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 22

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 22

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DEFALCATION IN COUNTY TREASURY

W. W. Hill, who succeeded the unfortunate Gaster as treasurer and himself filled the office for so many years, died on February 3, 1874. The safe being opened, there was found $27.497.25 cash, when there should have been over $80,000. A statement at the time was that "notes held against private persons will probably make good this deficit." The supervisors ap- pointed N. L. Bachman treasurer and increased the official bond from $60,- 000 to $100,000. At the special election A. J. Thorn was elected treasurer for the unexpired term. In April Mrs. Paulina Hill for the estate was given credit for $3,257.27 on account of redeemed warrants, still leaving $56,313.20 as a deficit. The bondsmen were sted, and, while after the appeal had gone against them and they asked in vain for more time to pay the judgment, little was ever recovered. The district court judgment against the sureties was for $31.313.20 with ten per cent interest from March 4, 1874.

The Hill and Gaster defalcations have one feature in common in the general belief that neither was beneficiary from the money shortages, but both were the victims of misplaced confidence. The Hill affair was another evidence of the "loose, devil-me-care style" in which the public's business was conducted. The general belief was that Hill had loaned out the money on notes to importuning friends, who ignored or delayed meeting their obligations. In these days the cash in the treasury is counted and verified

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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

monthly by law designated officials; in those days it was done at long intervals, quarterly or semi-annually. And it is a tradition of the times that when cash counting time approached the money needed to correspond with the auditor's vouchers, if not on hand, was expressed in as an accommoda- tion and reshipped before the ink was dry on the report of the count. It was not the counters' inquiry to "go behind the returns," so to speak. For them it was enough that the cash presented to view corresponded with the total called for, it mattered not whose money it was in fact.

Two months after the staking out of the new townsite, the supervisors were appealed to for wagon roads to "Fresno Station" from Centerville and Dry Creek in anticipation of early railroad connection. In fact the first passenger train service was not operated until Sunday May 4, 1873, accord- ing to the following meager schedule from Fresno:

Northbound

2:10 A. M .- Daily except Sundays to Merced, Lathrop, San Francisco, Stockton, Sacramento and East.

4:50 A. M .- Sundays only.

Southbound

2:10 A. M .- Daily except Sundays to Goshen, Tulare and Tipton. 9:45 P. M .- Sundays only.

Previous to the above and on December 2, 1872, a tentative schedule was in effect as follows :

Northbound

Local Passenger Train to Merced, Lathrop, San Francisco, Stockton and Sacramento: 4:30 A. M.

Freight Train to Merced and Lathrop: 6:35 A. M.

Southbound

Local Passenger Train for Goshen, Tulare and Tipton: 2:10 A. M. All above trains excepted on Sundays.

Even this was a vast improvement on the old stage coach routings.

The vote on seat removal was too decisive, so there was naught to do but "pull up stakes." In April, 1874, proposals were invited in San Fran- cisco and Sacramento for courthouse plans. Those of A. A. Bennett of Sacramento were accepted and visit was made to Fresno to locate on Blocks 105 and 106, the proposed building to face Mariposa Street and the depot. Before contract award on May 14, Merced was visited to view the courthouse there, which was and is a $55,970 duplicate of the one erected originally for Fresno by the same company, the California Bridge and Building Company, Alfred W. Burrell president. The Fresno award for $56,370 was $1,105 less than the next lowest of four bids and $2,530 lower than the highest. For change of county seat and necessary expenses a bond issue of $60,000 was authorized, one of the last acts of the supervisors at Millerton at its Septem- ber, 1874, session. A. M. Clark as county clerk moved the county's archives and property, and until the courthouse completion housed the public offices and jail in a 24x80 temporary structure on the Tulare Street side of the courthouse reservation, the building sold in September, 1875, to A. J. Thorn for $146 at public auction.

The Millerton orders were for removal by October, 1874, according to a resolution passed on Admission Day. The last transfer was on Saturday, the third of that month, of the county hospital inmates at Millerton in stages of Fleming under supervision of Dr. Leach, he following with family and friends and completing the official exodus, with the exception of the jail

FRESNO COUNTY COURT HOUSE, 1881

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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

incarcerated left in the care of Charles J. Garland of the Courthouse Ex- change Saloon. Subsequently a $400 offer was made for the old courthouse and spurned. The last assemblage in it was of thirty-three of the thirty-six shareholders of the Ne Plus Ultra Mining Company, with H. C. Daulton as president. It formally voted to move to Fresno and reelected Daulton presi- dent, Dr. Leach treasurer and Judge Winchell secretary, completing trans- fer of the last organization having birth and headquarters at old Millerton.

