History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Volume I, Part 13

Author: Vandor, Paul E., 1858-
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company
Number of Pages: 1362

USA > California > Fresno County > History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Volume I > Part 13

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Huntsville

Per diem

(The terms of all of these expired in October, 1858.)

THIRTEENTH JUDICIAL DISTRICT-Hon. Edward Burke, of Mariposa, judge district court ; sessions, second Monday, March, July and November.

SIXTH SENATORIAL DISTRICT-Senator : Hon. Samuel A. Merritt of Mari- posa; term expires January, 1859.

MEMBER OF ASSEMBLY-Hon. Orson K. Smith of Woodville.

AGRICULTURAL RESOURCES-Wheat, 1,000 acres; barley, 500 acres, and vege- tables, 500 acres.

FRUIT TREES-But little attention has as yet been devoted to the culture of fruit. There are two vineyards in a forward state, and a few fruit trees, which appear to thrive remarkably well.

LIVE STOCK-Horses, 1,400; mules, 200; asses, 150; cattle, 18,650; calves, 2,650; sheep, 1,000; swine, 4,000; goats, 50; total 28,100. Assessed value, $360,000.

MINERAL RESOURCES-There are several important mining streams, principally worked by Chinamen. Amount of foreign miner's tax collected $1,000 per month.

WATER DITCHES, ETC .- There are two extensive water ditches in the course of completion ; one steam saw mill and two quartz veins, represented to be remarkably rich. MILITARY POST AND INDIAN RESERVATIONS-Fort Miller, Frezno Farm and King's River Farm Reservations are located in this county.

FINANCES-Receipts from date of organization July 1 to December 1, 1856, $6,281.15; expenditures, $4,268. Amount of taxable property, principally stock, $400,000, tax col- lected, $6,912; foreign miner's tax collected $1,200 per month.

POPULATION-Votes cast, 319; Indians, 1,300.

ATTORNEYS-Millerton : O. M. Brown, H. Clark and James T. Cruickshank.

PHYSICIANS-Fort Miller : Wm. J. L. Engle; Frezno River: D. J. Johnson, Lewis Leach; Millerton : W. A. N. Dulgnay (Du Gay).

The first meeting of the supervisors-elect was held on June 23 of Hughes and Patterson, J. M. Roan having failed to qualify wherefore Hunt was chosen at a special election ordered at this initial session, besides which the county was declared formally organized. Patterson was succeeded by J. E. Williams in February. 1857, Clark Hoxie elected in May to succeed Hunt and S. W. Rankin in August to supersede Hughes.

1856-Fresno's birthyear is a memorable one in the annals of the state, being the year of the extraordinary reign of the great Vigilance Committee, "the most formidable public tribunal in the history of modern civilization," that ushered an era of moral, civic and political scouring and scrubbing, whose beneficial effect was experienced for a generation. Governor Johnson, who, with Gen. T. W. Sherman, was arrayed against the committee, referred to its deliberations as "turbulence and strife without a parallel in the re- corded annals of our nation."

Politically, California voted at its first two presidential elections as follows :

1852

1856

Pierce (Dem.)

39,665

Buchanan (Dem.)

53,365

Scott (Whig)

34,971

Fillmore (Am.)

36,165

Hale (Free Soil)

100

Fremont (Rep.) 20,691

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

At this November, 1856, first national election, the county went :

Buchanan 218

Fillmore

123

Fremont 1

The identity of this Republican or Whig voter was no secret. He was William Aldridge, and of an age that the younger called him "Dad." He was the choresman at Payne's trading post at Coarse Gold, as populous a voting district as there was in the territory at the time. He became known over the entire state as "the lone Republican of Fresno." Aldridge also mined at Fine Gold Gulch. The correct version here given for the first time is that he came by his political appellation on account of an incident at the first election for Lincoln. The polling place was at Mace's Garden and Captain Mace was the judge of election, electors not voting then by ballot but by oral announcements of their choice of candidates. Registration of electors was an unknown art. Everyone, who was believed to have been born on the soil and to have residence, was considered to have a vote.

In the camp were two notorious, swashbuckling Copperheads known as Davis and Hill, very undesirable citizens and later suspected of being mem- bers of the terrorizing band in the early sixty's that robbed the cabins of Chinese miners of gold dust savings and outrageously maltreated these inof- fensives, a reign that was ended only when the community took the matter in its own hands and hanged several suspects after "Judge Lynch" trials. Davis and Hill loudly boasted about the camp that no blank of a blank of an Abolitionist would be permitted to vote that day. Aldridge carried word of the threat to Mace and such swift and armed preparations were made that when Aldridge offered his vote there was no one to hinder him.

