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 15
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 15
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When the war sent prices soaring in 1914, interest was re- vived in the cinnabar mines of Sulphur Creek, and work was resumed in some of the mines there. An account of the Manzanita and Cherry mines will be found elsewhere in this volume.
Quarrying
In 1892, six years after the railroad was completed to Sites, a quarry was opened up a half mile east of the town; and from there some of the finest building stone ever seen in the state has been shipped. The Colusa Sandstone Company was the first to operate; but a few years later John D. McGilvray, the man who put up the buildings at Stanford University, opened up a second quarry and shipped hundreds of tons of Colusa sandstone to San Francisco, where it was used in some of the finest buildings in the city, or any city. The Ferry Building, the Spreckels Building,
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the Emporium Building, and the Kohl Building are some of those in which Colusa sandstone was used; and it was found at the time of the great fire in 1906 that this stone resisted heat better than any other stone used in the city.
In 1905 the quarries produced 118,054 cubic yards of sandstone, worth $289,454. For some years before the Colusa & Lake Rail- road suspended operations, the quarries had not been doing much, as concrete had largely taken the place of stone in building; and when the railroad quit, the quarries were of course put entirely out of business.
CHAPTER XIII
MANUFACTURING
Local Economic Conditions Unfavorable to Manufacturing
This chapter will necessarily have to be short. I am not sure but that it would have been more appropriately headed "Attempts at Manufacturing"; for it must be admitted that Colusa is not a manufacturing county. We produce immense quantities of raw material; but it is shipped as raw material, and the finished product is manufactured elsewhere. Continually we hear the cry, "What this town needs is a pay roll"; and every town in the county has answered the cry by establishing, or trying to estab- lish, a factory of some sort. Most of the attempts made, however, have met with failure. We have tried to turn our broom straw into brooms, but a larger town took the factory out of the county. We have tried to turn our timber into lumber, but the timber supply gave out. We have tried to turn our water into ice, but the trust gobbled us. We have tried to turn our paddy into rice, but capital avoided us. We have tried to turn our beets into sugar, our barley into beer, our fruit into cans; but something always happened, and kept happening, to thwart our desires. And so we've seen our fondest hopes decay, and again decay, with apparently no economic formaldehyde at hand to prevent or check the disintegration. A number of reasons might be cited in explan- ation of this state of affairs; but one reason overshadows all the rest: We haven't time to waste with manufacturing.
Let me explain. Manufacturing requires a constant and plen- tiful supply of labor. Labor necessarily works for wages. But how are you going to get a man to work for wages when he can go to the edge of his home town, put in a crop, and for every grain he sows get a hundred grains a few months later? For I want to submit this: Farming, under ideal conditions, is the most profit-
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able legitimate business on earth-except manufacturing Ford cars; and farming conditions, along many lines, are so nearly ideal in Colusa County that nobody wants to fool away time and capital in a manufacturing concern that may, perhaps, pay six per cent. a year, when he can put in a crop and make five hundred per cent. on his investment in six months. To illustrate my point, take the rice business. It costs about thirty dollars an acre to plant and harvest a rice crop. An acre will produce, under good conditions, and has produced in this county many a time, sixty sacks of rice, worth at present three dollars per sack. That makes one hundred eighty dollars per acre, or six hundred per cent. on the investment. You have there the big reason why factories haven't made much headway in this county. There aren't enough poor people to work in them.
Sawmills and Flouring Mills
The history of manufacturing in Colusa Co ty goes back to 1852, when a man named Morrison built a combination grist and saw mill on the bank of the river about a mile below Sycamore. The sawmill made lumber out of the oak trees that grew in the neighborhood. But it wasn't good lumber; it warped badly, and when dry was so hard that you couldn't drive a nail into it. More- over, the oak trees were very hard to work; and as the supply was limited, they had to be brought from an increasingly long distance each year. So the sawmill part of the enterprise was abandoned after two or three years. The grist-mill, however, con- tinued to run for over thirty years; but it now is also abandoned.
