Merced, but with no alleys; and with 80-foot streets, also like Merced. There are four blocks west of the railroads and eight east of it; and on each side of the railroad there is a 220-foot reser- vation besides the 80-foot street.
The town of Merced was first formally opened with the sale of lots on February 8, 1872. The name "Merced" was first applied to the town in its present location on the railroad. There was, how- ever, a small predecessor a mile or two down Bear Creek before the railroad came. Goldman's store was located there before it was moved to Merced. There was a blacksmith shop, and also a saloon. Steele records first learning about the embryo town in 1871, on a trip when he got several new subscribers there. It seems at that time to have had no more definite name than "Bear Creek," which designation was applied to the whole region up and down for several miles. It was absorbed by the new town on the railroad when that was established.
Merced was a railroad town, but the land on which it was built was not originally railroad land. The original patentees of the four
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HISTORY OF MERCED COUNTY
sections of land which the town occupies the greater part of were John M. Montgomery, Warner Oliver, Joseph F. Goodale, William P. Fowler, and Job Wheat. Montgomery was six years earlier than the next comer ; he patented 240 acres lying along Bear Creek in 1862.
To outline the situation briefly, Merced occupies the greater part of four sections lying in a square two miles on a side. These are sections 24 and 25 in Township 7 South, Range 13 East; and directly east of them, Sections 19 and 30 in Township 7 South, Range 14 East. The town is laid out with its streets respectively parallel and at right angles to the Central Pacific tracks, and at such an angle to the section lines that the railroad and the streets parallel to it run 24° 40' south of east as one goes towards Fresno, or slightly more than a quarter of a right angle. The section corner common to the four sections is located not far from the southwesterly corner of Lot 11 in Block 165; that is, about 100 feet east of O Street on the north side of Seventeenth. The north and south section line through the middle of our two-mile square passes from the road corner at the Catholic cemetery northward through this point, and about three- quarters of a mile further north crosses Bear Creek at approximately the Y. V. crossing on R Street. The east and west line from the central point going east cuts G Street about 100 feet south of Twenty- first Street, and going west strikes into the British Colony Road at the western edge of town.
Warner Oliver was the patentee of the two southerly sections, 25 and 30, of the south one-half of the northeast section, 19, and of the south one-fourth of the northwest section, 24. His patents were all dated 1868.
William P. Fowler patented the northeast quarter of Section 19 in 1868. The southwest corner of this quarter-section is roughly near James Ryan's residence at Twenty-sixth and L Streets and the quarter includes the part of the town east and north of that point, but lies for the greater part on the north side of Bear Creek.
The south half of the southwest quarter of this same Section 19, reaching a half-mile in length and a quarter in width, practically all on the south side of Bear Creek, approximately from the Huffman mansion to the Y. V. crossing, was patented by Job Wheat in 1872.
On west in Section 24, Joseph F. Goodale, Wheat's brother-in- law, had the eighty directly west of Wheat's, also the next eighty south, and also the west forty of the next eighty north. This last forty is for the most part north of Bear Creek. All of this, except his southeasterly forty acres, Goodale patented in 1872; the south- easterly forty he patented in 1868.
Montgomery had the forty upstream and the one downstream from Goodale's northerly forty, and also had the hundred and sixty
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HISTORY OF MERCED COUNTY
square directly west of Goodale's hundred and sixty square. Mont- gomery certainly, and Goodale presumably, had taken the land chiefly for the water-holes. Montgomery's land lay on both sides of Bear Creek from the Central Pacific, approximately up the Santa Fe; and from the Santa Fe crossing up to the Y. V., Goodale had the first quarter of a mile and Montgomery the second.