Fresno's townsite occupied a spot unfrequented save by roaming wild cattle, mustang horses, antelope, elk and coyotes. The original town plan of the C. and F. Company was signally departed from in the end because of a notion that provokes a smile at this day. It planned that Fresno Street as the only eighty-foot wide business thoroughfare in the city should be the main artery through town, obstructed though it was at that time in the center by a partially covered ditch from M. J. Church's Champion flour mill at N and Fresno, carrying off westward to the plains the surplus water from the mill race supplied from Fancher Creek. With this plan in view, grant was made for courthouse site of Blocks A, B, C and D bounded by Merced, Mariposa, N and P as the first recorded town plat of December 12, 1873, shows, with courthouse facing Fresno Street.

But nearly all first private improvements and business locations grouped on H Street, facing the projected depot, crossing or slowly groping their way into Mariposa Street. The cry was that the four blocks "were too far out of town," and so a compromise arrangement was made by which the C. and F. Company deeded for county public purposes Blocks 94, 95, 105 and 106 as platted June 8, 1876, the present location. Mariposa Street became the retail center street, though thoroughfare is blocked at H Street west- ward by the railroad reservation and passenger depot, and eastward at K by the courthouse reservation. One of the original four blocks at Fresno and N, opposite the mill, was taken as a schoolhouse site, now the Hawthorne. It is in fact only one block removed from the exchanged site, being the block Fresno, Merced, N and O. Thus a pretty sentimental idea was knocked on the head to have wide Fresno Street as the main business boulevard of Fresno City in Fresno County.

COURTHOUSE CORNERSTONE LAYING

At the first supervisors' meeting at Fresno, the tax rate was fixed at 64.9 for state and 83.1 cents for county purposes-total $1.48. Contractor Burrell for material and labor was given bonds for $9,900 gold value, hav- ing agreed to accept them at ninety-nine cents on the dollar, and the offer of J. M. Shannon for $1, "for any length of time," was accepted of a room in his building on H Street, near Tulare, for court purposes. Courthouse cornerstone was laid on Thursday afternoon October 8, 1874, and building reported completed for acceptance August 19, 1875. Cornerstone day was a festival occasion in the new town. According to the Expositor, never be- fore had the county "known such a large and fashionable assemblage," com- ing from Merced, Modesto, Lathrop, Stockton, Visalia and all portions of the county.

The day was pleasant, the heavens overcast with clouds preventing the scorching rays of the sun from pouring down, and a light rain sprinkle at noon purifying the atmosphere and rendering it refreshing. The Masonic fraternity had charge of the ceremonies with Isaac S. Titus, M. W. G. M., attending and Merced lodges, Free and Accepted Masons, and Independent Order of Odd Fellows participating with the county officials and citizens in the parade headed by Woodman's brass band from Stockton. The choir at the stone laying comprised: Mesdames W. W. Phillips, who was also the organist, J. C. Hoxie and William Lambert and Messrs. William Faymon- ville, A. W. Burrell and S. W. Geis of Merced. District Attorney C. G.

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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

Sayle for the supervisors invited the grand lodge to lay the stone for an edifice which when completed, he said, "is expected to stand the heats of summer and the storms of winter for a period of 1,000 years or more." The Masonic ritual was proceeded with, and at the close Judge E. C. Winchell delivered the prepared oration of District Judge A. C. Bradford, who being in the East could not return in time to fill the engagement. In the casket were deposited nineteen miscellaneous contribution parcels, mainly docu- ments and newspapers, besides a twenty-dollar gold piece of 1874 by A. W. Burrell, by the supervisors eleven pieces of coin of the realm, nineteen dol- lars and sixteen cents in all from a ten-dollar gold piece to a copper cent, and as historical documents contributed by Justice of the Peace W. T. Rumble and Dr. Leach notes of the first twenty years of the San Joaquin Valley with a copy of the Fort Barbour treaty of peace of 1851 with the Indians, and a copy of the 1851 muster roll of the Mariposa Battalion of Major James D. Savage. A bible contributed by Dr. Leach was a notable presentation, because according to the tradition it was the only one in town available for immuring.

That night Magnolia hall was filled to repletion at a ball with over 150 couples attending, the dance continuing until about one thirty in the morn- ing when the Merced excursion car came to bear away the guests and the music and close the festivities. The supervisors had appropriated $200 for the day, and of the $326 ball receipts a balance of sixty-six dollars was do- nated to the city school fund. Tickets to the ball were three dollars.

