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 40

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 40

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

through Lone Star, De Wolf, Del Rey and Parlier to Reedley from which latter extends a branch northeast through Vino, Wahtoke to Piedra on the upper Kings where the magnesite mountain mine, the street-paving rock quarry and crusher are located, where canal companies take water from the stream and in which foothill region there is a well marked thermal belt. Main line headed south touches Oleander, Bowles with its colony of in- telligent and thrifty colored settlers from the south, Monmouth, Conejo and Laton, and out of the county. At Laton in the southwestern part the Laton & Western runs to Lanare as a feeder in a newly opened district. One mile southeast of Fresno is the railroad town of Calwa through which the Southern Pacific passes and where the Santa Fe has expended one million, it is said, for terminal switching facilities not to be had in the county seat, and for homes for railroad employes and those of industrial plants that time, it is hoped, will bring forth.

North of Clovis at El Prado is the terminus of the San Joaquin & Western, the unique mountain road to the great Power House No. 1 of the San Joaquin Light and Power Company. Its terminus is high up in the Sierras at Cascada where a stupendous construction feat was accom- plished in the erection of an immense dam to impound the waters of Big Creek to form Huntington Lake for the generation of electricity and its transmission for power and light. A mountain resort has been established at the lake. Much has been said and written about the Mount Lowe scenic rail- way at Los Angeles and the tortuous railway to the top of Mt. Tamalpais on San Francisco Bay, but neither can compare with the Fresno scenic railway in the ascent of the Sierra Mountains and on shelving mountain side fol- lowing for miles the winding course of the San Joaquin in its rugged and wild canyons. Its scenic pictures are bewildering. A feature of the road is that the rolling stock is not hauled up the snaky mountain track but is pushed up by the locomotive placed where one looks to find the homely caboose. The descent is by gravity with the locomotive in rear that the train may not run away. This mountain road serves all the accessible Sierra timber region on the San Joaquin River divide of the county. The story is told that the cost of blasting out the original wagon road, which the rail- way follows in its sinuous track, with the added construction, equipment and operation of the steam railroad was found to be a substantial saving in the estimated mountain freighting of the cement and the construction material for the dam, tunnels and big power house, wherefore the San Joaquin & Western was conceived as an economy.

274

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

CHAPTER XLVII

INCORPORATED CITIES OF THE COUNTY NUMBER NINE. NEWNESS OF THE TOWNS ON THE PLAINS WITH FRESNO AS OLDEST LOCATED AND FIRST TO INCORPORATE. SETTLEMENTS EXISTING BEFORE 1872 ARE MEMORIES OF THE PAST. CLUSTERS OF POPULATION BEFORE 1880. EARLIER TRADING POINTS RECALLED TO MIND. WITH MADERA'S DIVORCE IN 1893 WENT THE EARLY HISTORI- CAL REGION OF FRESNO COUNTY NORTH OF SAN JOAQUIN RIVER.

Incorporated towns and villages in the county today are nine with the date of and vote on incorporation as follows :

Election Date Vote Cast

Fresno.

September 29, 1885

277-185

Selma.

March 4, 1893

124 -- 54

Coalinga

March 26, 1906 99. . 28

Kingsburg

May 11, 1908.

72- . 34

Fowler

May 25, 1908.

74 63

. Sanger

May 9, 1911

130-104

Clovis.

February 15, 1912.

169- 83

Reedley

February 14, 1913

310-104

Firebaugh September 10, 1914 56- 7

Fresno is also the oldest town in the county reckoned from the year 1872 when townsite was staked and located, unless you would include moribund Centerville in the Kings River bottom lands and Firebaugh in association with the ferry of the same name established in the earlier days, which would place Fresno third in the list. If not, Kingsburg would be the second oldest, having been founded in 1873 as a grain shipping station. At any rate not any of the nine incorporated population centers today are con- nected with the pioneer history of the county. With the location of Fresno on the plains, the center of population also changed, the county began a new historical era and all before became practically a sealed and closed book, so all comprehensive were the changes that followed.

This accounts for the comparative newness of the towns on the plains. The settlements before 1872 are today little more than memories, decaying and toppling ruins, as notably Centerville, Kingston, Tollhouse, Dunlap, Herndon, Millwood, etc., besides all the roadside hamlet stations, once bus- tling spots but perpetuated today only in post office names and stores. The cutting off of the territory north of the San Joaquin to the Chowchilla to form Madera County in 1893 bereft Fresno of its principal historical region, leaving only the strips immediately about Millerton and Centerville and the Pine Ridge region to link it with the past. Even the Fresno River is in another county, so is the historical Chowchilla and so is Madera, once the largest town next to the county seat, and Borden. Fine and Coarse Gold and Grub Gulches, and all the other mining camp locations that contributed to earliest history even to the last resting place of Major James D. Savage, the most picturesque character in the region's annals.

