USA > California > San Joaquin County > An illustrated history of San Joaquin County, California. Containing a history of San Joaquin County from the earliest period of its occupancy to the present time, together with glimpses of its future prospects; > Part 19
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and it may be confidently predicted that the same ratio of progress will continue in the future. The steamboat is an institution Stock- ton can never part with, be the railroads ever so plentiful."
Other early steamers were the C. M. Weber, Little Fawn, S. B. Wheeler, Sophie, Kate Kearny, Thomas Hunt, Cornelia, John Bragdon, Helen Hensley, Julia, Henry T. Clay, Urilda, American Eagle, Paul Pry, Amador, Willa- mette, etc.
March 1, 1854, the California Steam Naviga- tion Company was formed, who with a capital of $2,000,000 purchased every steamboat in tlie State and monopolized the business. This scheme, though threatening as to rates of trans- portation, was a good one in respect to racing of steamers, which had proved so disastrous to life and property. The company lowered the rate between here and the city to $6 a ton; but, notwithstanding this, sixty-four business firms in Stockton called a meeting " for the purpose of a general consultation relative to building steamers for the Stockton trade." About 800 citizens turned out, and a company was formed which purchased the Willamette and started it in opposition to the great Navigation Company, with the usual result of being starved out. Rates were again raised, and another feeble but evanescent attempt at resistance was again made at Stockton.
These experiments have caused the people to settle down to the monopoly, holding it in check only by the right, ability and disposition to es- tablish competing lines when the rates of the monopoly become too burdensome; and into this same policy will the entire nation probably be forced with regard to the railroad system of the country when it falls, as it more and more rapidly is now falling, into the hands of a few men, possibly a single company.
The State Legislature declared El Dorado street the head of navigation, and the city built a bridge across the slough at that point, at a final cost of $6,000. A bridge existed for a time across the slough at Center street. The
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merchants of Center street won their cause for a time, but the bridge which was built upon their street was swept away by the flood of 1862.
THE MOKELUMNE RIVER.
The flood of the spring of 1862 will be long remembered by the early residents of Stockton. The whole lower valley was submerged. It was in this spring that R. C. Sargent, in pilot- ing a sailing raft across the country north from Stockton to his ranch, with seven men and several thousand pounds of freight, was ship- wrecked within forty yards of his own house. Even after the subsidence of the waters there was left an ocean of mud. The finely graveled roads leading out of Stockton were not then built, and it was a matter of the greatest diffi- culty to communicate with the interior. The long interruption of travel and the impossibil- ity of transporting supplies had created a famine in the mines. Gold was plentiful, but food was scarce. Eggs were $3 a dozen and flour $1 a. pound. " One dollar a pound" was wafted on every breeze from the mountains, creating the greatest excitement. Fortunes were awaiting the men who could pass the Rubicon of mud with supplies, and bring away the dollars that represented the pounds they might be able to carry. It was a powerful stimulant to men possessed of enterprise, endurance and nerve, but there seemed to be no alternative but to wait for the mud to dry up. Some there were who could not wait, and among these was D. J. Locke, of Lockeford, who went to San Francisco and chartered a steamer, the Fanny Ann, com- manded by Captain John Haggerty, who was to spend, if necessary, two weeks in an effort to ascend the Mokelumne river as far as Locke- ford, from which point there would be no diffi- culty in transporting supplies to the mines. The Fanny Ann was a craft 110 feet in length, and was the first steamer that ever attempted to ascend the Mokelumne river. Loaded with goods for Dr. Locke at San Francisco, and arriving at Woodbridge February 21, 1862, the doctor first learned there that Mr. Woods, the
founder of Woodbridge and owner of a ferry at that place, was opposed to the navigation of the river above his town. To make Woodbridge the head of navigation was to build up a flour- ishing town, a rival to mud-bound Stockton. Captain Haggerty, in command of the Fanny Aun, according to Woods' wishes, declared he would "go no further on those perilous waters," and he did not. The freight was unloaded there and sent by team to Locke's place.
Not deterred, the doctor made another trip to San Francisco, bought a steamer on condition that she should succeed in making the trip, loaded it with about fifty tons of freight be- longing to himself and other shippers, received sixty passengers en route to the mines, and made the landing at Lockeford April 5, 1862. The event was the occasion of great hilarity. This craft was a double engine steamboat named Pert, and commanded by Captain Allen, who assured the citizens of Lockeford after his ar- rival there that the navigability of the Mokel- minne was better above Woodbridge than below it, and that the river was navigable; only a few snags would have to be removed.