And now that I have begun the discussion of grist-mills, or flouring mills, as they are more commonly called today, let me treat the subject in detail. Colusa has the honor of having the second flouring mill in the county. "By the end of 1852 the lands along the river had been pretty well settled up; and there soon came to be a considerable production of wheat, as well as a growing demand for flour. Dunlap & Turner built a sawmill in Colusa in 1853; but, seeing that wheat was more plentiful than timber, and was becoming more plentiful while timber was becoming scarcer, they soon took out the saws and changed their mill to a grist-mill. They made a brand of flour that captured the premium at the State Fair in 1867, and commanded a higher price than any other flour in the Marysville or Sacramento markets. The mill was often forced to run night and day to keep up with the demand. Charles Spaulding operated this mill for many years, but in 1874 J. D. Gage and Gil Jones bought it. Gage & Jones erected a new building, put in new machinery, and increased the already wide reputation of the Colusa mill; but the mill became 8
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worn out and obsolete, competition from more modern mills in neighboring towns pressed it closely, and it was finally abandoned and torn down. The lot where it stood has gone down the river, for it was located about one hundred feet northwest of the pres- ent foot of Sixth Street, where the middle of the river now is.
Some time in the sixties, but just when, I have been unable to learn, a flour mill was built at Princeton, which continued to operate for over twenty years. It was run by steam and was what was called a burr mill; that is, one in which the grain is ground between revolving stones. By 1885 the old mill was about worn ont; and as its business was being absorbed by more modern mills, it was closed and later torn down.
In 1863 John L. Smith settled near the junction of Big Stony Creek with Little Stony Creek, and laid out a town which he called Smithville. Evidently Mr. Smith came to share the gen- eral belief that every town needs a pay roll, for in 1878, fifteen years after his town was born, he built a flour mill, which was run by water from the Big Stony. This he operated till 1890, when he sold it, with the rest of his holdings, to the Stony Creek Improvement Company. The company moved the mill to a better location, rebuilt it, and put in modern machinery; but as the boom they had planned for the town did not fully materialize, the mill was closed down after a few years. Lack of wheat was also responsible in part for the closing of the mill.
The next community to tackle the flouring-mill business was Williams. In 1879, a year after Mr. Smith built his mill at Stonyford, a company was formed at Williams to build a flour- ing mill. It was called the Williams Flouring Mill, and the capital stock was twenty-five thousand dollars. The directors were J. C. Stovall, H. P. Eakle, W. H. Williams, John Stanley and J. O. Zumwalt. The business was highly successful, and would no doubt have continued to this day had not the mill burned down, leaving Williams without a mill for many years.
The building of the Colusa & Lake Railroad in 1886 stimulated business in Colusa, and in the fall of that year a second flouring mill was begun in the town. It was called "Sunset Flouring Mills," and was ready for the installation of machinery in Janu- ary, 1887. It turned out its first flour on April 5, 1887. On August 1, 1889, the Colusa Milling Company was incorporated with a capital stock of forty thousand dollars, and the Sunset Mills were bought of W. E. Browning & Company. The officers of the company were W. P. Harrington, president ; George Hagar, vice-president ; E. C. Barrell, secretary ; and J. C. Bedell, superin- tendent. The Colusa Milling Company continued to grow and prosper for twenty-seven years. In 1916 they sold out to the
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Colusa Milling & Grain Company, of which E. H. Weckbangh is president and general manager. The mill is doing a very pros- perons business at present.
In 1916 Williams decided to try the milling business again. The Williams Farmer had been repeatedly calling attention to the fact that Williams, although in the center of a great wheat- growing district, was buying its flour from outside. Finally the Williams Milling Company was formed, and a mill was built ad- joining the Southern Pacific tracks in the southeast part of town. It is a modernly equipped mill, with every facility for doing good work, and has established a good business. The directors who launched the project were H. W. Wakefield, Roy Welch, B. L. Fouch, W. W. Percival and W. C. Percival.
Manufacture of Salt
In the account of his exploring trip to Colusa County in 1844, John Bidwell mentions a salt lake which he found in the hills north of where the town of Sites now stands. The water was so salt that neither men nor horses could drink it, although they were almost famished for water. Peter Peterson afterward acquired the land about there and called it "Salt Lake Ranch." The pos- sibilities for making money from its saline water very early ex- cited the imagination of those who saw the lake. Salt was made there as early as 1860, but only in small quantity. In 1889 J. P. Rathbun took up the work in earnest, and made several tons of salt; and the next year he made ten tons more. The water contained from fifteen to forty per cent. salt, and Mr. Rathbun was enthusiastic over the prospects. In 1892 the An- telope Crystal Salt Company was formed with fifty thousand dol- lars capital stock, and plans were made to manufacture salt on a large scale. The directors of the company were J. P. Rathbun, Peter Peterson, W. P. Harrington, W. S. Green, G. B. Harden, P. H. Graham and R. DeLappe. The company did not get very far till it discovered that it could not make salt in competition with ocean-water salt, and the enterprise was therefore aban- doned.