In January. 1879, the postoffices in the county-towns or settlements as they were denominated-were: Berenda, Borden, Buchanan, Big Dry Creek, Fresno, Fresno Flats, Firebaugh, Huron, Kings River, Kingsburg, Kingston, Liberty, Madera, New Idria, Panoche, Tollhouse and Wildflower -seventeen in all and six of these not now in the county. To dispose first of the six :

275

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

SETTLEMENTS BEFORE 1880

Berenda called into existence in June, 1872, when Leroy Dennis, former sheriff, erected store and hotel, is still a station on the Southern Pacific Railroad and was terminal for the mail stage route to Buchanan and Fresno Flats, located in the mountains forty miles from Fresno. It is a relic of the past.

Borden, seventeen miles from Fresno and on the line of the Southern Pacific, was a busy station when Fresno was a barren plain. Its settlement was in 1868, and in 1873 as post office and trading point for the Alabama Settlement of Southerners, which ended in a fiasco. Borden aspired to be county seat to succeed Millerton. With the failure of colony, it was prac- tically abandoned. It was overshadowed at best by its proximity to Madera. and existing today only as a railroad point on map lives in a dead past. R. Borden was Central Pacific Railroad agent and R. P. Mace the hotelman in 1876-78. It was dignified once in a description as "the metropolis of Fresno County."

Buchanan's glory has long departed. Located in the northern foothills, it was called into life by the discovery of copper ore veins, notably the Ne Plus Ultra. Much money was spent in development but high cost of labor and transportation made the venture unprofitable. In the vicinity ranching, sheep and stockraising were followed. H. C. Daulton had near here his large and valuable Poverty ranch, and Buchanan boasted of a $2,000 school- house.

Fresno Flats is today a tumble-down mountain camp near the head of the Fresno River in a farming, mining, lumber and stock raising country. The Yosemite road passed it and the head of the Madera flume is eight miles away. Discovered quartz outcroppings once promised a future never realized. T. J. Allen was postmaster and general merchant, R. T. Burford lawyer and Thurman & Dickinson lumber men there in 1876-78. Smaller camps in the hills to the south and east in the 80's were Michael's and Walker's ranches, Brown's store and Oro Fino.

As the child of a flume enterprise, Madera, twenty-eight miles northwest of Fresno, was laid out in 1876 by the California Lumber Company on the south side of the Fresno River on the Central Pacific line, as the terminus of the first great lumber flume from the mountain pineries forty-five miles distant. Its population in 1882 was about 500, and until the formation of Madera County of which it became the seat was the second largest and most flourishing town in Fresno County. R. P. Mace, who represented this county in the legislature at two sessions, was the pioneer settler securing in September, 1876, first choice at the auction of town lots and located thereon the hotel bearing his name and facing the railroad depot. The Madera Flume and Trading Company supplanted the California in 1878, and has continued as one of the dominant industrial enterprises of the town. Madera was the terminus for the stage route to the Yosemite Valley and Big Trees. It is a thriving community centered in good farming land, much of which was held in large undivided parcels. It was a political center while a part of Fresno County with ambitions not to be satiated save through county division. Seven miles south was located the much advertised John Brown Colony enterprise of 3,500 acres in five-acre farm lots. The industries and enterprises that give life to Madera are on the same lines as those of the parent county. For years after first settlement mining, stock raising and grain farming ruled in turn and orchard and vineyard demonstrations brought about a transformation. It had in 1900 a population of 1,500. The Fresno River is the principal irrigation water supply, helped out by the north fork of the San Joaquin, and Big Dry Creek as a tributary of the Merced.

276

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

New Idria was at the quicksilver mine in San Benito County in a region fit otherwise only for grazing. Inhabitants were mostly Cornish miners and Mexicans, the latter numbering 500 at times when the furnaces were in full operation. Stage line from Hollister via Big Panoche connected it with the outside world. New Idria was by annexation of territory lost to Fresno sequestered as it was in a remote pocket corner. The mine was long idle during the costly litigation to the United States Supreme Court of the McGarrahan title claim. Three quicksilver furnaces were in operation in 1875. These were the $5,000 plant of the Little Panoche of 1874, the $10,000 of 1873 of the Cerro Gordo in Moody Canyon and the $100,000 of 1858 of the New Idria on Silver Creek.

Raymond in Madera was laid out by C. G. Miller in April, 1889, as the terminus town of the Yosemite division of the Southern Pacific from Berenda completed in the spring of 1885. The famous granite quarries are located near here. The staging and freighting that once animated Raymond exists no longer, Yosemite travel having been diverted and the mines and settle- ments in this section, once in the northeastern part of this county, depopulated.

FRESNO EARLIER TRADING POINTS

The old settlements of Fresno County were ephemeral and characteristic of the unsettled state of the times with their industrial revolutions. Not one has survived to become a notable factor in the subsequent great develop- ment of the county.

