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 9
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 9
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announced that he would shoot any man who tried to fire the anvil. No firing was done, but the matter did not end there. Someone reported to Captain Starr, commander of the troops stationed in Colusa, that certain citizens had been guilty of dis- loyal utterances; and the result was that the commander had eight prominent men arrested and taken to the Federal military prison on Alcatraz Island, where they were confined at hard labor for about two months. Captain Starr, Mr. Liening, J. C. Treadway and H. Hadley were a few months later indicted by the grand jury for kidnapping, the jury holding them responsible for the arrest of the eight citizens. After one jury had dis- agreed in Liening's case, the second acquitted him, and after one disagreement in Treadway's case, the cases were all dis- missed. After that the sectional feeling engendered by the war was allowed to slumber till it gradually died ont. Today there is scarcely a trace of it left. To be sure, the old Confederate soldiers of the county formed "Camp Pap Price," of the United Confederate Veterans, and the old Union soldiers formed Gen- eral John Miller Post, G. A. R .; but the two organizations have, for many years, united in decorating the graves of their dead on Memorial Day. They will hold only a few more such reunions, however, for there are scarcely half a dozen members of both organizations left in the county. The annals of the Civil War will soon have been written, as far as its active participants are concerned.
The work of plotting out the counties of the state in 1850 was largely a matter of guesswork on the part of the legislature, inasmuch as the state had never been surveyed; moreover, there were large areas with almost no population, and there was no way of telling where the centers of population would be. Colusa County, as at first laid out, was almost a hundred miles long from north to south, extending from the present southern bound- ary of the county to a point north of Red Bluff. Two centers of population at once sprang up, one at the southern end of the county, and one about Red Bluff; and for the sake of conven- ience it was deemed wise to cut off a strip of territory thirty-six miles wide from the northern end and add it to Tehama County. This was done in 1855, and met with no objection.
In 1864 a bill passed the Assembly fixing the boundary be- tween Lake and Colusa Counties east of Bear Valley, thus putting Bear Valley and the Stonyford country in Lake County. This arrangement met with fierce opposition from Colusa County people, and the bill was killed in the Senate. Two years later, in 1866, the Senate passed a bill adding to Butte County all the territory lying east of the river. A big remonstrance against
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this bill was circulated and signed, and it was also killed. Eternal vigilance seems to have been the price of territory, and there were times when even that failed.
After the completion of the railroad to Willows, in 1878, that village soon became a town-some of her citizens thought- with all the qualifications of a county seat except the county; and it was proposed to furnish that by dividing Colusa County. As early as 1882 the discussion had progressed so far that a public meeting was held at Orland to consider the matter; but the agitation was dropped at that time for want of support. The Willows people were anxious for a county of their own, however; and in January, 1887, a bill was introduced in the Assembly providing for county division. It passed the Assembly after a hot fight, but was defeated in the Senate by one vote. The next year county division was made the chief issue in the campaign for Assemblyman from this county; and the Demo- cratie candidate, who was outspoken against division, was de- feated by his Republican opponent, who put the soft pedal on the county division issue. In the matter of being downed, Banquo's ghost had nothing at all on the county division ques- tion. It simply would not be downed, much as the people of Colusa and the southern part of the county generally wished it to be. It rent the people of this county as no political ques- tion had ever done before or has ever done since. In 1889 it was up before the state legislature again; and this time it passed both the Assembly and the Senate, but the Governor vetoed it. Senator John Boggs and Assemblyman J. C. Campbell, of this county, both opposed it; but their opposition was ineffective. Open and vigorous charges were made that money had been used to influence the legislature, and on the whole more ill feel- ing was engendered than was necessary in the settling of even so important a question.