In 1868 Goodale deeded his southeast forty to Wheat; in May, 1871, Wheat deeded it back and also deeded Goodale his original eighty. In the same month, on the 26th, Warner Oliver and De- borah, his wife, deeded all their land to the Contract and Finance Company at a consideration of $22,960. On June 6, 1871, W. P. Fowler and Fannie A., his wife, deeded the portion of the northeast quarter of 19 south of Bear Creek, about twenty acres, to Charles Henry Huffman; and on the same day Huffman took a deed from Goodale and Martha, his wife, to all their lands mentioned that lie south of Bear Creek, and also a forty north of the creek. Huffman bought this Goodale land for $8350. On August 1, 1871, he con- veyed all of it except the forty north of the creek to the Contract and Finance Company for $7150. On January 17, 1872, J. M. Mont- gomery conveyed to the Contract and Finance Company his land in Section 24 lying south of Bear Creek. One dollar is the consideration mentioned. On August 4, 1873, Huffman conveyed to the Contract and Finance Company the twenty acres he had bought from Fowler. On October 26, 1875, the Contract and Finance Company conveyed to Charles Crocker all of the four sections "south of Bear Creek, 1525 acres, including the town site of the town of Merced, except the lots therein heretofore sold and conveyed by the party of the first part." The Contract and Finance Company was disincorporated the following day, and on April 27, 1876, E. W. Hopkins, E. T. Miller, and Jas. O. B. Gunn, as trustees, and in accordance with the order of dissolution, executed a deed to Charles Crocker to convey the same lands as the last one, to correct errors in the latter.
The first map of Merced was the "official map of Town of Merced, Merced County, Cal., on line of San Joaquin Division, Central Pacific Railroad" recorded at the request of H. B. Underhill on February 10, 1872, in Book F of Deeds at page 400. It em- braced only the part of the town from Twelfth to Twenty-third Streets and from H to R.
The next map was that one recorded in Volume X of Deeds at page 540 "at the request of Charles Crocker per C. H. Huffman," May 7, 1885. It was filed in the clerk's office the preceding Decem- ber as shown by the endorsement: "Filed Dec. 22, 1884. J. H. Sim- onson, Clerk per A. Zirker, Dep. Clerk." It embraced the territory from Eleventh to Twenty-eighth Streets, and from G to R inclusive.
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HISTORY OF MERCED COUNTY
The next, embracing the same territory and entitled "Supple- mental Map to Town of Merced," was recorded March 4, 1889, at the request of Wells Fargo & Company. This was just about the time of the calling of the election on the incorporation of Merced as a city of the sixth class.
A "Map of the City of Merced and Subdivisions of Adjoining Acreage Property, .. . " resurveyed in June, 1897, by L. D. Nor- ton, and certified by the Pacific Improvement Company, H. E. Hunt- ington, president, F. S. Douty, secretary, on December 10, 1897, was recorded on May 15, 1901. It includes all of the four sections south of Bear Creek except the triangle east of G Street and north of the Central Pacific.
The last map of Merced was the one recorded on August 23, 1912, in connection with a proceeding to perpetuate the testimony of M. D. Wood and others. It is accompanied by an affidavit by Mr. Wood to the effect that when he was county assessor, during the years 1886 to 1890, there was in the assessor's office a map known as the "Offi- cial Map of the City of Merced," and that this map is a true copy.
It was on March 6, 1889, that the board of supervisors, in re- sponse to a petition filed for the purpose, called the election to in- corporate Merced as a city of the sixth class. The election was held on March 30, and the votes were canvassed on April 1. There were 300 votes for and 59 against. The first board of trustees, elected at the same election, consisted of M. D. Wood, E. T. Dixon, W. L. Silman, J. R. Jones, and W. H. Turner. H. L. Rapelje was elected city marshal; M. S. Huffman, city treasurer; and J. O. Blackburn, city clerk.
Livingston was evidently named for the African explorer. We find it spelled with the final "e" in the early mention, when it was a candidate for the county seat in the latter part of 1872. Its first name, however, was Cressey, bestowed for the large landowner and grain farmer of that well-known name, whose ranch was extensive enough so that his name was afterwards applied to the present Cres- sey on the Santa Fe. E. J. Olds built a hotel in the first Cressey in its earliest days. A man named W. J. Little was postmaster and owned some land there; and as he was not in favor of the name of another landowner for the town, he succeeded in having it changed to a name of his choosing, "Livingstone," from which the final "e" was soon dropped.
The map of the town of Livingston was recorded in Book Y of Deeds at page 121, on December 4, 1872; the date indicates that the surveying was in all probability a part of the campaign to make the town the county seat.
With this we come to the last of the towns which may be fairly classed as early towns. One exception, however, should be noted,
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HISTORY OF MERCED COUNTY
a place that has been mentioned in another chapter, and that never attained to the dignity of much more than a postoffice. This was the Union Postoffice, out on Mariposa Creek near the Mariposa county line, kept by P. B. Bennett in the early days of the travel on the Stockton and Fort Miller Road.
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