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 25

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 25

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The Jones' affair occurred early in the evening, when ten or a dozen were smoking or playing cards in the store. Front and rear doors opened and three men entered with drawn and cocked revolvers. The inmates were ordered to lie down and keep quiet. They obeyed and submitted to be bound. Smith Norris, the clerk, was forced to open the safe and it was cleaned out. The robbers helped themselves to clothing, firearms and each to a saddle. Their visit lasted nearly an hour and a half, and when they departed they left the bound victims prone on the floor.

The store was on the main stage road at the ferry, and no house near save the hotel in rear. Jones was there, but had no inkling of what had gone on. The robbed were: John E. Bogg, John Gilmore, Capt. E. P. Fisher, Smith Norris, Jack Hazlett, H. Kohlman, John Fuqua, Hugh Clark, Walter Brown, John Berry and Bob Trumbull. All were searched. The old Chinese cook, who lay near Fisher, unbound him and he in turn liberated the others. Fisher took the information to town, arriving about eight thirty o'clock, and Sheriff Ashman and posse set out in fruitless pursuit on the following morning, which was a Tuesday. Raid enriched the robbers in goods and money to the value of $1,000.

For audacious daring, this exploit was surpassed in the little town of Kingston on the Kings River flowing along the southerly edge of the settle- ment and spanned by a bridge owned by O. H. Bliss. On the south side of the one street were two stores and a hotel, and fronting them to the north Bliss' bridge and stable. L. Reichert had the hotel. Stores were owned respectively by E. Jacob & Louis Einstein, and by S. Sweet. The robbers crossed the bridge on foot and encountering Bliss compelled him to lie down, tied his hands and feet and searched his person. He complained that his head was in an uncomfortable position, and a blanket was brought him for a pillow.

Next were halted John Potts, Pres Bozeman and Milt Brown near the stable yard gate. Bozeman and Potts laid down, but Brown objected and being marched to the hotel laid down there. Potts and Bozeman were searched and the last named yielded $180. The road being clear, a guard was placed at each store. In the hotel saloon were ten or more, who were made to lie down, tied and relieved of watches and money, realizing $100, besides Reichert's watch. In the dining room was Edward Douglass of Visalia, who would not lie down but being knocked down with a revolver lost money and watch. Launcelot Gilroy was at supper, when a bandit entered, where- upon Miss Reichert screamed and ran. Gilroy concluded he had insulted her, arose to his feet and gallantly floored the robber with a chair, but in turn was pounded with a pistol. .

At Jacob & Einstein, Edward Erlanger, the clerk, instead of lying down, ran to Sweet's store and gave the alarm. Sweet thrust his head out of the door, was seized by the guard, shoved back and made to lie down and be tied. After Erlanger's exit, Einstein was asked for the safe key, but pleaded that the clerk had it. He was forcibly prevailed upon to produce another, and the safe yielded about $800 cash. At Sweet's $54 had been secured, when

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the crack of a Henry rifle was heard, followed by another, and the guard sprang forward against the door, exclaiming, "I'm shot!" More shots fol- lowed and the robbers beat a hasty retreat across the bridge and scampered off on horses.

J. W. Sutherland and James E. Flood had learned what was going on and arming themselves arrived at the moment of the attack on Sweet's store. Flood armed with a revolver in which only one charge was left tried to head off the fugitives at the bridge, but failing gave them the parting shot. The robbers secured over $2,500 in money and jewelry. They bound and robbed thirty-five individuals. Great excitement prevailed, a crowd collected, but nothing was done in pursuit that night. Next morning Sutherland and others found about four miles from Kingston a Mexican in the brush and he con- fessed that he was one of the party.

He told a story in effect that he was going to Kingston for clothes, was overtaken by the party, robbed of $20 and then upon threat of death compelled to go on guard at the hotel. He disclaimed acquaintanceship with anyone in the party. Ignacio Ronquel, which proved to be the name of this fellow arrested near the California ranch, pleaded guilty before Judge Baley in February, saying he was "one of those fellows at Kingston." but he "did not go into the houses with the rest of them and attended the horses." He pleaded for mercy and it was meted out to him in ten years in the penitentiary.