Soon afterward D. J. and George D. Locke, Edwin Foster and James Tallmadge organized the " Mokelumne Steam Navigation Company," bought thie steamer Pert for $4,000, and placed it under the command of A. P. Bradbury. Two more steamers were soon put upon the route, namely, the O. K., which occasionally went as far up as Lockeford, and the Mary Ellen, which only reached Woodbridge. The results of the experiments were such as to encourage the hopes of the zealous Lockeford people, and in May, 1865, incorporated the " Mokelumne River Improvement Company," with a capital of $40,000, their franchise to be 10 cents a ton on all freight passing up. According to agree- ment, they cleared the river from Georgiana slough to Athearn's bridge within three years. They commenced business and collected tolls, but the latter turned out to be too meager, since the mining population became diminished and the railroad began to carry the freighits, and
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thus the "navigation of the Mokelumne" seeins to have become forever a thing of the past.
RAILROADS.
The history of railroads in San Joaquin County, in one important respect at least, is precisely like that of most railroads in the old States East, namely, many projects talked of, several organizations effected, promises made and broken, other mistakes made and hope de- ferred sufficient to make the heart sick many times. Passing by the projects and prospects of 1848, 1852 and 1856, we immediately come down to the year 1860, when copper in immense quantities was discovered in the foot-hills east of Stockton, and Copperopolis suddenly sprang into existence with a population of 8,000.
STOCKTON & COPPEROPOLIS RAILROAD.
In 1862 the Stockton & Copperopolis Rail- road Company was organized. The cheap trans- portation of these ores to tide-water at Stockton, and thence to the reduction works in Europe and the Eastern States, was one of the leading objects of the projectors of the road. Very valuable secondary considerations were found in the incidental development of vast agricultural, inineral and general resources of the unculti- vated lands over which the road would pass, and the otherwise inaccessible supplies of gran- ite, marble. slate, coal, timber, fuel, wood and other products, for which the road would open a way to a profitable market.
The next year, 1863, several important measures relating to railroads were agitated in the Legislature. March 24, that year, a bill was passed permitting four counties, including San Joaquin, to issne bonds for the Sonora & Mono Railroad, the bonds of this county not to exceed $50,000. In 1862, also, the Western Pacific Railroad Company was organized, for the purpose of building a road from Sacramento to San Jose, a distance of 120 miles. March 25, 1862, the Legislature passed an act author- izing San Joaquin County, by vote of the peo- ple, to issue bonds to the Western Pacific Rail-
road Company to the amount of $250,000. These bonds were voted aud issued, with the limit tliat the road should run through the county. They bear interest at the rate of eight per cent., and it was made the duty of the board of supervisors of 1872 to levy a tax not exceeding 25 cents on each $100, for the pur- pose of paying these bonds.
Under the direction of the few inen who con- stituted the original Copperopolis company, a preliminary survey of the contemplated road was made in 1862 by a competent civil en- gineer, who made an elaborate and comprelien- sive report, not only of the survey, but of the cost of construction, and the resources of the country that would be opened by the work. The civil war then raging, while it greatly facilitated the construction of the great conti- nental trunk road, as a national and military, rather than as a private and commercial work, not only retarded, but wholly paralyzed all local works depending directly or indirectly upon Government subsidies.
In April a rousing meeting was held in Agricultural Hall, and was addressed by Judge Dane and T. G. Phelps. The officers of the meeting were E. S. Holden, president, and H. B. Underhill, secretary. On the 12th of May an clection took place, amid the greatest excitement, with the following vote for the various projects: Western Pacific, 938; Cop- peropolis, 478; Big Tree Turnpike, 935; Mono Turnpike, 1,091. The total vote in the city was 1,128. From the sale of bonds thus voted the citizens now have the Big Tree road, lead- ing to the far-famed Calaveras grove; but the issue of bonds for the building of the Copper- opolis road was defeated by only four votes.
By the year 1865 as much as $33,000 per month was paid out for freight between Stock- ton and the copper mines. These facts gave the Copperopolis railroad enterprise new life, and on the 11th of October of that year the Stockton & Copperopolis Railroad Company was duly organized under the laws of the State, with a nominal capital stock of $1,500,000.
