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 18
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 18
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
159
COLUSA AND GLENN COUNTIES
"highest water" came, breaking the levees in many places and flooding thousands of acres of land. The year 1889 was another flood year. On March 17, 1893, it rained an inch in four hours. Heavy wind and heavy damage accompanied the rain. In 1894, 1895 and 1896 there were floods in January, and since then there have been a number of floods that have broken the levees. On March 6, 1911, it rained 3.12 inches, and on April 5, twenty-six thousand acres of grain went under water in District 108. The floods of February, 1915, were probably the most damaging in the history of the county. The river levee on the west side broke eight miles north of Colusa, two miles north, a mile south, at the Meridian bridge, and a mile above Grimes. The Northern Electric bridge at Meridian was wrecked, two miles of track between Colusa and Meridian were washed away or damaged, several miles of the Colusa and Hamilton Railroad were washed out, the power lines were broken, and Colusa was for a time cut off from all communication in any direction except by boat, and was without light or power for a week. No serious flood has occurred since then. Up to 1884, the latest date on which the heavy rains had begun was Jannary 13. That year no heavy rains came till Jan- uary 26, but there were floods in April.
The hottest spell the county ever knew was in 1879, when for forty-four consecutive days the thermometer went above one hun- dred degrees. The hottest summer of recent years was 1913, which had twelve days, not consecutive, with the thermometer over 100. The past ten years haven't averaged five days on which the temperature was over one hundred. There are two respects in which the climate has changed, or been modified. One is in regard to the heat of summer, and the other is in regard to north winds. The summers are cooler and do not have the long periods of hot north wind that used to be so disastrous. The change is due, no doubt, to the increased planting of alfalfa, and rice, and trees, which prevent the surface of the earth from becoming so hot. The most disagreeable element in the climate is the north wind, scorching hot in summer and cold in winter. In the early days the north wind sometimes blew for three weeks at a stretch, doing frightful dam- age to the grain if it came at the right time. But as I have said, orchards, alfalfa and rice seem to have moderated the wind, and it is seldom, of recent years, that we get more than three days of it at a time.
In the valley part of the county the thermometer has never gone below twenty-two degrees above zero, and seldom as low as that. In January, 1888, there was more suffering from cold than at any other time on record. With the thermometer at twenty-two above, a strong wind sprang up, and the people of the county had
158
COLUSA AND GLENN COUNTIES
were at all optimistic; but in November, 1864, a copious rain fell, and for several years thereafter the county was untroubled by drought. Of course there were seasons when a little more rainfall wouldn't have hurt, and other seasons when the rainfall was poorly distributed from the farmer's standpoint ; but since 1864 the county has suffered much more from floods than from droughts. In the twenty years following 1864 the driest one was the season of 1876- 1877, when the rainfall was a little over eleven inches; but it was so distributed that a good crop was raised. The rainfall for the season of 1850-1851 was 7.42 inches ; but the only season since which approaches that one in pancity of rainfall was the season of 1897- 1898, when 9.38 inches fell. The spring of 1913 was also dry; and the spring of 1917 gave promise of being a bad one for the farmers because of scarcity of rain, but the weather remained so cool till harvest time that an excellent crop was matured. The normal rainfall is eighteen inches. In the sixty-seven years since 1850 it has fallen short of this amount fifteen times and exceeded it fifty-two times.
On going through the newspaper files, one would be led to believe that the seasons had been growing increasingly wet ever since the foundation of the county. No less than a dozen times I l'an across the statement, "Highest water ever known in the connty," or "Rains the worst in history," or some similar state- ment. This can be accounted for partly by the license which the newspaper man sometimes takes with the facts, and partly also by the fact that as the river was more and more confined by levees it did rise higher and higher, and as improvements became more plentiful floods became more damaging. The average rainfall has not increased at all.