Hill ran counter, afterward, of Deputy Sheriff "Shorty" Green of Mari- posa County in an affair at Indian Gulch in that county and was killed by the latter with a pistol bullet that pierced his skull in the forehead center. Whatever became of Davis no one recalls.

Aldridge was an inoffensive old fellow whose Democratic friends good naturedly would escort him to the polls, and one of the candidates for gover- nor remembered him by sending him a fine hat in care of the county clerk. Aldridge declined to wear it until the county should give a Republican major- ity, but he passed away and the hat disappeared long before that event came to pass in an old time Democratic stronghold, built up by early settlers who very generally hailed from the southern states, and strengthened by those who came during and after the war and whose sympathies being with. the South religiously voted that way.

Organization year was one of small beginnings with Fresno. In 1856 the county was credited with 1,620 acres under cultivation as follows:

Acres

Bushels

Wheat

1,000

30,000

Barley

520

20,800

Oats

100

3,500

Grapevines were estimated at 2,000. Los Angeles County exceeded every other district in the state then in the cultivation of the grape, with 726,000 growing vines.

Two canals taking water out of the San Joaquin for mining purposes were reported, the first of these almost opposite the fort but never completed. These were the Fort Miller Mining and Water Company, two miles long and to have cost $100,000; and Mace, Hatch & Company's five-mile canal at Clark's Bar. The only steam sawmill was Alex. Ball's, about fifteen miles east of Millerton, erected in 1854, operating one saw with capacity of 6,000 feet and valued at $8,000.

Fresno was on one of the seven principal wagon roads leading from California to the East-the Tejon route from Stockton via Millerton and

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

the Kings River to the Tejon Pass to Los Angeles, San Bernardino and the military road to Salt Lake City, 1,100 miles.

Lieut. Lucien Loeser of the Third Artillery commanded the garrison of three officers and seventy-seven men at Fort Miller. He was the officer who was sent from Monterey to Washington with Colonel Mason's report on the gold regions, and carried with him a tea-caddy full of gold dust, besides cinnabar from New Almaden. The report was made ten days after the procla- mation of the Mexican War peace treaty.

Hugh Carroll was postmaster at Millerton, and William Innes at Scotts- burg, the only postoffices in the county at the time. Carroll was another of the tribe of squawmen, known among the Indians as "What-what," meaning goose or gander and applied to him on account of his waddling and shuffling gait.

CHAPTER XVI

MILESTONES IN MILLERTON'S HISTORY. LOOSE AND DEVIL-ME-CARE

TIMES. OFFICIAL RECORDS EXASPERATINGLY INCOMPLETE. CON- STRUCTION OF A JAIL A FIRST CONSIDERATION. IT PROVED A VERITABLE WHITE ELEPHANT. MINER'S TAX COLLECTIONS. FIRST SHERIFF AN INCOMPETENT. BOUNDARY LINE DISPUTES AND ATTEMPTED LAND GRABS. EARLY LICENSED FERRIES AND RATE SCHEDULES. TOLLHOUSE GRADE AS THE BEAST OF BURDEN KILLER. EXTENSIVE LUMBER OPERATIONS ON PINE RIDGE, WITH OCKENDEN AS THE CENTER OF ACTIVITIES.

The milestones in the eighteen years of Millerton's fleeting history may be set down in the following order :

1851, April-Establishment of military post on the south bank of the San Joaquin River, one mile above the later county seat village site.

1856, May 26-Meeting of commissioners to arrange for county organiza- tion details, with, election of first county officers on June 9.

September 10-Fort Miller evacuated. Regarrisoned in August, 1863, dttr- ing the war and until final abandonment and sale of buildings, not very long afterwards.

1857, February 23-Acceptance of first county built jail structure.

1861-62, Winter-Damaging river flood.

1865, January 28- Publication of first number of ten of the Millerton Times.

1867, Summer-Completion of the courthouse and jail.

1867, December 24-The big flood, with washing away of nearly half the village site.

1870, April 27-First number of the Weekly Expositor newspaper.

July 3-The great fire of Millerton, with destruction of the Henry Hotel and reported $8,000 property loss.

1874, March 23-Election on removal of county seat.

September 25-Removal of county offices to Fresno.

