USA > California > Glenn County > History of Colusa and Glenn counties, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the counties who have been identified with their growth and development from the early days to the present > Part 11
USA > California > Colusa County > History of Colusa and Glenn counties, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the counties who have been identified with their growth and development from the early days to the present > Part 11
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91
During the years 1914, 1915 and 1916, many of the wooden bridges of the -county were replaced with modern concrete struc- tures, the largest and most important of these being the bridges across the Trongh on the Colusa-Maxwell, Colnsa-Williams, and Grimes-Arbuckle roads.
Stage Lines
We have seen that the founders of Colnsa intended that it should be a steamboat terminus and distributing point for North- ern California, and that for a few years after they got a line of boats running regularly their hopes were realized and a great deal of merchandise passed through the town. Naturally, as the surrounding country became populated, stage lines were estab- lished for the carrying of mail and passengers. Baxter & Com- pany operated the first and leading stage line ont of Colnsa, bnt a man named Johnson soon put on an opposition line. They ran from Colusa to Shasta, and made the trip in one day. The rivalry between them was fierce, and very hard on horse flesh; but the speed they made soon diverted most of the travel to and from the northern mines from the Marysville to the Colusa route. In 1869 a tri-weekly express service was put on between Colusa and Princeton, and that year also an opposition stage line was put on between Colusa and Marysville, with the result that the fare was redneed to two dollars. In November of 1872 the Marysville stages reduced the fare to twenty-five cents; and the daily trips became horse races, so fierce was the competition. On February 12, 1873, B. C. Epperson sneceeded in having his Bartlett Springs & Bear Valley Toll Road Company organized; and the same year a stage line was put on between Colnsa and Bartlett and Allen Springs. This line carried six hundred passengers that first sea- son. The next year another line or two began business, and over two thousand passengers were hanled. On August 7, 1874, a stage line from Colusa to Chico was started; and on September 23 of that year a line was established between Colusa and Wilbur Springs. Altogether, in 1874 there were nine stage lines running ont of Colusa. In 1876 a line was established between Leesville and Fouts Springs; and the next year a tri-weekly service was
90
COLUSA AND GLENN COUNTIES
put on between Colusa and Willows, via Princeton. The coming of the railroad in 1876 did away, of course, with the stages be- tween Colusa and the mountains; but communication is still main- tained between Williams and the various springs resorts, the auto stage having taken the place of the old horse stage. The coming of the Northern Electric killed the stage line to Marys- ville; but there are still three stage lines out of Colusa, all of them auto stages. One of them runs to Chico via Princeton; another runs to Arbuckle via Grimes, Grand Island, and College City ; and the most important one connects Colusa with the South- ern Pacific at Williams. All of these will probably pass out of existence when a regular passenger service is established on the Colusa & Hamilton Railroad.
The Automobile
Let me close this chapter on transportation with a brief his- tory of the automobile in Colusa County; for the auto is having a decided effect on the history of the county. The first horseless vehicle, outside of the wheelbarrow, ever seen in the county was a velocipede, which arrived in Colusa on March 13, 1869, and drew great crowds of spectators. William Ogden brought the first steam "traction wagon" to the county on May 25, 1872. But the first real automobile ever seen in the county, and the fifth machine in the state, belonged to Dr. W. T. Rathbun, although we would hardly call it a real automobile today. It was a little steam Locomobile, of the type later referred to as a "road louse," but it was considered a wonderful machine in its day. That was in 1898. Dr. Rathbun then lived in College City, and his first trip to Colusa in his new machine was made on a visit to the county fair, which was being held here. As he and Dr. Gray drove into the fair grounds, the people lost all interest in the races and the rest of the fair, and crowded around to have a look at the "horseless carriage," the first one most of them had ever seen. In order that the crowd might see it perform, the management of the fair had Dr. Rathbun drive it around the track a few times; and this proved to be the great feature of the fair.
M. C. Dillman, now of Grimes, but in those days running a machine shop in Colusa, claims the honor of having the first gasoline car in the county. Not long after Dr. Rathbun's steamer appeared, Mr. Dillman got an Oldsmobile, a four-horse-power machine of one cylinder. It was also the object of much inspec- tion and many remarks.