The heavy rainfall of the winter of 1867 made the roads of the county impassable for two or three months, and greatly de- creased the acreage of grain sown. On the night of December 10 of that year the river rose three and one half feet, and "Colusa and its environs became an island in a yellow waste of water. Between here and the Coast Range the county presented the ap- pearance of an inland sea." The spring of 1878 holds the record for heavy and continuons rainfall. Beginning January 13 of that year, it rained 10.73 inches in three days and four nights; and from the 14th to the 30th the rainfall was 12.65 inches. Thousands of sheep were drowned and much other damage resulted. The "greatest flood ever known" occurred on February 5 and 6, 1881. The Feather River came across the valley past the Buttes, and rushed up Butte Slough to its junction with the Sacramento River in such volume that the current was carried clear across the river and washed out the levee on the west side. In 1884 another
159
COLUSA AND GLENN COUNTIES
"highest water" came, breaking the levees in many places and flooding thousands of acres of land. The year 1889 was another flood year. On March 17, 1893, it rained an inch in four hours. Heavy wind and heavy damage accompanied the rain. In 1894, 1895 and 1896 there were floods in January, and since then there have been a number of floods that have broken the levees. On March 6, 1911, it rained 3.12 inches, and on April 5, twenty-six thousand acres of grain went under water in District 108. The floods of February, 1915, were probably the most damaging in the history of the county. The river levee on the west side broke eight miles north of Colusa, two miles north, a mile south, at the Meridian bridge, and a mile above Grimes. The Northern Electric bridge at Meridian was wrecked, two miles of track between Colusa and Meridian were washed away or damaged, several miles of the Colusa and Hamilton Railroad were washed out, the power lines were broken, and Colusa was for a time cut off from all communication in any direction except by boat, and was without light or power for a week. No serions flood has occurred since then. Up to 1884, the latest date on which the heavy rains had begun was January 13. That year no heavy rains came till Jan- mary 26, but there were floods in April.
The hottest spell the county ever knew was in 1879, when for forty-four consecutive days the thermometer went above one hun- dred degrees. The hottest summer of recent years was 1913, which had twelve days, not consecutive, with the thermometer over 100. The past ten years haven't averaged five days on which the temperature was over one hundred. There are two respects in which the climate has changed, or been modified. One is in regard to the heat of summer, and the other is in regard to north winds. The summers are cooler and do not have the long periods of hot north wind that used to be so disastrous. The change is due, no doubt, to the increased planting of alfalfa, and rice, and trees, which prevent the surface of the earth from becoming so hot. The most disagreeable element in the climate is the north wind, scorching hot in summer and cold in winter. In the early days the north wind sometimes blew for three weeks at a stretch, doing frightful dam- age to the grain if it came at the right time. But as I have said, orchards, alfalfa and rice seem to have moderated the wind, and it is seldom, of recent years, that we get more than three days of it at a time.
In the valley part of the county the thermometer has never gone below twenty-two degrees above zero, and seldom as low as that. In January, 1888, there was more suffering from cold than at any other time on record. With the thermometer at twenty-two above, a strong wind sprang up, and the people of the county had
160
COLUSA AND GLENN COUNTIES
an experience that they have remembered. Ripe oranges were frozen on the trees, an occurrence that is so rare as to be remark- able. The fall of last year was also an exceptionally cold one, and the orange trees were considerably damaged.
The normal climate of Colusa County is made up of three months of ideal weather in March, April and May; a warm June; fairly hot weather in July and August ; a mixture of warm weather and cool, with possibly a little rain, in September; a beautiful October, with some rain; cool weather, and more rain, in November ; colder weather, with occasional rain-storms, in December and Jan- uary; and warmer weather, with showers, in February. Of course, there are many variations of this program. There have to be, or it would become monotonous. Sometimes there is rain in June or July or August, when the schedule calls for absolutely clear weather. For example, in four days, beginning June 12, 1875, it rained 1.31 inches and did a great deal of damage. Lighter show- ers have frequently come in the summer, always causing incon- venience, if not damage. In June, 1905, it rained and hailed both. Summer rain is generally accompanied by thunder and lightning, another unusual weather phenomenon in the Sacramento Valley. The county has been visited by a number of hail-storms, notably on March 16, 1864, when five inches of hail fell along Sycamore Slough; on February 17, 1873, when a terrific fall of hail occurred; and on June 24, 1890, when the "severest hail-storm ever seen" passed over Sites, Maxwell and Colusa, and the hailstones were "an inch in diameter and covered the ground a foot deep." On April 13, 1895, a heavy hail-storm struck Maxwell, killing small chickens and doing other damage. Other lighter hail-storms have come, but they are rare.
Snow comes on an average of every four or five years. On July 12, 1865, a little snow fell in Antelope Valley. On December . 3, 1873, a foot of it fell in Colnsa, and from twelve to eighteen inches on the plains, cansing hundreds of sheep to die. On January 11, 1898, snow fell to the depth of four inches, and again in 1907 there was a heavy snow. About five inches fell on January 8, 1913; and on January 1 last year there were five inches of snow, and on the 28th, four inches more, making nine inches for the month. Anywhere from a trace to an inch or so has fallen on numerous other occasions.