Two weeks after the robbery, a party of Kingstonians satisfied that they could not have been such bad marksmen visited the California ranch and extorted information from an old Mexican suspected of knowing more of the late raid than he would volunteer to tell. He chose to remember that a Mexican named Ramona, a sheepherder, was killed in the affair and he pointed out his grave. The body was exhumed and one bull's eye was scored.

Not long after, the legislature appropriated $15,000 as a reward for the pursuit and capture of Vasquez and his gang and so many were in the field spurred by the offer that undoubtedly some of these amateur man chasers themselves overstepped legal bounds by threatening innocent Mexicans. The consul of Mexico made protest from San Francisco and Sheriff Ashman received this caution :

Sacramento, Cal., January 20, 1874.

TO SHERIFF OF FRESNO COUNTY: I understand from the Mexican Consul that the Mexican settlers of Las Juntas and Rancho California, near Palo Blanco, are threatened with vio- lence and their lives are in danger. You are required to protect them.

NEWTON BOOTH, Gov.

Twenty years or more elapsed between the bloody reigns of Murieta and Vasquez, though two decades also intervened between Vasquez's first and last murders. Tiburcio slew his first man at the age of fifteen and almost within the year after Joaquin's worldly exit.

Vasquez stole the wife of his most devoted follower, a cousin, but as Bancroft sarcastically pleads for him, "who could resist Vasquez, the adored of all, he who never sighed to senorita or senora in vain, the fleet of foot, the untiring dancer, the fearless rider, the bold brigand?" Vas- quez was cunning, had always ready conviviality for his comrades, money for the needy, and a smile for everybody. His personal magnetism and in- fluence over others are said to have been wonderful, and followers joined him because forsooth they could not resist him.

Vasquez was born at Monterey in 1835, of Indian and Mexican parentage, and was bold, cruel, alert and cautious. In 1859 he was a convicted horse stealer but escaped in June to be again convicted in August, his terms expiring in August 1863, when he walked forth free but not reformed. A third time was he convicted of cattle stealing in Sonoma in 1867 and he was immured at

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San Quentin until June 1870. Before this in 1865, he was wounded in the arm in a pistol duel with a Mount Diablo farmer with whose daughter he had eloped. In the autumn following his last penitentiary release, he and associates overran Santa Clara, Monterey, Fresno and Alameda counties, robbing stage passengers, plundering ranchos and running off horses in swift and startling succession. One associate was shot dead in a hand to hand battle with Sheriff Morse of Alameda, the others skedaddled to Mexico but shortly returned to San Francisco, where a new combination was formed and Cantua Canyon was selected as a retreat and refuge. It was once the favorite camp and shelter of Murieta.

In the hills here. Vasquez was comparatively safe. White settlers were few, and the native Californians almost to a man aided and befriended him, largely through fear. He was known to have appeared openly at the New Idria mine on various occasions. The law-abiding were prevented from doing anything towards bringing him to justice, fearing the consequences. It is probable that the Mexicans there would have resisted any attempt at an arrest. One superintendent permitted Vasquez from motives of policy to come to the mine as long as he committed no depredation there and Vasquez never did trouble the miners or cast covetous eye on their horses. Several attempts at capture were made by Sheriff Adams of Santa Clara, but on every occasion and in spite of disguise and the utmost secrecy, so Vasquez stated, he was apprised of Adams' movements and designs before half the journey was made.

The robber band halted the Visalia-Gilroy stage near San Felipe, robbed passengers, tied them, laid them on their backs in the field to face the sun for hours and drove the stage around a hill point out of view of travellers. They held up three or four teamsters en route to Hollister and later on the same day Vasquez alone robbed Thomas McMahon, later a Hollister leading merchant, of $750 in gold. These successive outrages stirred up the country and a Santa Cruz constable following on Vasquez's trail overtook him and in the fight both were severely wounded. Vasquez rode sixty miles to his hid- ing place in Cantua and arrived almost dead from loss of blood.

Weary of small game, the project was conceived of robbing a railway pay car between Gilroy and San Jose. Too slow however in the work of tearing up the track, the pay car train came ten minutes ahead of time and they scattered. At Tres Pinos, while the brigands ransacked Andrew Sny- der's store, Vasquez held "a bloody carnival outside" as watch. Among the slain Leander Davidson was shot in the heart with a bullet that pierced the door that he was closing and which the wife had opened to see what all the shooting outside meant. After the murderous raid in which Vasquez was such a conspicuous cold-blooded figure, seven horses were commandeered out of the stable and the gang hurried to its Cantua retreat.