Just who got the next machine I have been unable to learn definitely. About that time Frank Wulff built a car, and also got
91
COLUSA AND GLENN COUNTIES
a Rambler from the factory; and George Showler and several others got cars. In 1900, Will S. Green, having carefully investi- gated Dr. Rathbun's machine, got one just like it for the use of the Colusa Sun. It was a four-horse-power steam Locomobile, and W. K. DeJarnatt received it at Sacramento and drove it home. It made the trip of seventy-five miles in five hours, fifteen miles an hour, and so pleased the owner that he gave it nearly a half- column write-up in the Sun. A modern machine would have reached Colusa about the time the Sun's Locomobile reached Woodland, but fifteen miles an hour was so much better than horses could do that the elation of the editor was entirely natural and pardonable.
Automobiles came very rapidly in this county as elsewhere, once they were introduced; and in 1905 there were twenty-seven machines in the county. In 1906 there were thirty machines in Colusa and its immediate vicinity, and after that the number in- creased so rapidly that they could not be kept track of. Today Colusa County has a larger number of automobiles in propor- tion to its population than any other county in the state, the total number being in the neighborhood of seven hundred-seven hun- dred twenty-eight, to be exact.
An interesting feature of the development of the use of autos in this county was the reluctance displayed in accepting the Ford. Arbuckle was the pioneer in the discovery of the Ford. In 1912, when Frank L. Crayton took the agency for the Ford in Colusa, there were only two cars of that make in the town. Sev- eral traveling representatives had been here and tried to estab- lish an agency, but without success, although at the time, in other parts of the state, about half the cars sold were Fords. Finally the people of the county began to discover that the Ford was in a class by itself, but this county still has a greater proportion of the higher-priced cars than any other place I have visited.
The first auto hearse was brought to the county on June 24, 1914, by J. D. MeNary; and today one seldom sees a horse-drawn funeral procession.
Within the past two or three years anto trucks have very largely supplanted teams for hauling on the roads, especially long- distance hauling. Cooks water and Bartlett water are now hauled by auto truck instead of the great ten- and twelve-mule freight teams, with their two or three wagons and jingling bells. Ninety per cent. of the rice crop, and a great deal of the barley crop, are hauled to the warehouses by auto trucks. The big machines have· entirely supplanted teams for hauling between towns, as when a family moves from one town to another; and as tractors
92
COLUSA AND GLENN COUNTIES
are very generally supplanting horse power in farming opera- tions, the long-looked-for holiday of the horse seems to have about arrived. We are fast passing into the age of gasoline, as far as local transportation is concerned. The change has brought many advantages; so let it be complete !
The Aeroplane
The hum of the aeroplane is as yet little known in this county. A number of exhibition flights have been planned; but for some reason or other they have all fallen through, with the exception of the one at the Grimes Odd Fellows' picnic in 1917. The aviator in that case unloaded his machine at Arbuckle, flew to Grimes, gave an exhibition, and flew back to Arbuckle to take the train.
CHAPTER IX
IRRIGATION AND RECLAMATION
Nobody knows just when a householder in Colusa County first took a shovel and threw up a few shovelfuls of earth to keep the water from his front door or out of his corrals; neither does any- body know just when the first bucketful of water was put around a cabbage plant or rose bush. So this chapter will not attempt to tell of the many private plans of individuals who have tried irrigation and reclamation on a small scale in this county, but will deal with the organized efforts of considerable magnitude.
District 67
To begin with reclamation, the first reclamation district in the county was composed of what is known as "Mormon Basin," the land between Sycamore and Dry Sloughs. Dry Slough branches off from Sycamore Slough near where Sycamore Slough branches off from the river, somewhat in the shape of a wishbone ; and as each slough had, in ages past, built itself up upon a broad, flat levee, the land between them was by nature fairly well pro- tected, except at the lower end, where the sloughs empty into the "Lower Basin." In 1867, the owners of the land in Mormon Basin, seeing that the water could be kept off their land at com- paratively little expense, combined and formed a reclamation dis- triet which was called District 67. The chief work that they had to do was to build a levee across the south end of the district, between the two sloughs, which they did; and although this levee has broken on several occasions, the land in Mormon Basin has been compara- tively free from flood troubles. After a few years, District 67 lapsed; but it was later renewed as District 479, which is alive and
93
COLUSA AND GLENN COUNTIES
active today. The present trustees of the district are J. H. Balsdon, president ; F. W. Schutz, secretary; and J. J. Morris. Some of the best land in the county is in this district.