The county has also felt a number of earthquake shocks, but none severe enough to do any damage or canse any alarm.
The foregoing discussion applies only to the valley part of the county. In the mountains there are snow and cold weather every winter.
161
COLUSA AND GLENN COUNTIES
CHAPTER XVII
MISCELLANEOUS FACTS
I find, as I near the end of my work, that I have a large assortment of notes on subjects that didn't seem to fit in anywhere in the regular chapters of the history. I do not pretend that the list is at all complete, and I have made no attempt to weave them into a connected story; but they are undoubtedly interesting, and possibly valuable, and so I shall set some of them down here.
Picnics, Celebrations, and Public Gatherings
Colusa County has had several famous celebrations, some of them in series. For twenty years or more it has been the custom of the Grand Island Lodge, I. O. O. F., to hold a picnic near Grimes, to which practically the entire county goes. The event is always held on some Friday in May.
Since 1910 College City has held an annual barbecue and old- fashioned reunion about October 1.
Arbuckle has held an Almond Day annually for the past three years, and has gotten much permanent good from these events.
Stonyford holds a picnic every year, and the entire mountain population attends, together with hundreds of people from Colusa, Willows, Maxwell, Williams, and other valley towns.
Princeton held a celebration on March 18, 1893, because Gov- ernor Markham had signed the bill changing the boundary line so as to throw the Boggs ranch and the town entirely within Colusa County. Princeton also celebrated on April 30, 1910, the occasion being the presentation to the town of a drinking fountain by the widow and children of the famous pioneer, Hon. John Boggs. The celebration took the form of a rose carnival and barbecue; and the rose carnival has been an annual event ever since, the one this year being held at Williams in conjunction with the people of that town.
Colusa held its first water carnival on June 18, 19 and 20, 1909. The attendance was five thousand. The second was held on May 28, 29 and 30, 1910. The crowd was not so large and the carnival was not so good as the first one, and those who hoped to see the water carnival an annual event realized that two events of the kind were all that would interest a Colusa County crowd.
The students of Colusa High School held a baking contest and pure food show on April 11 and 12, 1913, in Colusa Theater. Mrs. R. M. Liening captured three first prizes for bread. 10
162
COLUSA AND GLENN COUNTIES
Colusa celebrated the coming of the Northern Electric with a carnival on June 13 and 14, 1913. About three thousand guests were present.
Colusa held its first, last and only municipal Christmas tree in 1914. Ernest Weyand acted as Santa Claus.
March 27, 1915, was Colusa County Day at the Panama-Pacific Exposition; and a special train was run from Maxwell to San Francisco, carrying about one hundred people from Colusa and as many more from other points in the county. The county donated $17,000 to the exposition, and the commissioners to see that it was spent properly were J. W. Kaerth, H. H. Schutz, J. J. Morris, G. B. Harden and G. C. Comstock. The manager of Colusa County's exhibit was F. B. Pryor.
Colnsa County's first Chautauqua opened on June 6, 1915, and has been an annual event since then.
Williams celebrated the coming of the state highway on May 6, 1916, and entertained an enormous crowd.
Colusa held her first goose stew on October 31, 1914, to cele- brate the laying of the corner stone of the new Hall of Records. Thirteen fifty-gallon kettles of stew, containing, among other things, eight hundred sixty wild geese, were served in the park to a crowd of three thousand people from all over the valley.
Public Works and Public Buildings
On March 16, 1883, a new Hall of Records was completed in Colusa at a cost of $25,000. On May 6, 1914, the contract for the present Hall of Records was let for $45,585.
A free reading room was opened in Colusa on July 3, 1890. The new Carnegie Library at Sixth and Jay Streets was first occupied on October 1, 1906.
The contract for a wooden bridge across the river at Colusa was let on September 2, 1881, at a cost of $16,500. The bridge was completed and accepted on December 28, 1881. A celebration marked the event. The present iron bridge was built in 1900 at a cost of $42,800, but the approaches and other extras brought the total cost up to $50,000.
Public Utilities
The telephone was first introduced into the county in 1878. In 1901 the Home Telephone Company was organized to build a line to Sycamore and Grimes. In 1906 the Colusa County Tele- phone Company was organized with C. L. Schaad, Oscar Robinson, W. T. Rathbun, P. R. Peterson and G. C. Comstock as directors; and for two years the county suffered the inconvenience of two telephone systems. In 1909 the two systems were combined.