Still the county division question would not down. In the election of 1890 it was the chief issue in the fight between J. C. Campbell and H. P. Eakle for the Assembly, a fight which re- sulted in the arrest of several Willows citizens for ballot-box stuffing. These cases were taken to Marysville to be tried, and occupied the attention of the courts there for some time; but as no convictions were secured, they were dismissed on June 17, 1892. The advocates of county division finally won out in the legislature; and on May 5, 1891, an election was held to deter- mine the question. Division carried, and from that time on, Colusa County was twenty-eight miles shorter from north to south. The new county was called Glenn County, in honor of its largest landowner and leading citizen, Dr. H. J. Glenn. The
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town of Princeton and a large part of the ranch of Senator John Boggs were in Glenn County, as at first created; but Senator Boggs induced the legislature of 1893 to change the boundary line between the two counties so as to throw his ranch and the town into Colusa County. This ended the county division matter, and left Colusa County as it is today, as regards its boundaries.
Since the settlement of the county division question there has been no great contest of a political nature to divide the people into factions. To be sure, the liquor question has been ever present, with the anti-saloon forces gradually driving the liquor traffic to the wall; and the Progressive movement, in the years following 1910, badly disrupted the Republican party in this county as well as all over the nation; but such fluctuations in the political current of a self-governing people must be ex- pected. In 1873 the Grange movement was at its height, and created considerable discussion in the county. In that year the People's Independent party put a county ticket into the field and succeeded in electing its candidates for sheriff, district attorney and treasurer. In 1879, this element of unrest, of protest against the existing order of things, called itself the Constitution party and put a ticket into the field. The Constitution party endorsed the Democratic nominee for Governor that year, Dr. H. J. Glenn, of Colusa County, which is as near as this county ever came to furnishing a Governor for the state.
The decade from 1880 to 1890 witnessed the rise and growth of the anti-Chinese sentiment in the state and county. Tens of thousands of Oriental laborers had been brought into the state to help build the railroads and to assist in other great enter- prises. When the work for which they were imported was fin- ished, they spread over the state and threatened to supplant white labor in nearly all lines. Colusa County had received her share of them, and the sentiment against them was growing very bitter. On the 5th of April, 1882, a great mass meeting was held at Colusa "for the encouragement of American and European immigration," and a little later the American and European Labor Association was formed. The association and its object were purely anti-Chinese; but instead of stating its object bluntly as "Down with the Chinese!" the association used more diplomatic language and said it was to "bring domestic help, hired girls, from the crowded cities of the East and secure employment for them as cooks and house servants," intending thus to relieve the county of its pestiferons and insolent Mongo- lian colony, who had now assumed to dictate the wages at which their countrymen should be employed. Branches of the anti- Chinese league were organized in all the towns of the county,
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and in 1888 the supervisors appointed six delegates to the anti- Chinese convention in Sacramento. After Congress had passed the Chinese exclusion bill, the antipathy to the Mongolians in this county subsided; and today the two races live together on the most friendly terms.
It has been intimated in the foregoing pages that the Demo- cratic party was invariably successful at the polls, which is true as a general statement. But there were a number of notable exceptions to the rule. Prominent among these was the election of 1873, when the Independent People's party elected their can- didates for sheriff, treasurer and district attorney; the election of 1890, when E. W. Jones, the Republican nominee. was elected county treasurer, although the rest of the ticket went Democratic by as high as 1182 votes; the election of 1892, when Ernest Weyand, Republican, was elected district attorney, and W. A. Vann was elected to the Assembly on the People's party ticket; and finally, the election of 1914, when Hiram W. Johnson, great apostle of Progressiveism, beat the Democratic nominee for Gov- ernor, John B. Curtin, by a vote in this county of 1229 to 1208, and William Kent for Congress beat his Democratic opponent 1764 to 751. The great size of the vote is accounted for by the fact that women had been given the ballot, but the flop from rock-ribbed Democracy to Progressiveism can be accounted for only on the theory of a growing political intelligence of the electorate, one of the evidences of which was a breaking away from the old party-above-everything-else fetich, a fetich to which some of the earlier politicians of the county seem to have dedi- cated their lives-at least their political lives.