Half a dozen sheriffs and their posses camped on the trail of Vasquez, and as a result of a plan for his capture he was surprised unarmed at the dinner table of a friend near Los Angeles. Leaping through a back window, he rushed for his horse but was struck by rifle ball after rifle ball, where- upon he threw up hands, faced his captors with blood streaming from wounds and surrendering said: "Boys, you have done well. I have been a damned fool !"

The capture, which was hailed with delight and joy the state over, was preceded by a series of bold robberies. His penny-a-liner biographer records that he was "betrayed for coin." May be so. Not until after he had partially recovered from his eight wounds was he transferred to San Jose's jail as Hollister afforded no secure guarding place. While the notorious bandit was in jail in San Jose, thousands visited him. He usually sat in a chair and with a smile gave all courteous reception, apparently taking delight in his position. His vanity was inordinate and whenever a young woman (half the visitors were of the weaker sex) would approach he appeared as pleased as a monkey 10

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at the present of a tin trumpet. He evidently regarded himself as a hero and from the false sympathy received from a portion of the other sex it is no wonder that his head was slightly turned.

He was tried in January 1875 for Hotelman Davidson's murder, the de- cision on appeal being rendered about two weeks before the day for the execu- tion. The day before, he asked to see the coffin and measured it with hands to satisfy himself that it would fit in length. Sheriff W. R. Rowland of Los Angeles received in June 1874 the state reward for the capture of "the most daring rascal since Joaquin Murieta's time."

CHAPTER XXXI

WATER FOR IRRIGATION AND THE ADVENT OF THE RAILROAD TWO POWERFUL AGENCIES IN THE UPBUILDING OF CITY AND COUNTY. SYCAMORE AS A PROJECTED RIVAL TOWN TO THE NEW COUNTY SEAT. FAILURE OF A GIGANTIC IRRIGATION PROJECT. RAILROAD EXACTED TRIBUTE FROM FARMER AND TOWNS. LELAND STAN- FORD'S PROPHECIES. FRESNO GIVEN ALL ENCOURAGEMENT BY RAILROAD BUILDERS. SYCAMORE PASSES OUT OF RECOLLECTION. HISTORIC TRANSACTION GIVING RISE TO THE FAMILIAR HARRIS LAND TITLE. RAILROAD COMES IN FOR FRESNO TOWNSITE.

But for the assurance of bringing water for irrigation on the plains and to the townsite, Fresno might not have been encouraged when and where it was. The water and the railroad came practically together. This fact should not be overlooked in a consideration of the first days of Fresno City.

Previous to 1866, there had been no notable appropriation or diversion of water from the Kings River, the stream which furnishes the major por- tion of the irrigation water of the county. The railroad that headed this way was the Stockton and Visalia division of the Central Pacific Railway, branch- ing off at Lathrop on the most direct and straight line through the valley counties.

Give ear to the doleful tales of early and later pioneers and one cannot imagine a more inhospitable spot on desert plain for the location of a com- munity or townsite. A "growing village" was a description of Fresno as late as 1881. On this barren plain, every want of man "from a pin to a gang plow had to be provided," as has been said. Every supply to the commonest necessary of life had to be transported from Stockton by freight train. In its infant days, Fresno was a railroad fostered town. Along the line, new towns sprang up to transform in the course of time the general character of the country and establish new lines of industry. The process was a tediously slow one, but the transformation came about in time.

The practice of the railroad was in connection with these new towns to sell off at public auction a given number of choice lots as a settlement nucleus. In the case of Fresno, no buyers rushed forward for lots at this "desolate and forlorn looking station," and the company magnanimously permitted new comers to squat on the lots and improve them with the understanding that they would pay for them if they concluded eventually to locate permanently. It was anything to give the new town a start and a beginning. There were however influences as potent as the bringing of water to the plains and the advent of the railroad working for the location on the desert plain of the great interior valley. The railroad, it may be conceded, had not contemplated a town, possibly nothing more ambitious than a station, where Fresno stands.

