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 24

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 24

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Just as today, every other farmer or retired land owner may be either a vineyardist or an orchardist, so in the 60's and 70's every other one in the county owning land was a stock raiser. In the county recorder's office are two interesting book records of the registered cattle brands. They are of historic value as the brief abstracts of the cattle period, and of the men who were the backbone of that once dominant industry of the county. Ex. amination of this register is like turning back the pages of time with recall of the familiar names of the long ago dead associated with Fresno's second industrial period. The record runs up into the thousands.

The stockmen were the discoverers of the scenic wonders and the Big Trees of the Sierras. They were the pioneers that opened and marked the trails to the most inaccessible places in the search for feed for their animals. The name of many a pioneer stockman is perpetuated in the government quadrangle topographical maps. They are responsible also for the uncouth nomenclature of the landmarks. The forest service has improved their trails but adopted their routings as shown by the blazes on the trees. The stock- men's early mark is a rectangular chip clipped deep from the bark; that of the foresters on the same trees a chip the width of the ax blade and under it a longer vertical strip, the combination suggestive of the letter "i."

Dinkey Creek was named by Frank Dusy for a little pet dog that was

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killed there by a bear. An enthusiastic naturalist and mountain climber, describing a journey to the High Sierras, put in book print that Tunemah Pass takes its name from the melodious Indian! In fact, it is the vile epithet that was uttered by a Chinese sheep herder of Dusy in giving vent to his opinion after descent of that well nigh impassable mountain ridge cleft from the north to the middle fork of the Kings River and the Tehipite Valley, rival of the Yosemite. Dutch Oven Creek gives reminder of the dis- aster to a party in fording that swift stream and the recovery of the indis- pensable oven as the only article of the camping outfit.

CHAPTER XXIX

AGRICULTURE FORMALLY TAKES POSSESSION OF THE VALLEY IN THE 70's. GRAIN GROWING OR "DRY FARMING" CONDUCTED ON A GIGANTIC SCALE. BELT EXTENDS FROM RIVER TO RIVER. FIRST COLONISTS HAD MUCH TO OVERCOME IN LACK OF FAITH IN FARMING BY THE OLD RESIDENTS. STOCKMEN DISCOURAGED THEM. FERTILITY OF SOIL DEMONSTRATED. DEVELOPMENT OF LABOR SAVING MACHINERY. IMPROVEMENTS ON EARLY METH- ODS. FIRST FARMING ON THE PLAINS. FAILURE OF THE ALA- BAMA SETTLEMENT. WHEAT AS THE AGRICULTURAL KING OF CALIFORNIA WITH THE "DRY FARMER" AS HIS PRIME MINISTER.

The third general industrial period in the county's development came with the springing up about 1868 of farming, more especially grain growing, or "dry farming" as it was called. It was far more important in its effects than the superficial reader of local history wots of. It proved the agency that blazed the way for the fourth and most distinctive era that has made Fresno what it is in the line of fruit growing and in the products of the grapevine.

The "dry farmer" disproved the popular fallacy entertained in the mid- dle 60's that the valley plains were unfit for agriculture because of the uncer- tainty of the rainfall, and anyhow because "farming was too much of a gamble." In the 70's the valley was throughout almost its entire length and breadth used for grazing, and the cattle barons doggedly disputing ground with the few widely scattered farmers. Then came the notable conflict, with the No-Fence law as the result and small farming as the heritage. Before that the belief was tenaciously held that the plains had value only as pasture. One journeyed for miles and saw nothing save cattle and sheep and an occasional herder's tent or brush shelter. Cattle roamed the plains practically from Stockton to Bakersfield.

In the 70's agriculture formally took possession of the valley. In due time the two valleys "began on a great scale the first experiment in irriga- tion that the Anglo-Saxon has undertaken." It resulted in a remarkable success. The important fact must not be overlooked here that agricultural land in California means good, rich soil, free from rocks or trees and almost wholly fit for the plow. Valleys and rolling hills are as a general thing covered with wild oats and grasses and free from timber, brush, stones and other obstructions. Wheat growing was once on a colossal scale in the valley. Nothing attempted in California was done on a minor scale, it would appear. Measure was taken from the lofty mountains, the big trees, the great territory and the broad valleys as the scale. It was moreover "the thin edge of the entering wedge that displaced the stockmen and pushed them back, step by step, until the only refuge left them was the remote and less desirable land for cultivation," or the vast Spanish land grants.