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HISTORY OF SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY.
The officers of this first company were: Presi- dent, E. S. Holden; vice-president, R. B. Par- ker; treasurer, George Gray; secretary, John Sedgwick. Directors. George Gray. John Sedg- wick, W. L. Dudley, E. S. Holden, R. B. Par- ker, John II. Redington, Willard Sperry, E. R. Stockwell and J. K. Doak.
Thus organized, the company proceeded to business, and in March, 1867, through the influence of E. S. Holden, of Stockton, obtained from the Government, by act of Congress, a right of way over the public domain and a land grant of about 256,000 acres, to be forfeited on failure of certain conditions at the end of two years after passage of the act. The contract to build the road was let to Colonel J. P. Jackson, since one of the editors of the San Francisco Post. Notwithstanding the unquestioned value of the Government subsidy, the sudden collapse and abandonment of the copper mines, in con- nection with other unanticipated embarrass- ments, crippled the company and forced them, to save the franchise and land grant, to transfer their rights and property to another corporation, the California Pacific Company.
In 1869 the company asked the supervisors for aid, but the board laid the request on the table. Nothing more was done until Novem- ber, 1870, when ten miles of track were laid, and the council gave the company the right of way down Weber avenne to the water front, and also gave them permission to erect the Copper- opolis depot on the levee. In order to obtain the land grant, the company built the road to Milton, thirty miles distant, and the first loco- motive passed over the track to the water front December 13, 1870.
Subsequently in September, 1871, the new management made an arrangement with the quasi Stockton & Visalia Company, under which a short branch road was constructed from a point on the Copperopolis line, some twelve miles east of Stockton, southward to the Stanis- laus river, and denominated the Stockton and Visalia road, to save the $500,000 subsidy granted by Stockton and San Joaquin Connty
to the last named company. Cost of the road, $739,683. Soon after completion, November 17, 1877, the main road and branchi were trans- ferred to and absorbed by the Central Pacific Company, and this again in March, 1884, by the great Southern Pacific Company (big fish). This branch now uses forty-five freight cars, four passenger cars and three locomotives.
Though the mineral resources, upon which the value of the franchise originally rested, have not been realized, the ordinary local busi- ness is reasonably profitable to the company, while the road is of very great value to the county.
CENTRAL PACIFIC RAILROAD.
The Central Pacific and the Western Pacific companies were organized under the laws of the State in 1861, and were reorganized by Congress and subsidized by land grants and government credits. Originally the Western Pacific franchise extended from San Jose to Sacramento, its line passing through Stockton and bisecting San Joaquin County. Among the first and most prominent of its acts after incorporation was to ask assistance at the hands of the people of San Joaquin County, in the form of a subscription to the stock of the cor- poration to the amount of $250,000, and the issue of county bonds, bearing seven per cent. interest for the same amount. Popular senti- ment being strongly in favor of granting it, a special act of the Legislature was obtained, authorizing the people of the county to issue the bonds. The question was submitted at the first election after the passage of the act, and was carried in the affirmative by a large major- ity. The county bonds were duly issued, and dnly converted by the railroad company.
The Western Pacific Railroad Company, hav- ing received bonds from all the counties, let the contract for construction to Charles McLaugh- lin, for $5,400,000. After building from San Jose about twenty miles he failed, and the road passed into the hands of Stanford & Co. Stan- ford soon asked the city for the right of way on El Dorado street, but was refused, and he then
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located the track on Sacramento street, which was then outside of the city. The next year the council extended the limits of the city be- yond the railroad, and Stanford naturally opposed the change, as it would force his company to pay taxes to the city, a duty that had been re- fused him in 1869. This fact, together with the suits connected with the Stockton & Visalia road, made the Central Pacific the enemy of Stockton, which relation still remains.
SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY RAILROAD.
Immediately after the completion of the great continental trunk road, the Central Pacific management, in 1870, entered upon the con- struction of the San Joaquin Valley line, which has since been extended southward and eastward to the Colorado and beyond, one of the greatest and most important avenues of commerce and travel on the continent. The city of Stockton narrowly escaped a magnificent destiny as a rail- way, manufacturing and commercial emporium, in strangely and unaccountably declining, or at least failing, to become the initial point and tide-water terminus of this great thoroughfare. The result was, the road was deflected at Lath- rop, nine miles south of the city, and the rich products of the San Joaquin valley were di- verted front Stockton, and carried over the intervening mountains to tide-water at Oakland.