Other exceptions to the general rule of Democratic success at the polls are found in the cases where a special requirement for the office limited the number of possible candidates, as in the case of J. D. McNary, who, as a Republican, has held the office of coroner and public administrator for nineteen years, and J. W. Kaerth and Charles de St. Manrice, who were repeatedly elected county surveyor on the Republican ticket. These excep- tions were few and far between in the "good old Democratic days," but of recent years they have been more common. The Democratie majority was strong enough, however, to make a nomination by that party almost as good as an election, clear down to the day the non-partisan law went into effect. In this connection it is interesting to note that the Democrats of this county were so dissatisfied with Horace Greeley's nomination for president, in 1872, that the great editor's lead over General Grant in this county was only nine votes.
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Finally, we come to the liquor question as a political issue in the county. This question, while one of the most persistent ones that the voters of the county have had to deal with, has never aroused the bitterness that some other questions have, probably because it has never become a sectional issue. To be a first-class trouble breeder a political question must be of such a nature that the people of one community or section can take one side of it and the people of a different section the other. A question, both sides of which are upheld in the same community by people who must do business with each other, cannot long divide the people. And so the liquor question has been up in many a spirited cam- paign, but has left no permanent animosities. By successive steps the county has gone from very wet to almost totally dry; and the people have accepted the changes as they came, quickly for- getting what the old order was like.
In common with other parts of California, Colusa County started out on a "wide-open" basis. The license fee for saloons was so low as to be merely nominal, and little or no regulation was attempted. The saloon was the common meeting place, and therefore came to be more and more of a power in politics. For nearly twenty years after the organization of the county there was no organized opposition to the saloon. But in the late sixties lodges of the Good Templars, an anti-liquor order, began to spring up over the county; and in 1882 the County Central Committee of this order put a partial county ticket into the field. The candidates on this ticket were: Assemblyman, Warren Green; sheriff, John M. Pugh; assessor, W. J. Ford; county clerk, Julius Weyand; superintendent of schools, W. H. Reardon; coroner, Joseph M. Walkup; surveyor, A. T. Welton. They polled a good vote, but were defeated, of course.
One of the notable figures in the anti-liquor movement in this county has been J. D. MeNary, who joined the Good Templars in Kentucky in May, 1867. Shortly after coming to California in 1877, Mr. McNary identified himself with the Good Templars here; and for forty years he has been a consistent and effective battler in the cause of sobriety. Two other leaders of the temper- ance forces in the early days were Peter Earp and Stewart Harris, both of whom did much to organize and keep alive the sentiment against the liquor traffic.
The first Good Templars lodge was organized in Colusa in 1868; and among the officers of this lodge were Col. J. F. Wilkins, father of Mrs. Richard Bayne, and O. S. Mason, father of O. R. Mason, of Colusa. By 1874 the temperance people were strong enough to call an election in the six townships which then com- prised the county, namely, Colusa, Monroe, Grand Island, Fresh-
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water, Union and Spring Valley Townships; and all of them went dry except Colusa Township, which went wet by twenty-one votes, and Grand Island, which went wet by eight votes. But those that went dry didn't stay dry.
On February 14, 1892, a Union Temperance Sunday School was organized in Colusa for the study of the temperance question. The men at the head of this organization were J. D. MeNary, Judge E. A. Bridgeford, and Charles B. Whiting; and it was influential in shaping public opinion.
On December 10, 1908, a county license ordinance was intro- duced before the board of supervisors by Supervisor J. F. Campbell, and seconded by Supervisor W. A. Vann. It provided for precinct option; that is, that the people might vote on the liquor question by precincts. On November 8, 1910, they did so vote; and Stonyford, Sites, Maxwell, Goads, Butte Creek, College City, Cooper, Cortina, Grand Island, Newland, Washington, and Williams No. 2 went dry, while Arbuckle, Fouts Springs, Fresh- water, Leesville, Princeton, Sulphur Creek, Sycamore, Venado, and Williams No. 1 went wet. The legislature of 1911 passed the Wylie local option law, making the supervisoral district the unit on the liquor question; and on November 5, 1912, Colusa County, all but the incorporated town of Colusa, again voted, and every distriet went dry. Since then a number of votes have been taken in the various districts, but they have always gone drier than they did the first time. Several votes have also been taken in Colusa; but it has always gone wet, once by a majority as low as sixteen votes.