District 108
The greatest reclamation district in the county, although it is not entirely within the county, is District 108. It is also one of the greatest reclamation districts in the state, or in any state. It was formed in 1870, and as first organized embraced the land between the Sacramento River and the Trough from a point near Grimes southward to Knights Landing. About ten miles south of the northern boundary of the district a point of high land, called Howell Point, runs out from the river toward the Trongh. In 1902 it was thought advisable to divide District 108 at Howell Point, forming the southern part into a new district called District 729. In 1911, District 108 was reorganized, taking in District 729 again, with the exception of the Great Fair Ranch near Knights Landing, which in the meantime had been formed into a district of its own. The original district contained a little over seventy-four thousand acres ; the district as reorganized in 1911 contained about fifty thousand acres. Since then some additions have been made to it, so that it now contains about fifty-five thousand acres. The first trustees of the district were A. H. Rose, Charles F. Reed, and L. A. Garnett. Mr. Reed superintended the work of the district till 1879, when Robert Cosner took his place, which he held for many years.
Apparently the original intention of the organizers of the dis- trict was to gain protection from the river only ; they built a levee along the river from Knights Landing to Sycamore Slough, pay- ing little or no attention to the back water. For the first ten years the district was greatly troubled by breaks in the river levee or by back water, and in 1879 a party of men from Sntter County crossed the river and cut the levee at the month of Wilkins Slongh, claiming that to dam the slough threw the water over on their lands. The levee was quickly repaired; and two weeks after the act was committed twenty-seven men were arrested for it and bonnd over for trial. The history of the district from that time to 1910 was one of alternating good and bad years. When the levees held, the lands produced a wonderful crop. When they didn't hold, which was about every other year, the crop was drowned out, and the landowners went down into their pockets for another assess- ment. The total sum spent in reclaiming District 108 now amounts to millions.
In 1910 plans were made for an enlargement and reorganiza- tion of the district, and for extensive protection works. Charles de
94
COLUSA AND GLENN COUNTIES
St. Manrice was the engineer in charge, and the business manage- ment of the enterprise was in the hands of Jesse Poundstone, whose name, for many years past, has been synonymous with the name of District 108. One of the chief things planned was an im- mense baek levee, twenty-eight miles long, two hundred feet wide at the base, twenty feet wide on the crown, and twenty-two feet high. Night and day for nearly three years, beginning in 1912, from two to five monster dredgers worked on this levee, some of the dredgers, the Monterey and the Argyle, having booms one hundred eighty-five feet long and buckets weighing ten tons. It was also planned to have this levee faced with concrete, but that has not yet been done.
Another important feature of the work done on the district at this time was the pumping plant at Rough and Ready Bend. This plant consists of five fifty-inch pumps, and was at that time the largest in the world. It is capable of throwing one million five hundred thousand gallons a minute when all of its five three-hun- dred-horse-power motors are going. The district already had at Howell Point a pumping plant consisting of one forty-inch and one thirty-six-inch pump, the former driven by a three-hundred-horse- power electric motor and the latter driven by steam. These pumps are so arranged that in a dry year water can be pumped or siphoned backwards through them, and be distributed over the dis- trict by a system of canals that diverge from the pumps. The yield of barley has been greatly increased in this way.
The improvements of 1911 and the years following cost over a million dollars. Some of the individual landowners in the dis- trict put up ten thousand dollars a month for six months at a stretch to keep the work going. Now they have an empire worth many millions, and producing each year as much as it cost. The present trustees are Jesse Poundstone, J. H. Balsdon, and J. W. Browning.