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The wheat ranches were of great size, operated necessarily on a gigantic scale and corresponding cost. One thousand to 3,000-acre grain fields were not uncommon. The individual largest grower in Fresno was Clovis M. Cole, who in 1891 had 10,000 acres in wheat. Instead of enriching him, it impoverished him in the end. Cole and his grain domain was a frequent subject of magazine articles and newspaper write ups. The rapidity of the growth of farming with irrigation once under way, the one naturally lead- ing up to the other, was noticeable. Fresno's grain belt lay between the eastern foothills and the railroad, with exceptions at Borden, Kingsburg and Selma. The rainfall almost double in the foothill country was as a rule ample for the well tilled soil. That soil was better adapted for cereal crops. The time was when you could say that the eastern foothill country from the Chowchilla to the Kings River was one vast grain field, and what is true of Fresno was equally so in the adjoining counties.

Experimentation with irrigation was in progress during the "dry farming" period. The first colonists had many discouragements to overcome and espe- cially to contend against the lack of faith of the old resident in the possi- bility of successful farming on the plains, even with irrigation. There were no pessimists like the stock and sheepmen, and none more heavily stocked up with hard luck tales of dismal failures of health and crops.

The climate? Worst in the world-they had seen the thermometer 130 degrees in the shade, and no shade, and had seen birds drop dead from the heat. Fruit? Oh, it grew, but it also baked on the trees before ripening. Vegetables? Wouldn't grow even when irrigated, and then either rotted in the water or dried up in the sun-baked mud. Butter was out of the question, except during the winter, rainy months. Potatoes? Invariably crop failures, and what few were raised rotted when dug up. Trees and vines? A losing proposition, because the pestiferous jack-rabbit overran the plains, and the durned rabbit-proof fence was a snare and a delusion because the rabbits burrowed under it. Chickens had never done well on the plains and could not be profitably raised, and besides there were the coyotes. Sandstorms, hot and cold winds and whirlwinds made life a burden. Instances were de- tailed of fever and ague following up the bringing of water for irrigation, and as a finale the truly sympathetic stockman earnestly and charitably advised the listener to hurry away before his last dollar went for grub to keep body and soul together.

WHEAT GROWING LONG HELD SWAY

The fruit and vine industries had inception about 1880, but wheat growing held sway for about thirty years. Unceasing repetition of crops with consequent impoverishment of the soil and added indifferent cultiva- tion had their effect. Grain growing did not then bring in the returns that the earlier years had. Resort was had to summer fallowing and irrigation. This proved an aid in the crop production, but even then the soil did not yield as once, and the profits grew beautifully less in the face of the large acreage sown. This led to the consideration of other crops, and fruit and vine attracted attention. Bees and poultry were found to give good returns on small investments and comparatively little care. Alfalfa proved a specially adapted forage plant. Trees and vines returned greater profits, and so orchards, vineyards and alfalfa fields eventually supplanted the grain ranches. They ushered in the wine, raisin and cured fruit industries, while the pastures gave stimulus to dairying and live stock.

With average rainfall the plains produced rich grain crops, yielding from fifteen to twenty bushels an acre, varying according to climatic and rain conditions. San Joaquin Valley wheat was, all in all, of excellent qual- ity and considered as among the best milling wheat anywhere. The grain crop values proved greater than the gold yield. In 1860 the wheat crop

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was 2,530,400 bushels, in 1870, 6,937,038, in 1880, 29,017,707 and in 1889, 40,869,137, the largest wheat crop save that of Minnesota and wheat worth a dollar a bushel, equaling the gold yield before 1856 and almost doubling any two seasons in wheat since.

The success of farming on the plains, with proof of the fertility and possibility of the soil, was stimulating. Population increased and the build- ing of permanent homes resulted. The coming of the railroad was, to be sure, an important factor to help bring about the new life. Fresno city grew -indeed outdistanced its rivals, notably Stockton, Visalia and every other new town on the railroad. In 1870 the county had 6,336 population, in 1880 9,478, in 1890 32,026, in 1900 37,862 and in 1910 75,657. Land that had been in the market for two and one-half dollars an acre sold for fifty dollars, $100 to $200 and more where under irrigation. The changed conditions neces- sarily made cultivation and harvesting more rapid and economical. Cradle, reaper and single plow were too slow for the San Joaquin Valley big wheat- grower. Implements and machinery adapted to the times and needs were improved upon as in the great gangplows and combined harvesters.