A writer from memory in the Expositor of January 1, 1879, presenting what is the first attempted and at the time the most ambitious effort at a historical write-up of the early days of Fresno County, originated in print the since oft quoted description of conditions ruling in Millerton in 1853 that has passed down as an accepted historical fact. Said he: "The mines on the banks of the river were then rich, and the county officials and the officers and men at Fort Miller had a very agreeable time with Millertonites, and everything was conducted in a loose, devil-me-care sort of a style. County 5

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

court was adjourned one day to give the jury an opportunity to attend a horse race, and the board of supervisors would adjourn twenty times a day in order to go and take a drink." (The writer probably meant twenty adjourn- ments in a day for twenty drinks, and not twenty adjournments to take one drink.)

The writer of these "Reminiscences of Early Times" in that New Year's day number was undoubtedly William Faymonville, whose "kindly aid" is duly acknowledged editorially. He was an old timer, an office holder as far back as February, 1861, when he was appointed assessor to succeed W. H. Crowe resigned, elected county clerk and recorder in September, 1863, and reelected two years later. He was prominent as a citizen and as a politician in Millerton and in Fresno. The earliest mention of him is as an election clerk in the fall of 1851 at the Texas Flat (Coarse Gold Gulch) precinct. He was in a position to treat from personal knowledge of the early days that he wrote about. Anyhow, the social "historical fact" has never been traversed.

That things in private and public life were "conducted in a loose, devil- me-care sort of a style" in those early times in Millerton was true in no restricted sense of the expression, and the record bears it out. For years the county did business without an official seal. One was not adopted until February 13, 1873, when the design in use to this day was accepted of County Clerk Harry Dixon, who brushed up his youthful classic recollections to build up the hog-Latin motto, "Rempublican Defendemus,"-"We defend the public good"-as he rendered it. And there was no one to gainsay him.

At clerical work, men were set who were more competent to manipulate a shovel or a flail than a goosequill. No record is kept in the supervisors' minutes as canvassers of election returns until 1862, and no declaration of results. Tabulated returns were then inserted and paid for at the rate of fifty dollars and more for a total county vote recapitulation less in number than in a single Fresno city precinct today. Nowhere in the record is there anything concerning the organization of the county, save months and months later in casual references to the organization act in connection with boundary line resurveys.

Office holders were landlords of the county, receiving rent for public office quarters. County employes were paid extra for services in the line of their work. Was any responsible person short of money and the treasurer a good fellow, a loan was negotiated, and the money came forth from the public treasury, evidenced by personal note of the borrower. Supervisors met quar- terly only, and the "per diam," as their minute clerk insisted upon writing it, was ten dollars, besides mileage.

FIRST ERECTED MILLERTON CALABOOSE

It is recorded as a commentary upon the looseness of the times that at the initial meeting of the first board of supervisors on June 23, 1856, after the county organization preliminaries consideration was given the subject of a jail. A county rate of fifty cents was levied as a tax for jail and court- house, and one of seventy cents on the $100 for state purposes. The jail contract was awarded to Henry Burroughs, the hotelman, for $6,000 on Sep- tember 15, and the structure accepted on February 25, 1857. The story is that the calaboose was so flimsy that on the day for its examination and acceptance the lone inmate exultingly offered to demonstrate how easily he could scratch his way out with a nail. Burroughs begged him to delay any demonstration and the prisoner obligingly complied. Upon the sworn testi- mony of Alexander Wallace, who was the unsuccessful bidder with Burroughs as one of his bond sureties, acceptance and contract payment followed. This jail proved a veritable white elephant, what with frequent repairs beginning as early as May, 1857, and November, 1858, the guarding of prisoners with Burroughs among others as a jailor. high priced hotel meals and ten-dollar

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

blankets for prisoners until in the course of time a ten-dollar a week meal rate was established in November, 1863, by the supervisors, and in May, 1865, contract was made with McCray of the Oak Hotel on competitive bids to feed them for $1.33 a day payable in scrip and $1.66 a day for board and keep, however long or brief the individual incarceration. In the 50's as much as six dollars a day was charged by the sheriff, but the board reduced the per diem to four dollars.

The dilapidated jail having been pulled down as a preliminary in one of the frequent spurts to build a courthouse and jail, arrangement was made with the sheriff of Mariposa, for a time, to feed and guard Fresno's pris- oners. At the last, so the story runs, the inmates of Burroughs' corral pro- vided themselves with a conveniently concealed exit hole for frequent ex- cursions into the open, always returning in time to incarceration and the cer- tainty of meals and a bed for the mere inconvenience of temporary restrictions in personal liberty.

Eighteen per cent. remuneration was allowed for the collection of the four- dollar foreign miner's tax, but at the third meeting George S. Harden com- plained that because of the treasurer's change in the gold rate valuations and the consequent loss in blowing off sand from the dust his percentage as deputy sheriff in collecting was "too small to live on." The percentage was fixed at twenty-two per cent. and gold made receivable at fourteen dollars an ounce in value.