District 124
The year following the organization of District 108, District 124 was organized. That was in 1871. It embraced fourteen thou- sand acres north of Sycamore Slough, in what is known as the "Upper Basin." It included what is now known as the Davis tule. The first trustees were E. A. Harris, Moses Stinchfield, and A. H. Rose. They leveed the river from Sycamore Slough to the mouth of Powell Slough. In 1880 A. H. Rose, T. C. King, and Howell Davis were elected trustees. Some years later the district lapsed, and it is now a thing of the past.
95
COLUSA AND GLENN COUNTIES
Other Projects
One of the most active advocates of irrigation and reclama- tion in the early days was Colonel L. F. Moulton, who owned most of what is now Colusa County east of the river. His ranch com- prised twenty-two thousand acres, most of it overflow land, and he spent several princely fortunes on levees, ditches, and other more or less experimental work. His land lay between Butte Creek and the river, and overflowed very readily; and when District 70 built its levees to the south of him, forcing the flood waters to pass to the east and go down Butte Slough between the district and the Buttes, Colonel Moulton's troubles were multiplied. But the final and worst blow came when J. W. Parks, a large landowner in the Sutter Basin, built a levee or dam across the slough from District 70 to the Buttes. Mr. Parks' intention was to stop the flow of the water through Butte Slough, force it to go back into the river at the mouth of the slough, and thus protect his lands below the dam. The effect of the dam was to put Colonel Moulton and his east side neighbors on the bottom of a great artificial lake. The result of all these circumstances was a stormy career for the dam while it lasted. Meetings of protest were held, resolutions against it were passed, the legislature was invoked, the dam was washed out by floods several times, and on several occasions it was surrepti- tiously cut at periods of high water. It was first built in 1871, and in 1876 Colonel Moulton secured from the state supreme court an injunction restraining Mr. Parks from maintaining the dam.
In 1905 the Crocker Estate Company, a party of San Fran- cisco capitalists, bought most of the Moulton ranch. They at once put three hundred men and one thousand head of stock to building a great levee around that part of the ranch just south of the Moul- ton "break." The waves from the back water washed much of the new levee away the following winter, and no good was ever gotten from it, although it had cost over one hundred thousand dollars.
In 1913, following an act of the state legislature, the Sacra- mento and San Joaquin Drainage District was promulgated. It was a comprehensive scheme for draining the flood waters from the entire Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys, one of the fea- tures of the scheme being a great drainage canal to follow the Trough down through the Colusa and Yolo Basins to the Bay, a plan that had been dreamed and talked of for years by reclama- tionists. Another feature of the scheme was a similar canal be- ginning at the Moulton break, about twelve miles above Colusa on the east side, and following the low land of the east side down to the Feather River. The preliminary work on this latter canal has been authorized, the cost to be fifteen million dollars. The
96
COLUSA AND GLENN COUNTIES
lands of the entire district, reaching as far north as Chico, were to be assessed to pay the cost of these canals and the other works necessary for the district ; and at once a number of landowners of Colusa County, especially the northern part of it, protested against having to pay for draining the swamp lands farther down the valley. A meeting was held in Colusa on March 19, 1913, to organize the opposition; and the result was that the original plan of the district was modified, and lands that could not be benefited by the district were left out of it.
In 1915 the Sacramento Valley West Side Levee District was created by the legislature, its object being to form the west side of the valley, from the river on the east to the Trough on the west, and from Colusa on the north to Knights Landing on the south, into a great protection district which should have charge of and keep up the levee on the west side of the river from Knights Land- ing to Colusa. At first it was provided that all lands in this dis- trict should be assessed alike; but this aroused so much opposition from those whose lands would receive little or no benefit from the district, that a new plan of assessment had to be adopted, namely, that of assessing the lands in proportion to benefits received. This district includes District 108, and will hereafter have charge of the river levee of the latter district.
If this chapter were to include all the reclamation plans and projects that have been promulgated but have never materialized, it would fill the entire book. One of these projects, however, is of sufficient importance to Colusa County to deserve mention here. I refer to the Iron Canyon Project, which is a scheme, partially fostered by the state and the United States government, to dam the Sacramento River at Iron Canyon, seven miles above Red Bluff, collect the flood waters during the rainy season in an immense reservoir there, and allow them to escape gradually into the channel or into irrigating canals in the summer. This scheme, if it works, will keep the river from getting too high in winter and too low in summer, two consummations devoutly to be wished. So much for reclamation, which I have taken up ahead of irrigation because the people of the county did the same.