CHAPTER VIII
TRANSPORTATION
As the transportation facilities of a community are, so is the community. A community without water transportation, with inadequate facilities for railroad traffic, and with bad roads cannot hope to be prosperous and progressive in any great degree; and the possession of these advantages goes a great way toward counteracting the lack of others.
Colusa County has for many years known the truth of the above principle, but it is only recently that she has acted upon her knowledge. For years she was content to be known as a "cow county," because the natural advantages of the country were sufficient to insure comfort and prosperity to those who had settled here, and they didn't care whether the county kept pace
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in growth and improvements with the rest of the state or not. Indeed many of them were so well satisfied with existing condi- tions that they were openly hostile to any change, or any measures that would bring in new settlers who might disturb the old order.
Within the past decade, however, sentiment on the transporta- tion question has undegone a great change. During that time an electric railroad giving excellent service has penetrated the county; a second electric road, part of which was actually built, was projected across the county from north to south; a branch steam railroad has been laid across the county along the river; forty miles of substantial concrete highway have been built ; plans for seventy miles more are under way; and dozens of per- manent concrete bridges have been built, some of them hundreds of feet in length. The next decade will witness a wonderful im- provement in the road system of the county, and probably a con- siderable extension of its railroad facilities. The one department of transportation over which no change has come is steamboating; and as it was the first one in operation, I shall take it up first, for I want to tell briefly of all the different modes of transporta- tion in the county.
Steamer Transportation
When Colonel Semple located his town, he had visions, as I have said, of its becoming a great steamboat terminal and dis- tributing point for the northern part of the state. The navigabil- ity of the river from Colusa to its mouth had been established, the northern mines were using immense quantities of supplies, and there were no roads or railroads. But there were many obstacles in the way.
While there was plenty of water in the river, there were more than plenty of snags, sandbars, and sharp turns, which proved disastrous to the early pilots, who, of course, were un- familiar with the channel. The consequence was that it took a hard struggle to get a permanent and regular line of boats estab- lished to the new town. But Colonel Semple persisted and finally had the satisfaction of seeing Colusa and San Francisco con- nected with a dependable and satisfactory line of river trans- portation-with cheap freight rates, too, which was a material factor in the upbuilding of the town and county.
As early as the spring of 1850 two small steamers had come up the river as far as Colusa, probably more for exploring pur- poses than anything else, for there was no town north of Saera- mento with which they could trade. In July of 1850 the Colusa, Dr. Robert Semple's home-made boat, came up from Benicia,
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having as pilot Will S. Green, and as cargo the lumber and other material for the beginnings of Colusa City. The Colusa made only that one trip; for upon her return she went to San Francisco, where she was tied up till she rotted at the wharf.
Two other boats were persuaded to make the trip up the river in the late summer of 1850. One of them went up to Chico Land- ing, where she struck a snag and sank. Her timbers were used to build a hotel at Monroeville. The second boat was captained by James Yates; but she was so slow that when near Grimes, on the way up, she ran out of provisions, and some of the crew had to walk to Colusa to renew the supply. This made five boats to Colusa or higher in 1850, but they made only one trip each.
The next boat to reach the town was the Martha Jane, which came up in the early spring of 1851. She was the first boat to make more than one trip. She made several, but also struck a snag and was wrecked. As the Martha Jane had made most of her trips with little or no freight, shippers not having learned to use the river, Colonel Semple was getting desperate. He started out to find a boat to make regular trips to Colusa, and to find cargoes for it. He found both. In August of 1851 he loaded a steamer called the Benicia with goods for a Shasta merchant, and started up from Sacramento, bound for Colusa, where the goods were to be transferred to wagons and hauled to Shasta. Near Knights Landing the Benicia struck a snag and went down. Colonel Semple and the owner of the goods hurried back to Sacramento to get a boat to take the cargo off and bring it on up to Colusa.