Projects for a Sugar Factory
I have told something of the attempts to establish a sugar factory in this county. The first attempt was made in 1895, and the second in 1896. Then the matter rested till 1905, when it was taken up with renewed vigor and one hundred thousand dollars was subscribed toward building a factory; but this attempt also resulted in failure. After that the factory was built at Ham- ilton City; and as it will furnish a market for all the Colusa
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County beets that can be grown, this county will probably have to do without a sugar factory.
Canning and Packing
Beginning with 1884, the fruit industry about Colusa boomed. Many orchards of pears, peaches, prunes and apricots were planted up and down the river. No provision had been made for handling the fruit, however; and there was much talk of a can- ning factory. Several preliminary meetings were held; and in April, 1889, the Colusa Canning, Drying and Packing Company was incorporated, with W. P. Harrington, W. T. Beville, L. L. Hicok, E. A. Bridgford, J. B. DeJarnatt, F. W. Willis, and A. S. Mc Williams as directors. The enterprise was launched with great enthusiasm; and that fall forty thousand five hundred sixty-six pounds of raisins, prunes and canned fruits were shipped. On August 15, 1891, the following appeared in a local paper concern- ing the cannery :
"Twenty tons of fruit are now in the cannery, and they expect to have fifty tons more. About sixty hands are employed at present, and one hundred more are wanted. The warehouse just now contains about forty thousand cans of fruit, and fifteen thousand cans have already been shipped East. The cannery peo- ple expect to ship about two hundred thousand cans altogether this season. They have finished with apricots and have just com- menced with pears. About the nicest peaches they have gotten so far came from the Henry Ahlf place on the east side of the river."
Less than three years after the above was written, the can- nery was a matter of history. It did not pay, and therefore operations were suspended. The Colusa Dried Fruit Company opened up for business in the brick building at Seventh and Market Streets in 1900, where it was operated for a few years; and then it, too, succumbed.
Creameries
So far as I know, there have been only three creameries in the county to date, although every little town ought to have one. On November 23, 1895, a representative of the Pacific Creamery Company came to Colusa to interest the dairymen in a coopera- tive creamery. He may have interested them, but he didn't establish a creamery at that time. On January 6, 1897, the Colusa Cream Association, headed by H. B. Turman, bought a lot on which to establish a creamery; and in March following, the Colusa Creamery Company was incorporated with H. B. Turman, H.
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Morris, Frank Wilkins, E. C. Peart, and U. W. Brown as directors. A creamery was built, and was operated for a year or two; but there weren't enongh cows to keep it going, and consequently it failed. Its building was on the north side of Market Street, be- tween Third and Fourth, and is now used as an ice honse.
In 1903 the Colusa Butter Company was incorporated with L. L. Hicok, E. B. Vann, D. W. George, O. J. Kilgore, and J. H. Kilgore as directors. This company built a creamery and under the careful and skillful guidance of Mr. Hicok, operated it with success and profit till 1909, when it was bought by the Western Creameries Company and went into the great creamery trust that was being organized at that time. The trust proved to be a failure, and in 1912 the Western Creameries Company sold its Colusa plant to M. A. Sickels, one of the best creamery men in the state, who is turning ont every week about twelve thousand pounds of the finest butter that can be produced, butter for which the consumer has paid as high as sixty-two and a half cents a pound.
In 1913 the Stonyford Creamery was organized with A. T. Welton, F. M. Kesselring, Bruce H. Sutliff, W. E. Whitcher, and G. T. MeGahan as directors. They built a fine little creamery, installed the latest machinery, and made a product that could not be improved upon. This creamery shut down for a year or two, but it has been reopened and is now in operation.
Steam Laundries
On March 20, 1895, J. R. Phillips opened a steam laundry in Colusa; but Chinese competition killed it, and it had to close for lack of patronage and competent help.
In 1911 John C. Mogk promoted and organized the Colusa Steam Laundry Association, with himself, G. A. Olson, Herman Jacobson, Wilson Scarlett, and B. C. Maves as directors. The new enterprise couldn't compete with the Orientals, however, and kept running behind each month till December, 1913, when the plant was sold to W. H. Graham. Mr. Graham has made a success of it, in spite of very poor support by people who ought to patronize it. The association assessed its members six dollars each to pay its debts, and disbanded.