The fact is the Central Pacific had no generous government land grants through the valley, and therefore it was a beggar for land for townsites. It probably did not seriously consider planting a rival so close to its own town

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of Sycamore, afterward named Herndon for an humble Irish section-boss, on the south bank of the San Joaquin. Watson's Ferry, eight miles above Firebaugh on Fresno Slough, was the head of steamboat traffic on the San Joaquin in the days before irrigation, when the river was used for navigation. Small steamboats and light craft ascended as far as Sycamore, and there are rare old maps that mark the head of river navigation as at that point. Syca- more Station was a railroad creation and location of the year 1872, and it was deemed of sufficient importance to warrant a postoffice in September of that year with Charles A. Strivens as postmaster, the postoffice officially known as Palo Blanco, It was an important ferry crossing point for that section. Along in 1881 a new ferry scow was put on, sixty-five feet long by seventeen in width, described as "a better and more substantial affair than the old one."

The railroad laid out a town there, and it was thought that it would have a future with the completion of the big irrigation ditch out of the San Joaquin, abandoned in the end notwithstanding the fortune spent on it. It was at this point that the railroad bridged the river originally. Sycamore was for a time a divisional construction point, and a spur track was placed along the south bank to take out tons and tons of gravel for the ballasting of the road from Lathrop. It had been ballasted largely with sand and gravel brought from as far as Auburn in Placer County. The irrigation project re- ferred to must not be confounded with the Herndon Ditch as known at this date, but was the Herndon Canal. Evidences of it may be seen in the ditch along Big Dry Creek and the river bluff on the south side, and the dam remnants in the river.

It was a conception of the Upper San Joaquin Irrigation Company, and report has it that nearly three million dollars were sunk to demonstrate its impracticability. This project undertaken in 1880-82 was the largest and most ambitious irrigation plan attempted up to then in the county to divert from the river about four miles below old Millerton by means of a rock dam across the channel. It was designed to water 250,000 acres lying west of the rail- road. The dam was 800 feet long, calculated to raise the water in the channel six feet, canal to be twenty-five miles long and where crossing the railroad on the plains to be about twelve feet above the river bed. It proved a failure, because on account of the nature of the soil the ditch banks would not hold the water, and moreover the river dam was washed out several times by freshets so that the raise of water in the basin was never attained.

The Bank of California, which was heavily interested in the project for the marketing of its western plains lands in the territory now covered by Kerman, Barstow Colony and the agricultural neighborhood, completed the canal at a dead loss as the sequel proved. The canal was an engineering and construction failure. The original plan was to tap the stream at the rocky gorge below Millerton, where the Jenny Lind bridge bought by the county in February for $9,000, spanned the river for a generation, carry it through the rocky bluff tunnel and thus make the level of the plains. The cost of tunnelling estimated at about one million was deemed too high, and this plan was rejected for the one that was attempted to be put through and to make the level by running the canal along the bluff. Herein lay the weak feature, for the north side of the canal scooped out of the bluff would not stand. The water seeped into the loose soil and breaches many followed, letting out all the water. Repairs were made until patience was exhausted, and at best, when completed, the water could not be carried down more than five or seven miles. The project could have been saved by cementing the canal, but this meant another great outlay and Portland cement in those days was a costly import. Perhaps the bank concluded that to sink more money into the venture was throwing good coin after the bad and the undertaking was given up.

Activities centered at Sycamore, where the railroad had four sections of

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land, were sufficient to warrant the generally entertained belief that here it had resolved to build a town. Rival townsites were located by speculators, but nothing more tangible ever came of them save the platted maps recorded as reminders of the unrealized hopes of their projectors. So great were the expectations based on Sycamore that it is pathetic to look over in the county recorder's office the ponderous volume of 1,054 printed pages intended to record as many sales deeds by H. Deas as the agent and factotum of the high sounding Central California Land and Immigration Company. A book of printed deeds must needs be furnished to save the time and labor of copying work. It records twenty-two deeds to as many individuals of actual lot sales made in 1879.