Early trouble was had with Bradley, the first selected sheriff, and pend- ing action on a resolution of Clark Hoxie to depose him on August 7, 1857, he peacefully resigned. Harden succeeded him. Bradley had an insufficient bond, Supervisor J. R. Hughes, one of his sureties, having moved out of the county, and another, Alexander Ball, being a bankrupt. Bradley was lax in not making returns of his collections, failing to make seizures and sales for non payment of taxes, and in general conducting the collections in "a care- less, loose and incompetent manner."

So loosely and slovenly drawn was the act creating and defining the county and the boundary lines that it was not until May, 1878, that the last complaint on this score was received from Tulare asking for a joint resur- vey. It was not the first time either that the line with Tulare, one of the contiguous counties, was in contention. Fresno could not perceive that any material benefit would result to either from the survey and curtly dismissed the proposition, as it did a similar one from Inyo in June, 1873. Resurveys were, however, had at intervals with every contiguous county under the orig- inal creative act, besides the attempted territory grabs, notably later by Kings in April, 1909, of a 120 square mile slice under the Webber bill, and the sensa- tional effort and defeat after long and bitter litigation and the indictment of three of the commissioners to divide the county for the enlargement of Kings with the annexation of the Coalinga oil field in 1907-08.

As early as August, 1857, it was agreed between joint commissioners- Hewlett Clark, then a justice of the peace, and James Smith, ferryman at the Tulare Mansion at the Lower Kings crossing near Reedley, for Fresno- that $2,609.55 was due-$744.16 to Mariposa, $1,362.42 to Tulare and $502.97 to Merced for the land taken in forming the county. The various surveys were made necessary largely by the faulty legislative description of the southeast boundary of Merced.

The first defeated land grab was in February, 1859, against the separation of the Upper and Lower Kings River territory to be attached to Tulare. Effectual protest was on the ground that the dismemberment was against every interest of Fresno, taking as it would two-thirds of the then small vote of 264 and a proportionate amount of taxable property, "which can illy be spared and which, if lost would greatly injure our county finances and perhaps lead to an abandonment of our county organization," for which "there is no good and sufficient reason and which is of no special value

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

or necessity to the advantage and rapidly increasing prospects of Tulare County," and being "a movement so unnecessary in every respect."

In February, 1860, Fresno also successfully combatted the effort of Merced to diminish its territory, "contrary to every interest," reducing its income by more than $1,000 a year and jeopardizing its chances to elect a legislative representative independent of Tulare, with no special advantage to Merced, "further than robbing us of a large amount of revenue."

After the lapse of so many years, it would seem that all boundary line questions might be at rest, but in 1917-18 arose another as to the line be- tween Fresno and Merced, which following the crest of the Coast Range in part and never having been run on the ground left in doubt in which county in reality respective assessors were placing values on land for taxa- tion purposes. To run the extended line according to a joint agreed upon survey, Madera's surveyor furnished the known and accepted starting point in the lower moult of cottonwood timber of the original legislative described northern boundary line of Fresno, surveying the line in Madera to tie in with Fresno as now bounded with the severing of Madera, then to be taken up by the joint survey. That survey was never completed because of the death of Surveyor Mckay and on account of the war.

So also on a survey of a few years ago between Fresno and Kings with the Kings River as the line, the expected problem was to locate the channel . center after all the years with the changes in the river bed but it was made easy with the fortunate discovery of the tree benchmark making the location of the channel center of the years before a simple matter of measurement. The new line was run on the zigzag section lines, where before the diagonal bisected properties, ran through houses and left part in one or the other county so that it was no fiction for a man in his house to sleep in bed- chamber in one county and stepping across the line sit down to a meal in kitchen in the other county.

FERRIES AN IMPORTANT CONSIDERATION

As a new county, the safety and convenience of the increasing settlers was early brought to the attention of the supervisors in frequent applications for and renewals of licenses to conduct ferries at favorable points on the travelled roads. doing away with fords which were not always safe. The earliest fords on the San Joaquin were at Cassady's Gravelly Ford and at other points at and below Millerton. The first ferry was the one of Ira McCray, the political nabob and popularly accepted "mayor" of Millerton, alongside his hotel and opposite the courthouse. The earliest licensed fer- ries were these:

August, 1856-McCray's at Millerton, on the San Joaquin.

Stephen Gaster at Mono City, on the San Joaquin.

November, 1856-C. P. Converse across San Joaquin below Millerton at Converse Flat, afterward known as Jones' store.