Cultivating from 400 to 1,200 acres, a single plow was first used, then two were fastened together. Then came the gangplow with one man and ten horses plowing ten acres in a day turning up a three-foot swath. Then it was eight feet, sowing, and harrowing at the same time with an oil burn- ing machine. The pioneer used the old fashioned mower for grain cutting. Then came the invented California Header, levelling a twenty-foot swath and sending a steady stream of grain into the receiving wagon. Later the great hay-fork operated by horsepower lifted the grain from wagon and stacked it. The McCormick thresher burned straw for fuel instead of wood, threshing 2,000 bushels in a day. James Marvin, a San Joaquin farmer, con- trived a combined header and harvester, but it was not successful until after improved. Then when drawn by thirty horses, it cut, threshed and sacked fifteen acres in a day and later it was operated by its own motive power.

The threshing machine is popularly supposed to have been first operated in Fresno County on Dry Creek in 1870 by Hewlett, Jack and Wyatt. The heading machine was a notable improvement on the thresher. It was worked by the team pushing, as it were, instead of drawing it. The driver lowered or raised the sickle bar according to the height of the grain stalks. The heads dropped into a traveling gangway attached to the machine and into a wagon driven alongside of the header, the side of the bed next to the header receptively lower. Wagon after wagon followed the header, the loaded going to the thresher and dumping grain on a platform to be cleaned at the rate of hundreds of bushels in a day. This machine was superseded by a most economical and ingenious contrivance, the combined harvester driven by fifteen to twenty-four horses, harnessed six abreast, attended by four to five men cutting, threshing and sacking grain on thirty to thirty-five acres in a day, twenty to thirty bushels to the acre.

The grain threshed in the field filled sacks of 100 or 200 pounds each. The long dry season dried the grain ready for the mill or for shipment in bulk or in sacks. The sacked grain was left in heaps in the field measurably secure from rain until November, or if transported to shipping points piled up on wharves until loaded on shipboard. So dry was the grain that it went direct from the thresher aboard ship or car without damage. Mills have had to dampen it before grinding into flour. A peculiarity of California wheat is that the kernel does not shell, however ripe, or how long it stands in the field. Rain or weather change does not open it. In ordinary seasons enough grain was shelled in the handling to make seed for a volunteer crop, and good harvests were had for several seasons without plowing or sowing. But best crops follow the annual sowing with deep plowing and summer fal- lowing. Custom was once to burn the straw on the field where the thresher stood, and with fire to clean off the stubble. Drought and cold and long

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winter rains taught the farmers the lesson and straw burning was aban- doned. It was stacked, shedded and secure from rain and summer's scorch- ing heat the feed was saved for a time of need.

Prior to 1868, settlements for farming operations were few in the county save in the foothills as on Dry Creek, and on the lower Kings River. The great waterless plain between the rivers "was common pasture ground for whosoever chose to turn stock upon it." The government had surveyed and sectionized most of the land, but no one was tempted to acquire or occupy on account of the lack of water. Land was acquired for speculative purposes in great blocks and sheep turned out upon it when driven out of the moun- tains by the snow. Here and there a venturesome farmer sowed grain upon the too dry soil, took desperate chances on the season, and harvested only too frequently defeat, ridicule and I-told-you-so triumph for the sheepman, who having crowded out the cattleman himself stood in fear of speedy elbowing out by agriculture.

Still one of the large productions of the county was wheat in its day. The area devoted to wheat during the season of 1880-81 was 100,000 acres, the county export about 800,000 bushels, worth not less than $750,000. It was the high price of wheat that induced grain farming on a large scale in Stanislaus County, and in turn prompted William S. Chapman and. Isaac Friedlander, the wheat market manipulator in California, to take up great tracts of "plain lands" in this county in 1868 and 1869, around Borden and covering the present site of Fresno City.

"Dry farming" in grain growing was at best a venturesome undertak- ing. There had been droughts and short crops in 1869, 1870 and 1871. Other years to 1876 were more or less fraught with woe for the "dry farmer." The very instability of this "dry farming" suggested the thought of irrigation, but "the man of the hour" had not yet come to the fore. 1862 was a set- backing year-year of the big flood-with the valley basin from Sacramento to Visalia under two feet of water, fifty lives lost and damage estimated at fifty millions entailed. Two years later was another dry period, with scarcely any rain in the winter of 1863 or the spring of 1864. Little hay was cut. The wheat crop was a failure. Hay went to sixty dollars a ton and wheat was scarce at five dollars a bushel. Horses, cattle and sheep perished wholesale. The poorest beef sold at twenty-five cents a pound. Hay and grain were imported from Oregon and Nevada.