Madam Bordes started a French steam laundry in 1911, but it burned down a year or two later and was not rebuilt.
Ice Plants
Colusa has also tried the ice business. In January, 1880, J. B. Cooke, of the Colusa Waterworks, began the manufacture of ice; but the venture did not pay and was discontinued.
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In January, 1907, Eybel & Webber bonght a lot on Market Street ; and in 1908 Mr. Eybel organized the Colusa Meat & Cold Storage Company. W. C. Blean finished a ten-thousand-dollar concrete building for the company on January 1, 1909; and at once an ice and refrigerating plant was installed. The first ice was turned out on May 4, 1909; and for two years the business was apparently prosperons. Then the Union Ice Company came in, and an ice war began on May 1, 1911. The result was that in March of 1913 the Colusa Meat & Cold Storage Company leased its ice plant to the Union Ice Company, which closed it down; and a perfectly good ice plant is now rusting in the basement of the building. That was the end of homemade ice for us.
Iron and Steel Manufactures
Factories for working iron and steel have been practically limited to the blacksmith shops. In 1882 the Williams Fonndry and Machine Shop was organized by J. C. Stovall, W. H. Williams, Henry Husted, J. O. Zumwalt, J. G. Moyer, J. W. Woodland and F. M. Boardman, and did a modest business.
In 1888 the people of Colusa were made to believe that their town was the proper location for a great factory for the making of farm machinery of all kinds. A firm named Gessner & Skinner were ready to undertake such an enterprise, provided the proper indneements were forthcoming. So the town got behind the project to the extent of at least a site for the building; and on February 4, 1889, the Colusa Agricultural Works was put in operation for the purpose of turning ont plows, wagons, buggies, traction engines and agricultural implements. Gessner & Skinner lasted abont a year, and then J. Grover had to take charge of the remains. He sold them in 1892 to Wulff & Lage; and a short time later Frank Wulff bonght his partner out. For twenty-one years Mr. Wulff conducted the Colusa Fonndry & Machine Shop. In 1914, after Mr. Wulff's death, Mrs. Wulff leased the works to T. E. Maroney and H. S. Hern; and they later bought it. Mr. Hern has retired from the business, and Mr. Maroney is now the sole proprietor.
The Brewery
About the year 1870 a brewery was started in Colusa. The first building was of wood, and was located near the corner of Main and Eighth Streets. Some years later a new brick building was erected at the corner of Main and Eighth. For many years, under the proprietorship of G. Kammerer, this brewery supplied much of the local demand for beer. It was sold in 1891 by the sheriff, to satisfy a mortgage; and since that time Colnsa people have been compelled to drink imported beer if they drank any.
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Light, Power, and Water Companies
On March 31, 1886, the town of Colusa emerged from the coal-oil era and began the manufacture of gas. The Colusa Gas Company was organized, and began operation under the following directors : J. W. Goad, D. H. Arnold, George Hagar, W. D. Dean, A. Bond and E. W. Jones. This company sold out to the Pacific Gas & Electric Company when it came to Colusa in 1900, and the town still uses gas made on the premises.
In 1909 C. K. Sweet launched the Williams Water & Electric Company, and supplied the town of Williams with light, power and water.
Manufacture of Brooms
There have been two attempts to establish a broom factory in Colusa. The first attempt was made in 1893 by William Prater, of Red Bluff; and the second, in 1909, when J. W. Van Winkle made brooms for a time in J. C. Mogk's warehouse, near the old Colusa waterworks. After being here a few months, Mr. Van Winkle moved his factory to Sacramento.
Manufacture of Poultry Supplies
In March of 1912, M. C. Rogers, George Ash, W. H. Ash, G. C. Comstock, and A. H. Burns incorporated the Rogers Manufactur- ing Company at Williams, for the manufacture of portable, sani- tary chicken houses and other poultry supplies. The company was moved to Sacramento last year, depriving this county of one of its chief factories.
Other Projects
It would be practically impossible to mention all the factories of various kinds that almost got going in the county. There were dozens of them, and one of the most prominent was a rice mill for Colusa. This project has been agitated two or three times since the rice industry came; but the greatest effort was made in 1913, when a permit was obtained from the state authorities to sell stock. The response, however, was far from encouraging; and in 1915 the permit was revoked.