The walls of the building that was erected stand today in the present courthouse after the addition of the wings and other changes. Building was sixty by ninety-five, three stories high, surmounted by a cupola topped by a plaster figure of Minerva. It was brick with granite trimmings, covered with cement. Plaster figures of Justice ornamented front and side window arches. The building was fifty-seven feet high above the grade and 112 to the top of the cupola figure. In the basement was a six-cell jail and all in all it was ornamental in exterior. Eight hundred thousand bricks entered into the construction. Designer Bennett planned other public buildings for the valley counties, and the company of Oakland erected them according to stock designs. Windmill and tank were erected and well sunk near the northwest corner, grounds graded by J. B. Stephens, parked and planted by A. J. Witthouse and fenced in by L. D. Fowler later, a special act of the legislature authorizing the expenditure of $20,000 for various public improvements.

The enlarged and winged courthouse building caught fire on the night of July 29, 1895, in the copper sheeted dome, the glare lighting up the city. The flames were so high up that the fire apparatus could not reach them. The dome was 223 feet from the ground and "a veritable forest of timbers," built two years before. A strong north wind blew and dome finally collapsed upon the south wing, carrying down tons of burned timbers. There was general wreckage on the second and third floors of the central structure of 1874 and in the south wing, entailing a loss of over $75,000. It was a spec- tacular fire. But this is anticipatory.

Fresno was cityfying at the dedication period. All the vagrant cows were taken up under the trespass act. General appeal was made to clean up premises. The press of advertisements was so heavy that the Expositor had in one issue to leave out two columns of "live ads." New buildings were going up. The hope was expressed that the hotels would be enlarged be- cause beds were not to be had on cornerstone day or the night before. "The Grandest Organization that Ever Crossed the Continent, Montgomery Queen's Gigantic Menagerie, Circus and World's Fair," the first circus that ever struck the county with two shows given at Borden on the Saturday be- fore, exhibited on Monday October 19, 1874, at Fresno, and in its next Wednesday issue the "county official paper" recorded that besides nine in-

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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

fants baptized at the Dry Creek church the Sunday before, "nearly a dozen fights" had occurred in town since that Sunday-circus, court week and too much whiskey producing the result-and confessing that "we can go without food and clothing on a pinch but we will see every exhibition of horse opera," and that "the circus attracted all alike 'colored and plain,'" and the Indians from the foothills.

CHAPTER XXVII

INDUSTRIAL PERIODS IN STATE AND COUNTY. LUMBERING WAS CONSPICUOUS IN FRESNO FROM EARLY TIMES. IT HAD ITS PIC- TURESQUE SIDE. HABITATIONS WERE THEN MERE MAKESHIFTS. FIRST HANDWORKED "SAWMILL" WAS AT FORT MILLER. HULSE AS THE HISTORIAN'S OVERLOOKED PIONEER OF MILLMEN. PINE RIDGE THE BUSY MOUNTAIN SCENE OF MILL ACTIVITIES FOR YEARS. INDUSTRY IS THE BASIS FOR A FRENZIED CRAZE IN 1890. DIRECTORY OF FIRST "BULLWHACKERS" AND SAWMILL MEN. CORPORATE FLUMING OPERATIONS. SMALL ENTERPRISES ARE CROWDED OUT OF THE FIELD BY THEM.

According to Historian Bancroft, the state's industrial periods have been the age of grass, the age of gold, the age of grain and the age of fruit. He comments thereon to say that the golden age was neither the age of gold, nor the pastoral age of grass, but the age of fruit, meaning thereby the real, positive, lasting and substantial economic wealth basis. Fresno County has also passed through four stages of industrial development.

Its birth was during the mining period, which while it cannot be con- fined to hard and fast lines of demarcation any more than can the others, lasted until about 1860-64. It was followed by the stock raising period (cat- tle and sheep), growing out of the gradual decadence of placer mining and lasting until about 1874, though sheep raising continued for years later. Third, the springing up of farming about 1868, more especially in the growing of grain, or "dry farming" as it was called. Before the advent of the railroad in 1870, agriculture may be said to have been in the experimental stage. Fourth, and assuming importance in the early 80's, the viticultural and horti- cultural period, with the introduction of irrigation.