They got the Orient, which had just come out from Maine; and with her they established the first regular steamboat line to Colusa. She made many trips during the next three years, often going as far north as Red Bluff; and although she struck snags or stuck on sandbars several times, she made money for her owners and demonstrated the navigability of the upper Sacra- mento River.
After the Orient's success a great number of boats rushed into the Colusa trade; and as the same conditions existed on the San Joaquin and Feather Rivers, a number of the leading boat owners formed a combination or trust, which for many years controlled the steamer trade to Colusa. At first the boats ran regularly to Red Bluff; but when the railroad was completed up the east side of the valley in 1872, the boats quit going further than Chico Landing, except at time of high water or on other special occasions. When the railroad was completed through Colusa County in 1876, it took away most of the passenger traffic and some of the freight from the boats, and the steamboat com- pany sold out to the railroad company.
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In 1860 the Sacramento Wood Company was formed for the purpose of supplying Sacramento and San Francisco with wood from up the river. It later became the Sacramento Transporta- tion Company, and went into a general river transportation busi- ness against the railroad company's boats, with the result that the Sacramento Transportation Company absorbed the railroad company's business north of Sacramento, and for years was the only important boat line to operate into Colusa. Of course there was spasmodie competition; but none of it succeeded in gaining a foothold until 1901, when a number of ranchers and business men, chiefly from about Grimes, headed by J. M. Miller, organized the Farmers' Transportation Company and put on the steamer Valletta, a boat that differed from those of the Sacramento Trans- portation Company in that it towed no barges, but carried its cargo on its own decks, while the other boats were all towboats.
Since 1901, both the Sacramento Transportation Company and the Farmers' Transportation Company have run a line of boats regularly to Colusa from San Francisco and Sacramento, the former company having a twice-a-week service and the latter a weekly service for most of the time. About two years ago, each company put on a fine, new boat of larger capacity than any of the older boats, and for several months both companies ran a twice-a-week service; but in the spring of 1917 they reached an agreement whereby they each took one boat off the service, and the Farmers' Transportation Company went back to a weekly service.
In the early days the boats carried passengers, and made lively competition for the stage lines; but the advent of the rail- road put an end to the passenger traffic of the boats. In 1873 the California-Pacific Railroad established a line of boats between Colusa and Knights Landing, connecting at the latter place with the recently completed railroad for Sacramento and San Fran- cisco, and furnished a fairly rapid and satisfactory service; but when the Northern Railroad was completed through the county in 1876, this line became obsolete and passed out of existence. At present the only persons who travel as passengers on the boats are those occasional ones who want to see the river and spend a few days on the water.
In the days of the Orient the freight rates were one hundred dollars a ton between Sacramento and Red Bluff, and correspond- ingly high to Colusa. Today the rate to Colusa, on rough freight, such as coal or lumber, is twenty-three cents a hundred pounds from Sacramento, and twenty-nine cents from San Francisco. The highest rate, which applies to furniture and other bulky or easily
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damaged goods, is forty-six cents a hundred from Sacramento, and fifty-seven cents from San Francisco. This low rate modifies, of course, all freight rates in the county, and has been of inestimable benefit to the people in keeping down rates.
Railroads
In the year 1870, what is now the Southern Pacific Railroad was being built from Roseville up the east side of the Sacramento Valley toward Portland, Ore. It passed twenty-eight miles east of Colusa County; but some of the leading spirits of the county at once saw the possibility of securing railroad connections, and in that year a bill was introduced into the state Senate providing for the incorporation of the "Colusa, Marysville and Nevada Railroad Company," one of the provisions of the bill being that Colusa County was to put up ten thousand dollars in cash as soon as the road had entered its boundaries. This road was never built, because six years after it was promoted the county got a road from another direction.
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