STOCKTON & VISALIA RAILROAD.
In the latter part of 1869 a local organization, under the title of the Stockton & Visalia Rail- road Company, was formed in Stockton for the purpose of building a road up the San Joaquin valley, as far south as Visalia, a distance of 160 miles, to compete with the great southern trunk line, at that time commenced by the Central Pacific people. The company asked for sub- sidies of $300,000 from the city of Stockton, and of two hundred thousand from San Joaquin Connty. The Legislature, thien in session, promptly passed an act authorizing the people of the city and county to vote the subsidy. The question was submitted to popular vote, and
was carried alinost unanimously, there being only four votes polled in the negative and 1,328 in the affirmative. The bonds were issued and deposited in the hands of trustees, to be deliv- ered to the company on the completion of the first section of the road, according to the terms of the charter and the conditions upon which the subsidy was granted.
The company was granted the privilege of selecting any street for the right of way that they wished. They first selected Mormon ave- nue on account of the water front; but in 1871 the company changed policy and purchased the Copperopolis road for $400,000, and built a road from Peters to Oakdale, a distance of twenty miles, as a compliance with their agree- ment, and demanded the delivery of the bonds. The trustees, on their own responsibility, and by the orders of the county and city authorities, refused to surrender them. Protracted litiga- tion followed, which resulted in judgment in the District Court for the defendants, the city and the county. On appeal to the Supreme Court the judgment was reversed and the cause remanded with directions to the court below to enter judgment for the plaintiff. The surrender of the bonds was still further contested; and the controversy was finally terminated by a compromise between the contending parties, in pursuance of which $300,000 of the disputed bonds were surrendered. These bonds carry seven per cent. interest, the remaining $200,000 to be paid at some future time without interest.
STOCKTON & IONE RAILROAD COMPANY.
February 13, 1873, a company was organized in Stockton by E. S. Holden, and a charter ob- tained for the construction of a narrow-gauge road from tide water, at Stockton, to the coal inines, near Ione, in Amador County, a distance of forty miles. The corporation entered upon its work under apparently favorable auspices, surveyed the line, graded several miles of road- bed, purchased and landed three or four miles of iron, abont two miles of which were actually laid; erected commodious depot buildings, car-
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HISTORY OF SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY.
shop, etc., and ordered two splendid loco- motives. At this point embarrassinents and complications, that had for some time existed, culminated in the bankruptcy of the contract- ors, the suspension of work, and general liti- gation between corporation and contractors, contractors and stockholders, material men, la- borers and all concerned; and the enterprise was abandoned. What remains of the work stands as a melancholy monument of what was, at least in the minds of the proprietors, a grand enter- prise, and one that was to result in both honor and credit to themselves. While the foregoing was in progress the Central Pacific Company built a branch from Galt to Ione.
THE SAN FRANCISCO, ALAMEDA & STOCKTON RAIL- ROAD COMPANY
was chartered December 8, 1863; consolidated with the " San Francisco & Alameda Railroad Company " October 15, 1868; this, in turn, with the Central Pacific Company, August 22, 1870; and since March, 1884, all the con- structed lines of the Central Pacific have been operated by the Southern Pacific Company.
SAN JOAQUIN & SIERRA NEVADA RAILROAD.
This is a narrow-gauge road, the track being three feet in width. The first intention was to run the road to the timber belt in the moun- tains, and probably, in the course of time, over
the mountains also, if found practicable. There is a belt of fine timber in the Sierras east of this valley. It was completed and opened for traffic from Brack's on the Mokelumne river, through Woodbridge and Lodi to Lockeford, in August, 1882; two months afterward it had reached Wallace, at the eastern line of the connty; in 1884 it was completed to Burson, in Calaveras County; and in April, 1885, to Val- ley Spring, its present eastern terminus. Total length of inain track, thirty-nine and one-half miles, of which about thirty two are in this connty. Cost of construction, $409,830. The company was incorporated March 28, 1882; there are 126 stockholders, and Hon. B. F. Langford is one of the directors. The company now has about twenty-five employés, including the operating officers, three locomotives, three passenger cars, sixty-three freight cars, and about a dozen other cars. Shops at Wood- bridge. The line is now operated by the South- ern Pacific.