163
COLUSA AND GLENN COUNTIES
Telephone rates were raised in Colusa County in 1911, and many citizens signed a protest to the company, but withont avail.
Grimes Lighting District was established in July, 1912; Princeton Lighting District, in 1915.
Postal Dates and Postal Data
Colusa was made a money-order post office in 1866.
Colusa was connected with the postal telegraph system on May 5, 1887, by a wire from the main line at Williams.
The largest mail that ever came to Colusa arrived on Decem- ber 19, 1915, when fifty-nine sacks were unloaded.
In 1870 the people of Bear Valley, Sulphur Creek and Stony- ford came to Colusa for their mail.
The post office at Arbuckle was established on September 11, 1876, with T. R. Arbuckle as postmaster. The post office at Max- well was established on April 5, 1877.
Companies and Corporations
On February 3, 1894, the Colnsa County Cooperative Com- pany was formed for the purpose of attracting settlers to the county.
The Sacramento Valley Development Association was organ- ized on April 27, 1900, largely through the efforts of W. S. Green.
The College City Rochdale Company was organized in 1901; the Arbuckle and the Grimes Rochdale Companies in 1903; the Colusa Rochdale Company in 1906; and the Maxwell Rochdale Company in 1907. The Colusa Rochdale Company filed a petition to be dissolved on December 11, 1911, after the shareholders had been assessed heavily to pay up its debts.
The Central California Investment Company bought the Moulton ranch on the east side in 1904, and sold it to the Moulton Irrigated Lands Company in 1910. The Moulton Company, under the direction of W. K. Brown, made some extensive improvements and sold the ranch a few months ago to the Colusa Delta Lands Company.
A party of ten Chicago business men bought the Hubbard ranch, three miles south of Princeton, in 1911, and under the man- agement of one of them, H. J. Stegemann, proceeded to lay out a community settlement, which they called "Thousand Acres." They devoted forty acres in the center of the tract to village pur- poses, laying out a large oval around which their homes were to be built, and each was to have a share of the rest of the land as his own property. After abont eighty dollars an acre, in addition to the cost of the land, had been spent in developing the land, the members of the party became dissatisfied. Mr. Stegemann died
164
COLUSA AND GLENN COUNTIES
in 1913, and after his death the land of the settlement reverted to the previous owners.
On March 11, 1912, the Yolo Land Company bought thirteen thousand five hundred acres of the Tubbs-Tuttle land south of Grimes and began a colonization project.
The Colusa County Bank was organized in 1870, and ever since that time it has been one of the strongest financial institu- tions in the state. Its building, which at first was a two-story one, was remodeled in 1910 into its present form. B. H. Burton is now president ; and Tennent Harrington, cashier.
The Farmers Bank opened for business on July 20, 1874; but it was not successful, and on February 20, 1876, the stockholders voted to disincorporate.
The Farmers and Merchants Bank was organized in 1902. Owing to the failure of its San Francisco correspondent, the Cali- fornia Safe Deposit and Trust Company, and the defaleations of J. Dalzell Brown, manager of the San Francisco bank and presi- dent of the local bank, the latter was compelled to suspend busi- ness on December 10, 1907. It reopened on March 2, 1908, and prospered thereafter. It became a national bank in 1911, and changed its name to The First National Bank of Colusa, organiz- ing. at the same time a savings department, The First Savings Bank of Colusa. In 1912 the two banks, which are under one man- agement, moved from the Odd Fellows building to their own new stone building across the street, where they do an immense busi- ness. U. W. Brown is president; H. F. Osgood, cashier; and Everett Bowes, assistant cashier.
The Colusa County Bank established a branch at Maxwell in 1911, one at Princeton in 1912, and one at Grimes in 1913.
Various Organizations
The enrollment of Company B, National Guard of California, was completed on June 16, 1887. B. H. Mitchell was Captain; F. C. Radcliff, First Lieutenant; and James Moore, Second Lieu- tenant. The company was called to Sacramento on July 20, 1894, to help quell the railroad strike, and returned on August 4, 1894. The company was also called out for the Spanish-American War in 1898, but got only as far as Oakland. Interest in the company waned, and it was mustered out on September 24, 1910.