These last have become the leading and distinctive industrial features of the county, and as California holds first place among the states for irri- gation, so is the county the leader in the state, having more than double the acreage under irrigation than has any other in California. The develop- ment periods followed one another by slow and gradual processes, at the time almost imperceptible, so easy the merging of one period into another. The above general division omits one early and large industry, conspicuous for its scope even during the mining era and before the passing of that pic- turesque period. The lumber industry had its picturesque side in the men that "toyed with the lash and goad long before Fresno City was built," or even dreamed of; that hauled lumber, shakes, posts and shingles with mule and ox out of the mountains over the roughest of roads through the uncut timber and underbrush, descending trails so precipitous that great trees were tied on behind the wagon or truck as safety drags in the passage of narrow ravines or washed out creek beds.

In early days most of the lumber was hauled to the mining camps on the San Joaquin, or to the Upper Kings settlements above Centerville. Later and after the war, the Alabama Settlement at Borden, down about Gravelly Ford on the Sycamore bend, called for teaming. By this time not a few mills were running at full capacity as Ball & Rimmell on Pine Ridge at Corlew Meadow.

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the first and for a time only steam mill in the county. C. P. Converse, then in prosperity, ran one with water power at Crane Valley, associated later with George Mccullough and Thomas Winkelman on the north fork of the San Joaquin. John Dwyer hauled from the nearby and then untouched moun- tains the logs from which the lumber was cut for Fort Miller, or rather the blockhouse. An ordinary cross-cut saw was used. In the work with him were engaged Peter Fink, George Newton and Clark Hoxie. This was the first sawmill in the county, the forerunner of all on the north sides of the San Joaquin and the Kings, and on Pine Ridge crest between the rivers. Joseph Elliot, George Green, Abe Yancey and Bill May were the first "bullwhackers" working for Alex Ball as far back as 1854 and making their starts in life.

The acknowledged historian of the Pine Ridge lumber region is R. W. Riggs, who being also a photographer, has spent many a season in the mill and lumber camps. Few, save the very earliest, that he did not know per- sonally. He gave his efforts for three years to gather "from the earth's four corners" 361 pictures of teamsters alone, classifying them in four groups: (1) the early ones before 1875, (2) the Glass and Donahoo, Lane & Frazier and Smyth & McCardle men and (3) those of 1888 to 1900. The collection was short some 100 pictures.

In the first classification may be named the following :

Abe Yancey, Dan Bruce, Andrew Farley, Peter Fink, V. F. Moore, Bill Wyatt, Ed. Burnett, Tom Bates, Steve Boutwell, Cub Jacks, Ransome Mc- Capes, Jim Mitchell, Fred Winkelman, Pack Qualls, Joe Medley, Alfred Haecker, Joe Carter, Bill May, Mark Chapman, Ellis Pitman, Charles Beard, Joe Hutchins, Jim Wyatt, Cy Dean, Billy Anderson, Mark Gentry, Dave Watson, Bill Holmes, John Moore, Gassy Rodgers, Joe Taylor, Dan Clark, Charles Williams, Dan Miller. Lije and Jim Perry.

The earliest habitations, if such they can be designated, were of canvas, old sacking and the interlaced branches of small trees, sides, ends and roof of the same material. Not a few lived in wagons, utilizing in favored places rocky boulders as walls. Cooking was done principally at open camp fires. The Dutch oven was an important culinary utensil, and many an appetiz- ing "flap-jack" was browned on a shovel. A cast-iron stove was a curiosity, flour a luxury at fifty cents a pound, beans or rice seventy-five cents, sugar, bacon or dried fruit cheap at a dollar, and tea and coffee reasonably so at two dollars. And there was no hue and cry about the high cost of living, either.

The first Pine Ridge sawmill man was in 1852, James Hulse, who two years later sold to Alexander Ball. He moved mill farther back into the forest at the upper end of Corlew Meadow. Historians have to a man with- held credit from Hulse, accorded it to Ball and referred to the surrounding country as "Ball Mill Meadow." Ball was "a rough and ready and good natured man, a hard worker by day and an ardent poker player by night" -$7,000 of debts with burning of mill landing him a bankrupt early in his career.

After this for a time, the lumber supply source was Crane Valley on the other side of the San Joaquin, where Converse and George Sharpton lo- cated a mill in 1860, and George Mccullough, who built the first house in Fresno, Jeff Dunlap and one Brown had another, both run by water power. About 1866 John Humphrey imported a mill from Mariposa, and Moses Mock buying the Mccullough water mill, the consolidated Clipper was moved up Pine Ridge, below Kenyon's or Armstrong's, and eight years later became the property of Donahoo & Glass. C. D. Davis, Milton Jacks and James J. Phil- lips formed a partnership, built the then largest and finest mill at Moore's Flat and not inappropriately called it the Lightning Striker, for it was reduced to ashes that same year and another replaced it.