There are in operation, within the limits of the county, about 112 miles of first-class track, of which fifty-seven iniles are on the old Central Pacific and San Joaquin Valley lines, thirty- three on the Stockton & Copperopolis line and the Oakdale branch, and thirty-two on the nar- row-gauge. Distance from Stockton to San Francisco by rail, by way of Martinez, 103 miles; by way of Niles, ninety-two miles.
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HISTORY OF SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY.
STOCKTON IN LATER TIMES.
CHAPTER X.
BUSINESS.
T is a matter of astonishment that Stockton has kept equal race with Sacramento in most respects, and in some respects surpassed her, when we consider how many artificial advant- ages have been enjoyed by the Capital City. Sacramento was an old point, made famous by Sutter's fort and colony long before Stockton was born; the first gold discovery and the first rush of immigration was in that vicinity, at least at such points that Sutter's " embarcadero" necessarily became the great entrepöt; Sacra- inento has had tlie State capitol ever since 1854; and the principal capitalists of the State in early day became such at Sacramento, even before San Francisco became a city. One secret of Stockton's success is, its situation for the establishment of large and varied manufactur- ing interests is unsurpassed by that of any in- terior city on the Pacific slope, and for certain classes of manufactures, such as agricultural implements, flour, wine, etc., is unequaled by but few choice localities. The manufactories of this city are thriving and remunerative, be- ing founded on the scientific principle of "natural selection." Having communication by rail with the length and breadth of the State from north to south and from cast to west, and by water not only with the State and the Pa- cific coast, but with the whole outside world,
the city of Stockton would seem to have no more to desire in the way of natural location to ren- der her the leading interior manufacturing point of the State of California.
Here, as elsewhere, the manufacturing inter- ests have been compelled to progress and de- velop slowly; they had to creep before they could walk. Even now some of them are in leading-strings, while others are floating on the full tide of a well-earned prosperity. It is not to be expected that a country as new as this would furnish the facilities for manufacturing industries so varied and numerous as are found in older and more highly-developed localities, nor, either, that all the possibilities and oppor- tunities that have and do present themselves, would be instantly grasped and improved to their fullest extent. It is but natural, and the commou experience of manufacture in all quarters of the globe, that many advantages should be overlooked, and many branchies of manufacturing industry be neglected that might be improved with profit, and made a source of wealth and prosperity to the people of the valley.
Yet there is a wonderful change from 1849, when everything, even the flour from which to make bread, had to be brought from the East, to 1879, when thousands of barrels of that article are annually shipped to foreign ports;
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HISTORY OF SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY.
from 1852, when the plow and cradle of the husbandman had to be transported thousands of miles at an enormous expense, in order to har -. vest the meagre crops here timoronsly planted, to the present time, when Stockton is found the manufacturing center that furnishes the great variety of implements used in the cultivation of the multitudes of fields for miles around. Wages were high; labor was scarce, men preferring to suffer hardships in the mines with the prospect of becoming suddenly rich, to working in the factories at wages that were certain to keep them in comfort; there was no water-power, and all machinery had to be run by steam; fuel was scarce and dear. For all these reasons was first made what was most needed and what could be made to the best advantage.
The manufacture of flour in Stockton was commenced in 1852, by Austin Sperry and S. M. Baldwin (or Mr. Lyons according to one ac- count), in an old wooden building on the corner of Main and Commerce streets. For the first six months, however, it was run only as a barley mill. They then added one run of buhrs for making flour, and still later two more runs, making the capacity of the mill seventy barrels in twelve hours. In 1856 Mr. Baldwin sold his interest to Alexander Burkett, a former em- ployé in the mill, and S. W. Sperry. The capacity of the mill was at this time increased to 200 barrels in twenty-four honrs. In the same year they moved to their present site, on the corner of Levee and Beaver streets. The building occupied here was the old Franklin mill, built in 1853 by Calvin Page & Co. It was an immense building for those early days, and fur- nished with expensive machinery from England; but as in one particular it was not substantially bnilt, it had been closed in 1856. Soon after this date it was purchased by Daniel Gibbs, of San Francisco, but it lay in idleness until pur- chiased by Messrs Sperry. The latter moved their machinery also into it, and, after making extensive improvements in 1878 for the pur- pose of manufacturing " new process " flonr, occupied it until it was burned down April 2,
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