The Colusa County Chamber of Commerce, better known as the C. C. C. C., was organized in 1906, and hired John H. Hartog as professional booster, at a salary of two hundred fifty dollars a month.
165
COLUSA AND GLENN COUNTIES
The Colnsa County Humane Society was organized in 1911 under the presidency of Mrs. Tennent Harrington, who has been at the head of it ever since.
The Colusa Gun Club, owning one thousand acres of tule land on Butte Creek, decided in 1893 to build a boat-house on the creek, The shares, or memberships in the club, with a par value of $100, have been for many years worth $500, and recently advanced to $1,000 each.
The Trolley League of baseball clubs was first organized in 1913. It survived for three or four years, W. M. Harrington be- ing its guiding star; and then the Great War took its place in the limelight.
It was in 1913 that the swimming craze struck Colusa. A swimming club was formed; and everybody in town and the sur- rounding country, that had any sporting blood at all, bought a bathing suit and went down to the beach on the east side of the river, below the bridge, every afternoon and evening, and swam or tried to learn to swim. By the next summer the enthusiasm had dwindled amazingly, and the third summer and thereafter swimming was confined to the youngsters and a very few enth- siasts. For the past year or two there has been great enthusiasm for swimming at Arbuckle, where a fine bath house with swimming tank has been erected by A. J. Strong.
Resorts
Fouts Springs was opened up on March 17, 1874, by John F. Fouts. The resort has been owned for many years by Charles H. Glenn, of Willows, who has spent thousands of dollars in im- provements.
Cooks Springs resort was bought in 1899 by the Cooks Springs Company, the present owners, who created a wide mar- ket for the bottled water.
A. A. Gibson bought Wilbur Springs in 1907, and sold it to J. W. Cuthbert and others in 1908. Mr. Cuthbert bought Jones' Springs from J. A. Ryan in 1914, and consolidated the two resorts.
Personals
Cleaton Grimes, one of the county's first settlers, died in 1913, at the age of ninety-seven years.
Sallie McGinley Greely, the first girl born in Colusa, died in Vermilion, Mont., on January 16, 1890.
James Yates, one of the first men to settle in the county, died September 1, 1907.
Col. L. F. Moulton died on December 8, 1906, as the result of a runaway accident.
166
COLUSA AND GLENN COUNTIES
In 1891 Hon. John Boggs offered to sell one thousand acres of his best land along the river for forty dollars an acre.
W. S. Green was appointed Surveyor-General of California on March 24, 1894, by President Grover Cleveland.
On February 20, 1874, Henry Booksin, of Freshwater Town- ship, sold 5,858 acres of land for $70,303.
In January, 1884, F. T. Mann and Ed Harrington presented every widow in Colusa with a sack of flour. It took forty- seven sacks.
On February 17, 1894, E. C. Peart and Andy Bond started soliciting funds for a District Fair at Colusa. They raised $2,385.50.
Miss Marcia Daly eloped with Rev. J. R. Ward on October 23, 1907, and, so far as the public knows, has never been heard of since.
In the spring of 1890 Colonel Moulton gave everybody in Co- lusa who wished them, walnut trees to replace the locust trees along the streets.
The Sacramento Valley Irrigation Company in 1910 offered a five-hundred-dollar registered Holstein cow as a prize for the most successful intensive farming. The prize was won by W. F. Burt, of Princeton. Mr. Burt showed that he put $1,500 in the bank each year from his seven-acre farm, besides educating a fam- ily of five children. Mr. Burt's returns were received from the following: Pears, $25; peaches, $105.15; apricots, $18.40; grapes, $25.15; berries, including strawberries, blackberries, raspberries and loganberries, $45.09; melons, $100.60; cows, $900; hogs, $200; chickens and turkeys, $175; onions, $7.80; cabbage, $8.25; string beans, $9; cucumbers, $8; sugar corn, $41.30; tomatoes, $69.84; potatoes, $19.35; green peppers, $106.70; honey, $100; total, $2,064.72. Besides the foregoing, Mr. Burt raised oranges, lemons, pomeloes, figs, olives, plums, prunes, alfalfa, bees and sheep.
A company of about fifty I. W. W.'s struck Colusa County in March, 1914. There was much excitement and some trepidation, as they were reported to be desperate men, but they committed no acts of violence. Williams gave them their breakfast and sixty dollars for cleaning up the cemetery; but Arbuckle and Colusa gave them nothing but hostile looks and good advice. So they went on over into Sutter County, where they disbanded.
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.