In 1875 Henry Glass bought the Flintlock from Humphrey & Mock and moved the Clipper farther into the woods at Hoxie's Flat, taking in

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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

next year as a partner Jeff Donahoo, who had been his foreman the season before. After Glass' death, Humphrey took up the Glass interest and Dona- hoo & Humphrey sold in 1887 to William Ockenden. In 1879 Alonzo Little- field dammed creek on his timber claim, and by a series of wooden wheels and cogs turned out brake blocks and later erected a more elaborate mill, operated as a one man concern. Cy Ruth of Big Sandy built the Paiute mill on Rush Creek in 1880 at the base of Old Baldy, but sold out to C. M. Ben- nett, who had a planing mill at Tollhouse and who continued the Paiute for twenty-five years at various locations, the last one quarter of a mile below the Ball mill site at Corlew, destroyed by fire in 1905.

William Foster and August Behring ran for a season the Phoenix on Riley Anderson's claim with James Fanning and L. B. Frazier as lessees for the second. On Behring's death, Adolph Lane and Frazier bought the mill and moved it down near the old Flintlock site at the present Pine Ridge postoffice. Here was made the first experiment on the coast with horses in logging. The firm dissolved in 1885 and the mill was burned in storage. Moses Mock reentered the field on Rush Creek. John Smyth, sawyer for Donahoo & Humphrey, and James McCardle bought him out and theirs was for a time the largest mill on the Ridge until the one at Shaver.

The Lane-J. J. Musick copartnership lasted several years until the withdrawal of the first named. The Musicks owned several sections of the finest timber land. In 1886 A. C. Crossman, who was city engineer of Fresno, leased the mill but before three months assigned to William Black and John Nelson of Tollhouse, who ran it for the first season. Upon the death of Musick, the sons, Henry and Charles, carried on the business until fire in 1893 led up to merger with the Fresno Flume and Irrigation Company, the "irrigation" part of the name inserted to facilitate rights of way for the flume for supposed irrigation. In 1887 or 1888 W. S. Bouton and W. M. Ewing built a box factory on the Dinkey road beyond Ocken- den, first enterprise of its kind on the Ridge. Fire destroyed it. William Ockenden, who for a decade had conducted hotel and general store at Dona- hoo & Humphrey's mill yard, bought the mill at this time with Henry Ham- ilton and Frank Peabody, and after a season moved it down hill, with a road leading out from Kenyon's. That summer welcomed back John Hum- phrey with a mill on the Swanson lands and with Swanson as a partner. On the latter's death Richard Beall and Joseph Paddock bought the dead man's interest. The mill went up in fire.

In 1890 and for six years there was a veritable craze for sawmill owner- ship-"frenzied finance" on a small scale to swallow up many a modest competency. As was said, it "looked as though whoever had a tin can, a buzz saw and six bits started a sawdust factory," and "when the can blew up, the saw became bent or the hands wanted their pay, the concern shut up shop or the creditors took it and ran it on the dividends that didn't divide." But what need to follow the many, frequent and bewildering changes? In early days what later was known as Kenyon's was Behring's, afterward Pine Ridge or Armstrong's: in 1881 it was Donahoo's mill, later and now it is Ockenden. The locations of early mills would be difficult to trace with names as the only guide.

It was in 1892 that the F. F. & I. Company commenced damming of Stephenson Creek to create Shaver Lake, and to build the flume to Clovis, and the next year it was in operation, cutting more timber and bringing out more lumber seasonally than all mills combined, with possible exception of the Herman Peterson mill run by a stock company and formerly the Smyth & McCardle mill. The Fresno railroaded logs from the forest.

The Pine Ridge sawmill men come under two general classifications. In the first are these :

From 1852 to 1892 following as near as can be learned the order of their entering the business-James Hulse, Alex Ball, John Humphrey, Moses 9

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Mock, C. D. Davis, J. J. Phillips, Milton Jacks, Henry Glass, M. J. Donahoo, Cy Ruth, C. M. Bennett, William Foster, Gus Behring, Alonzo Littlefield, Joseph Bretz, James Fanning, L. B. Frazier, Adolph Lane, J. J. Musick, W. S. Bouton, W. M. Ewing, John Smyth, J. McCardle, H. Peterson, Wm. Ockenden, Andrew Swanson, Joseph Paddock, Richard Beall, A. C. Cross- man, John Nelson, W. Block, C. Cummings, Henry and Charles Musick, Warren Brown, Jerome Bancroft, Winn Lichfield, Frank Peabody, Henry Hamilton, William Kip, James Kerns and John Sage-forty-two.

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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 22

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