May, 1857-James Smith across the lower Kings at Smith & Crumbley's. John Poole, across the upper Kings at Campbell's Crossing.

February, 1858-W. W. Hill at Poole's crossing of the Upper Kings near Scottsburg (Centerville).

February, 1859-L. A. Whitmore, on Lower Kings at Kingston.

Firebaugh's on the lower San Joaquin.

These ferries paid monthly licenses of five dollars and three dollars and were under bonds of $3,000 reduced later to $2,500. They multi- plied fast, and for a time were evidently good investments. There was more or less trouble on their score because of the varying tolls and popular opposition because of the tax, so that in February, 1860, a regular schedule was adopted borrowed from Merced, after the road approaches had been declared public highway and the county mapped off into districts with

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

roadmasters. Incidentally, "Mayor" McCray charged the county four dollars for ferrying a corpse across the river for burial, a tariff not taken cognizance of in the toll sheet.

By August, 1869, general traffic had so increased in volume that a new rate list was established, made necessary also by the heavy Stockton freight- ing business with trail wagons, and the ferriage of cattle and sheep. One Millerton ferry boasted of having on one day in June, 1871, ferried across the river 24,000 sheep without the loss of an animal. The new rates, incor- porating those of 1860, were these:

1 horse wagon or buggy. $ .50

2 horse wagon or buggy. 1.00

4 horse wagon, loaded 1.50

4 horse wagon, empty 1.00

2.00

6 horse wagon, loaded

1.50

6 horse wagon, empty

2.50

8 horse wagon, empty

1.75

10 horse wagon, loaded

3.00

10 horse wagon, empty

2.00

12 horse wagon, loaded

3.50

12 horse wagon, empty

2.25

Horseman

.50

Footman

.25

Pack or lead animal, each

.25

Loose cattle or horses, per head.

.10

Hogs

.03

Sheep

.02

In use by 1869-70 were the fords at Cassady's Bar, at McCray's (ferry having gone out with the flood), and at Fort Washington, the Walker, Fay- monville & Company ferry at Rancheria Flat, that at Jones' store (formerly Converse's), one at Sycamore railroad crossing (now Herndon), Gravelly Ford at where Skaggs' concrete bridge is now, Watson's ferry on the slough (now Whitesbridge), another at the Gus Herminghaus ranch and the one on the slough at Casa Blanca. On the Upper Kings were Poole's and Smith's, and on the Lower Kings, Whitmore's to which O. H. Bliss suc- ceeded, and Van Valer's five miles above. The Gaster ferry at Mono City was where the first electric generating power house is located now on the San Joaquin. Royal & Gaster had a big two and one-half story adobe trading store at this stage station.

IN THE SIERRA TIMBER COUNTRY

The toll road from the Henry Burroughs ranch to The Pineries-the Pine Ridge road with the beast-killing grade above the tollhouse-was com- pleted in August, 1867, and the tolls were :

Wagon, span of horses, mules or oxen. $1.50

Each additional span

.50

Horse and buggy 1.00

Horseman .50

Pack or led animal .25

Loose horses, mules or cattle

.10

Sheep or hogs

.02

This roadway, popularly known as the Tollhouse grade, was for years the burden beast killer as the highway for mountain travel and freighting. Opened to replace the ox trail and facilitate lumber shipping from Pine Ridge mills, it gave rise at the base of the grade to the settlement of Tollhouse, where Abe C. Yancey kept a roadhouse in 1868, and Henry Glass a blacksmith shop. The

8 horse wagon, loaded

100

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

grade is the steepest on any public highway in the state save one, traversing hills in places on a long and steady grade of thirty-three percent. It has been the scene of several auto hill-climbing contests, the first in April, 1909, when A. J. Hudson established the record in a Dorris in twenty-four minutes and forty-eight seconds to Armstrong's seven and one-half miles above the Pine Ridge divide.

Up this murderous grade the heaviest freight wagons for years hauled laboriously to supply the mountain saw mills, as well as tugging the heavy machinery for their operation. Donkey engines, carwheels and track rails and a small locomotive were freighted up the mountains for the plant con- struction notably of the Fresno Flume and Lumber Company for its lumber- ing enterprise in the region about the dammed artificial Shaver Lake, and later as far back in the timber forests as Dinkey Creek. So fearful is the grade that passengers by stage were cajoled, threatened or commanded to walk it to relieve the jaded animals in the ascent.

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History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Volume I, Part 13

Author: Vandor, Paul E., 1858- Publication date: 1919 Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company Number of Pages: 1362

Author: Vandor, Paul E., 1858-
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company
Number of Pages: 1362