But aside from all these causes, the time came when it was apparent that there was no longer profit on the big grain ranch. There was the fall in the price of wheat to seventy-five cents due to financial panics, the re- duced yield in ever taking from the soil and adding nothing to overcome its impoverishment, the increased value of land for the more profitable or- chard and vineyard and alfalfa field, all leading up to the practical surrender of the field to the small farmer and his varied crops.

FIRST FARMING ON THE PLAINS

It is a disputed question who first farmed on the plains of Fresno. The account most susceptible of proof is that the late A. Y. Easterby of Napa and a pioneer in development about Fresno, became the owner in July, 1868, for $14,496 of about 5,000 acres, which an association of San Francisco merchants, mainly Germans, bought in a block of 80,000 acres from Chap- man and Friedlander, who had purchased from the government for scrip. The purchase price from them was one dollar and eighty cents an acre and the highest hoped for selling price was five dollars. An experimental crop of wheat was put in by Easterby in November, 1869, on land near Miller- ton as the nearest populated point, on which alfilaria and sunflowers ten feet high were growing luxuriantly, being in the northwest corner of Section 8, Township 14 S., Range 21 E. M. J. Church, "the Father of Irrigation,"

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whom Easterby had permitted to bring his sheep there to save them from starvation in Napa, bored the well and a man named McBride sowed wheat and barley.

The seed germinated nicely, but for lack of spring rain dried up and what survived the drought was eaten up by roaming horses and cattle. Easterby had four sections set aside later for his own use after survey. They constituted the Easterby Rancho, first named the Banner Farm because of the raising of the flag on the barn staff on July 4, 1872, probably the first display on the plains of which there is record. The story is added that when Easterby presented the deeds for recording, County Recorder Dixon hesi- tated to accept the fees, intimating that the man must be crazy who thought of cultivating the plains. In 1871 Easterby put in wheat 2,000 acres, partly irrigated, paid in 1872 $1,207.32 freight on lumber and $2,574 for fencing and lumber and in August and September shipped 20,000 sacks of wheat to Friedlander, the first wheat shipment from the plains of Fresno over the Southern Pacific. The eighteen carloads of lumber for fencing was the first shipment of the kind over the new road to this locality. Outlay on crop was $2,600; for lumber and freight $3,781. The Easterby rancho is a few miles east of town, comprising some of the best known pioneer vineyards in the district now called Sunnyside.

The Alabama Settlement of 1868 formed of Alabamans, Mississippians and Tennesseeans who came after the war, was the first concerted effort on the plains to raise grain. They had a drought the first year, suffered several more in after years, water was not always available for the irrigation of other crops, and besides they were in frequent conflict to save their scant product from roaming cattle. The Alabama proved a failure, as did in after years the much vaunted and advertized John Brown Colony. The southern enterprise did not prosper, most of the founders removed to other localities and those who remained drifted into more congenial and lucrative fields- politics was a popular one-so that in 1874-75 the place had few of the original settlers. The failure was a conspicuous one. Besides the local con- ditions contributing to it, there was the important fact not to be overlooked that the southern planter and gentleman was evidently not cut out for the new and untried conditions of the life of pioneer farming in the Far West with accompanying hard labor and struggling poverty.

The first name of the settlement was Arcola from which town in Ala- bama the leading colonists came. It was afterward named for Dr. Joseph Borden, one of the leading spirits of the enterprise. Among the prominent colonists, who became men of note in Fresno politics and circles, were the R. L. Dixon, S. H. Holmes, W. B. Dennett. J. A. and J. H. Pickens, C. A. Reading and other families. Hardly a notable but had a military or judicial title.

The cereal acreage of the state has greatly decreased in recent years. The soil has yielded much greater profit when devoted to fruit, vine and forage, alfalfa giving from four to six cuttings. As far back as 1852, Cali- fornia has held first place for barley, North Dakota and Minnesota slightly exceeding it in 1915. Since 1901 the acreage has been upwards of one mil- lion. That of 1910 with 1.195,000 and a product of 36,000,000 bushels is the largest on record. In 1915 the estimated acreage was 1,360,000 and the acre average twenty-nine bushels. In wheat the production notably de- creased between 1900 and 1910. The acreage in 1915 was 440,000 and the acre yield sixteen bushels, one less than in 1914 with 400,000 acres. Rice growing is comparatively new in the state. In 1915 the state's acreage was 32,110, with 3,135 in the San Joaquin Valley and Fresno leading with 1.120. The state's production was about 888,000 100-pound sacks, average return one dollar and eighty-five cents per hundred. The 1916 crop was almost double that of 1915 with more than 2,500,000 pounds harvested. Rice growing was started as late as four years ago on a comparatively large scale with

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50,000 acres under cultivation in the state in 1916. The prospect is for a 100,000 acreage in 1917 of the "short kernel" variety of rice.