In 1895 W. W. Felts, E. F. Peart, G. F. Scott, J. K. Barthol- omew, C. C. Felts, G. B. Harden, E. E. Scott, W. F. Ford, and U. W. Brown organized the Felts Electric Light & Power Company, for the purpose of making and putting on the market a wonderful new electric battery that had been invented by Editor W. W. Felts. The battery did not materialize as a commercial proposition.
In 1899 C. D. Stanton, H. H. Seaton, A. F. Shriver, G. F. Scott, and U. W. Brown organized the Western Acetylene Gas Company,
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principal place of business, Arbuckle, for the purpose of manu- facturing and installing acetylene gas plants. They did some business, including the fitting out of the Golden Eagle Hotel in Colusa with an acetylene plant, but not enough to keep the wolf from the door.
In 1907 A. S. Lindstrom, C. H. Glenn, C. R. Wiekes, B. H. Bur- ton, Tennent Harrington, M. J. Boggs, and H. C. Stovall organized the Snow Mountain Electric Power Company, for the purpose of putting in an electric power plant just where the north fork of Stony Creek enters the main stream. They built a fine mountain road from Fouts Springs to the site of the power house, and then abandoned the work.
This chapter will have to end somewhere, and it may as well end here. Other corporations and enterprises, not of a manufac- turing nature, will be mentioned in a later chapter, under head of the various towns in which they are located.
CHAPTER XIV
NEWSPAPERS Colusa
Colusa County worried along for twelve years, in the begin- ning, without a newspaper. The Colusa Sun was the first paper ever published in the county. It was founded on January 1, 1862, by Charles R. Street, who published it till some time in the summer of 1863, when he sold it to T. J. Andus. On September 26, 1863, Mr. Andus sold it to Will S. Green and John C. Addington; and in 1873 Stephen Addington bought half of his brother's half interest, and thereafter edited the paper whenever Mr. Green chanced to be away. In 1886 the Colusa Sun Publishing Company was formed, and it has since published the paper. For many years the Sun was a weekly paper; but when in 1889 the Daily Gazette appeared, the Sun was forced to meet the competition, and on November 1, 1889, its first daily edition appeared. It also issued a semi-weekly in connection with the daily, and later changed the semi-weekly to a tri-weekly, which, with the daily, it now issues. Will S. Green was editor and guiding spirit of the paper until his death in 1905, and since that time Mrs. Green has had editorial charge. Jack MeCune has been in charge of the mechanical department for the past twenty-five years, and has made the paper mechanically one of the best in the state. The Sun has had a decided influence on the shaping of affairs in Colnsa County in the last half century. It has always been radically Democratic in politics.
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The Colnsa Independent was established in 1873. It lived almost four years, passing away in 1877.
The Colusa Herald was started as a Republican weekly in July, 1886, by Jacobs & King. Mr. King sold out his interest to Frank Radcliffe, and the paper later passed to C. D. Radcliffe. S. H. Callen owned it for a short time, but in 1897 John L. Allison bought it. In 1900 the ownership was transferred to a stock com- pany, of which J. L. Allison, G. A. Ware, James Balsdon, A. A. Thayer and G. C. Comstock were directors. On July 25, 1900, Mr. Allison made a daily of the Herald, and for a time Colusa had three dailies. On January 1, 1905, the paper was changed back to a weekly; and on June 1 of that year it was sold to C. D. McComish, who continued it as a weekly till May, 1910, when it was changed to a semi-weekly. On February 1, 1916, Mr. MeComish sold the Herald to Tompkins & Harriss, who came from Lexington, Ky., to take charge of it. They still own it, and have made a tri- weekly of it, adding a telegraph news service.
The Colusa Daily Gazette was established in 1889, making its first appearance on August 23. Its editor and publisher was E. I. Fuller, and he led abont as exciting a life as conld be found off the melodramatic stage. Mr. Fuller's literary forte was criti- cism, sometimes of a very caustic nature. His wife kept a tamale parlor; and his paper was generally, almost universally, called the "Tamale Wrapper." The Herald referred to the Gazette as E. I. Fooler's blacksmith shop; and although I have never seen a copy of the Gazette, I could till the rest of my space with stories of this eccentric editor's anties. The paper ceased publication about 1904.
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