Irrigation
This is not a personal history of Will S. Green; but he was so intimately connected with many of the early affairs of the county, that one cannot investigate them far without encountering his influence. Irrigation was the great hobby of Will S. Green. As long as the breath of life was in him he talked irrigation, wrote irrigation, urged irrigation, and worked for irrigation. He hoped to see every level acre in the county under irrigation; but such is
97
COLUSA AND GLENN COUNTIES
the irony of fate that, when he was called to his reward in 1905, only a few acres had been irrigated, while, in the twelve years since, thousands upon thousands of acres have been brought under water. The project to which Mr. Green devoted much of his time, for many years, was the Central Irrigation District, by far the most important attempt at irrigation made in this county, and one of the most important ever made anywhere.
In 1864, Mr. Green made an examination of the river with a view to locating the intake of a canal that would irrigate the great plains of Colusa County. He was convinced that such a canal was feasible; and, securing the services of a competent engineer, he ran lines and established a ronte for a canal through Colusa and Yolo Counties. But by the time the canal was fully laid out, it had developed into a great shipping canal one hundred feet wide at the bottom, which would cost twelve million dollars to complete; so it was dropped, although the legislature in 1866 appropriated eight thousand dollars to pay the expenses of the survey.
Mr. Green was undaunted by this first failure, and kept talk- ing irrigation for twenty years more. In 1883, he met at Willows with H. B. Julian, N. D. Rideout, and John Boggs, to see what could be done with the waters of Stony Creek. They found that there was water enough in that stream to irrigate nearly the whole Sac- ramento Valley, and a corporation was formed and the money raised to develop the project; but the opposition of men who al- ready had riparian rights in the stream defeated the enterprise. This second failure had no chilling effect on Mr. Green's enthu- siasm, for he was a natural-born booster and promoter.
Up to this time all irrigation had been done by "riparian owners" or "appropriators," who secured the right to take a cer- tain amount of water from a stream at a certain point, and then sold it or distributed it over the land. Mr. Green had been advo- cating the district plan as against the plan of appropriators, and at the Fresno Irrigation Congress he succeeded in getting a com- mittee appointed to go before the state legislature and advocate a law providing for the formation of irrigation districts. The com- mittee was not successful in having such a law passed; but the next legislature, the session of 1887, passed what was known as the Wright Act, which gave farming communities the right to form a district with powers similar to those of a municipality. The Wright Act was approved March 7, 1887, and Central District was the fourth district to organize under it. The following history of the district, written by Frank Adams, Irrigation Manager for the United States Department of Agriculture, and published as part of a bulletin, "Irrigation Districts of California," by the State 6
98
COLUSA AND GLENN COUNTIES
Department of Engineering, is so brief and clear that it is here given in full:
"The district was organized November 22, 1887. Entirely feasible physically, it was still a disastrous failure because of the legal and financial troubles that beset all of the districts in the early nineties, but most of all because the forced irrigation of the great holdings included, averaging 870 acres for the entire dis- triet, and with forty owners holding an average of 2,225 acres each, could not possibly succeed under settlement conditions exist- ing then or even now.
"The petition for the formation of Central Irrigation District was signed by sixty-four (supposed) freeholders, and was aecom- panied by the objections of nine non-resident landowners whose attitude in a way seems now to have forecasted the failure of the undertaking. Still engaged in the 'bonanza' grain-growing of the earlier and more remunerative period, when both yields and prices were higher, they conjured up visions of rnin with the bringing in of irrigation water. Irrigation would be bad for fruit, they said. It would even produce chills and would be a detriment to alkali lands. And besides, the irrigation of wheat and barley was not a success, anyway. All of the lands included, they averred, were not irrigable from the same source; the boundaries of the district were improperly described ; and the Wright Act was unconstitutional. Further, these objectors intended in the near future to include their lands in an irrigation district of their own, which would include their residences, so that they would have a voice in the proceedings. When election time came, the opposition mustered only 51 votes out of 322, and organization prevailed.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.