Passed, however, is the day when wheat may be hailed as the agricul- tural king in California with the grain grower as his prime minister. It is Charles Nordhoff in his remarkable little book, "California for Health, Pleas- ure and Residence," unquestionably the best, most truthful and oft quoted of practical works on the subject for travellers and settlers, who relates in connection with the phenomenal and rapid production with labor saving machinery in the field the incident that with combination steam header and thresher the grain in the field in the morning was in sacks and frequently at the shipping depot for steamship or car to market before night, or even carried to the mill to be returned to the ranch as flour, so that the laborer who helped harvest it in the morning bolted it down at supper time in the eve- ning as hot yeast powder bread or saleratus biscuits. Nordhoff locates this story in Fresno, but leaves it to the imagination to conclude that the stunt was a performance on the Cole 10,000-acre grain ranch, which embraced the region about Clovis, named for the P. T. Barnum of "dry farmers." Cole is, by the way, engineering a steam thresher in his old days at a per diem.

CHAPTER XXX

VASQUEZ AND HIS ROBBER BAND IN THE LIMELIGHT FOCUS. MIL- LERTON IS GIVEN A GREAT SCARE. AUDACIOUS TWILIGHT ROB- BERIES COMMITTED WITHIN A FEW MILES FROM THE COUNTY SEAT. MURIETA'S RETREAT IN A DEFILE OF THE COAST RANGE IN THE COUNTY IS THE HAVEN OF REFUGE AND THE STARTING POINT ON RAIDS. STATE IS TERRORIZED AND HALF A DOZEN SHERIFFS ARE KEPT BUSY IN THE PURSUIT. VASQUEZ THE MOST DARING RASCAL SINCE MURIETA'S DAY. HE IS HANGED AT SAN JOSE FOR A MURDER AT TRES PINOS.

Towards the close of the year 1873, and while warming up to the sub- ject of county seat removal, Millerton was given a great scare by Tiburcio Vasquez and his robber gang. It was not groundless as were the periodical Indian uprising reports started on the occasion of every pow-wow by the excitable located remote from the settlements. A considerable portion of the state was likewise agitated and for the same long suffered reason.

The robber gang came as near to Millerton as Jones' store, three miles below, and at Bliss' ferry at Kingston, being driven off here by armed citizens and leaving one bandit dead on the field. Sheriff's posses pursuing the robbers were out several times, but never with any result. Vasquez and his gang had become such a terror that the sheriffs of a half a dozen counties were in pursuit, and the state had offered such a large reward for capture, dead or alive, that speculative bands of man hunters were tempted to go on the trail. Millerton so confidently expected a robber visit that as a precautionary measure the two mercantile establishments expressed out all their unused money.

In the history of California highwaymen, this Vasquez made a record for himself second only to Murieta for notoriety and achievements. Ban- croft says that except "in skill of horsemanship and dexterity in catching and killing men," one was opposite to the other. Murieta was "of gentle blood, handsome, gay and chivalrous"; Vasquez, a "hybrid, half Indian, coarse, treacherous and brutish." His boyhood was "spent in taming wild horses, cutting flesh with bowie knives, and shooting, dancing the bolero and fandango, and betraying young damsels." Bancroft adds that he was "a

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be-deviled Don Juan at love, for repulsive monster though he was the dear creatures could not help following him."

Vasquez had selected Cantua Canyon, a defile in the Coast Range, near the New Idria mine, as a retreat and a starting point for robber descents. This was generally known and his proximity made the Millertonians so fearful of a visit as to necessitate especial watchfulness-"preparedness" as it were. Vasquez ended his career on the gallows in the Santa Clara County jail on March 19, 1875, for one in a series of murders in the raid of the store at Tres Pinos in San Benito County on the evening of August 26, 1873. He was not apprehended until March 14, 1874, near Los Angeles. The near- home robberies that so agitated Millerton were at Jones' November 10, and at Kingston December 26, 1873.

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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 24

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