With the prospect of a railroad after all the years of preparatory agi- tation, a few men had become the owners of liberal chunks of government scrip. They filed it on the best located plains tracts, also in the foothills and a speculation in Fresno lands opened. In this speculative field entered an association composed largely of wealthy Germans in San Francisco un- der the name of the San Joaquin Valley Land Association. It bought from William S. Chapman, whose ownership embraced 80,000 acres, as it had done also from others. A. Y. Easterby of Napa, later intimately associated with Moses J. Church, "the Father of Irrigation," as he has been called, in 1871 had contracted to cultivate 2,000 acres of the Easterby Rancho to wheat, Church to bring the water for irrigation from the Kings River. Every one awaited with anxiety the outcome of the Easterby wheat experiment.

The association was probably not the lever that moved the railroad mag- nates to favor the site of the future Fresno City, but its members were, and they were the medium through which an arrangement was made for a gift or a sale to the railroad of land including the townsite. The Fresno Canal and Irrigation Company had also become a verity and all things con- sidered there is probably color of truth for the story that when the canal had been extended to the ranch, not more than three miles from the town- site, the railroad people consulted with the canal projectors and were given the assurance that the plains at and around the town would and could be brought under water for irrigation.

The railroad was not a philanthropic movement. Indeed it is history that it demanded and exacted tribute from farmer as well as town in rights of way or subsidies and meted out punishment when the demands were not accorded. Stockton, which because of its location and at the head of water transportation could afford to assume an independent attitude, was threat- ened with a day when the grass would grow in its streets, and Lathrop was founded in opposition. Goshen was placed on the map as a train change station, because Visalia did not comply with the demand made upon it, and Sumner (East Bakersfield) was made a divisional point to spite Bakersfield for the same reason. With Fresno, the railroad was friendly and gave it en- couragement. Leland Stanford paid a visit in November, 1871, en route to Visalia and took a long distance view of conditions. It may have been on that occasion, according to the old story, that he uttered the confident pre- diction so many times quoted since that Fresno would be some day the best town on the railroad between Stockton and Los Angeles. If he ever made the prediction, it has been long verified.

Be that as it may, the visit had undoubted beneficial results. Easterby was earnestly progressing with his 2,000-acre wheat venture, the irrigation canal map had been recorded on June 9, 1871, and the Centerville ditch brought in in September. Stanford and accompanying officials were driven to the rancho to look over the situation, and there is another handed down story that as he stood on the later site of the station depot he indulged in another prophecy when he remarked to the Reception Committee: "Gentle- men, this town can never go bankrupt with a fund like that to draw on." He alluded to the waters of the two rivers and the melting snows of the

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Sierras that fed them. He was prescient in beholding in his mind's eye Fresno City as the great shipping point for a rich agricultural district.

At the rancho the sprouting grain was beheld-a veritable oasis in the desert-and they regarded it as a revelation, being, as they asserted, the first green spot that they had set eyes upon since leaving Stockton. "Here," said Stanford, "we must locate the town." The San Joaquin Valley Land Asso- ciation later did arrange for the sale on easy terms of the townsite, and in December, 1875, the Contract and Finance Company deeded as recorded to Charles Crocker 4,480 acres including the townsite of Fresno, excepting only the lots that had been before then sold and conveyed.

Incidently may be recalled the fact that the division never was pushed to Visalia, oldest and most important town in the valley, as old as 1852. Visalia was not so accommodating or compliant as Fresno. It ignored the demand for a 160-acre townsite donation. The railroad switched off on its projected line that was to come southward via Pacheco Pass and the West Side of Fresno and made its terminus at Tres Pinos in San Benito County. A switch off on the valley division was made to Goshen on the Tulare alkali waste, which like the famous mythical Shelbyville in Fresno County was simply a point on the railroad map.

Visalia secured railroad connection with the main line at Goshen by private enterprise, but eventually the main line swallowed it up when the San Joaquin Valley Railroad came through. Instead of the terminal at Visalia as contemplated, the division road was run due west via Hanford to Huron, then "a desolate waste" as was Fresno, given over to sheep graz- ing on the wild grasses and in later years to "dry farming."

Visalia had its revenge though, for in the construction of its line from Goshen to Tipton the railroad laid steel rails imported from Germany and shipped around the Horn, in violation of its grants conditioning that only American steel be used in rail laying. The Visalians exploited this depart- ure, and not to jeopardize its land grants the German rails were torn up and the home made article substituted.

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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 25

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