The first settlement in the extensive Dry Creek stock and farming com- munity dates back to 1852 with John G. Simpson, W. L. L. Witt and William Harshfield, the latter returning later to Arkansas and Witt removing to the San Joaquin River. In 1856 they raised hay for sale to the Fort Miller garrison and then sold possessory ranch title to C. P. Converse, who for three years raised fodder for the fort and became a settler. The region was dotted with cross road trading stores, such as Jensen's among others, with a post office established at Big Dry Creek in 1870. In this foothill region were the settlement groupings of Academy named for the pioneer incorpo- rated school, Mississippi for the settlers from that state and Big Dry Creek. Irrigation never was run to this stretch of the county. It was the great dry farming region and prominent in the days of cattle and sheep. The Collins brothers had store, shearing and dipping corral at Collins' Station, also a stage halting point. Above Academy is a fine quarry of granite. The Dry Creek region was prominent in early days socially, and industrially and in all the better attributes of settlers in a new country.

Firebaugh's Ferry on the San Joaquin was named for A. D. Firebaugh, who died in June, 1875, and years before conducted a ferry there. The vil- lage has been a dependent upon the great Miller & Lux cattle ranch along the river and the later grain and alfalfa and stock farms. It is one of the oldest sheep shearing stations for the annual season of six weeks. The Italian population predominates. At high water light steamers ran up the river in earlier days as far as Whitesbridge, ten miles above on Fresno Slough, though practical navigation ended at the ferry drawbridge. It is not denied that town incorporated to place itself beyond the operation in the district of the Wylie local option law.

Huron as the terminus of the Southern Pacific branch running west from Goshen was located in a desolate waste and has stood absolutely at a standstill. Considerable farming in cereals is done here with results in wet seasons: otherwise it is a sheep grazing region as most of the West Side land of the county is where petroleum has not been discovered. Huron was described in 1890 as "an embryo settlement." It has never passed that stage. A time was when trains ran beyond it to Coalinga three times a week.

277

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

Centerville or Kings River as the post office designated this pioneer settlement on the Upper Kings, was once the principal stopping place on the Stockton-Visalia line. With abandonment of the route and later location of the near by lumber mill town of Sanger on a branch railroad from Fresno the settlement has been buried in its past. Centerville is today a collection of ruinous, weather and time beaten, toppling rookeries of a past era. It had in 1882 a population of about 800, besides 300 Indians, one of the two reser- vations of early days having been located near here. Settlement was orig- inally named Scottsburg, a name changed to Centerville about 1870, and the post office serving all the Upper Kings River country. It was once the center of population of the county, outrivalling Millerton and controlling the county's political destinies. It had a flouring mill antedating the one at Selma, pioneered in irrigation because of its proximity to the river but was also subjected to inundations in wet winters in its bottom land loca- tion, which was considered unsurpassed for corn. The thrice moved settle- ment is located about sixteen miles from Fresno and at the base of the foothills bordering on the Kings. Jesse Morrow erected in 1872 the three- story Centerville flouring mill at a cost of $22,000, using in the construction part of Sweem's mill further up on the stream. Centerville is the pioneer orange growing district. Its navel orange has high repute. It is largely populated by Japanese in the citrus nursery industry. In 1879 Fresno alone exceeded the old settlement in population. Centerville and its people con- tributed much to the county's history making. It was thought for years to be the center of the valley until survey accorded the distinction to the county seat.

Saloonless Kingsburg on the line of the Southern Pacific, twenty miles southeast of the county seat and one mile and a half from the river for which named, was founded in August, 1873, by Josiah Draper, who moved to what was then called Kings River Switch run by the railroad on his land. He erected the first habitation of posts set in the ground and covered with willow brush. His purpose was to freight with teams to Jacobs & Einstein, merchants at Kingston west of the railroad. Some forty-eight carloads of grain raised in the vicinity of Grangeville were shipped from the switch during the season. The next nearest settlement was Centerville, only one other farmer having located near the switch to raise grain hay. The first store in the town was Simon Aaron's in the basement of Farley's hotel, the second Simon Harris' in a structure erected for him, and the third was a saloon. In the fall the railroad erected a station house cubby, a post office was established called Wheatville with Andrew Farley as postmaster, and Wells, Fargo & Company opened an office with Harris as agent. In the winter of 1874-75 two sections of land were put to wheat and barley.

Irrigation was agitated in the spring of 1875 and twenty-four of the settlers organizing with the Fresno Canal and Irrigation Company started work on June 21, 1875, on a canal. Eighteen months elapsed because of the heavy work before water was brought up, and about this time the village name of Wheatville was changed to Kingsburg. Water was sold to incor- porators for $250 per right represented in labor, and an annual tax of twenty- five dollars per share. Two dry seasons retarded the progress of the town. In 1878 another company was formed and ditch pushed to completion in a dry summer. Water changed the drear aspect of the country and in 1880 16,000 acres were in grain in the vicinity, yielding 4,000 tons, with about a third more in 1881. In 1882 Kingsburg had a population of about 400, and was a grain shipping point, having in 1881 in three warehouses 7,000 tons or fourteen million centals of the grain output of the vicinity. Village was shipping point for the Tulare country and the Laguna de Tache grant, and a busy little place as a stage line station. Louis Einstein and Leo Gundel- finger were pioneer general merchants. It was an early beneficiary from irrigation in the Centerville and Kingsburg Irrigation Ditch Company. Lo-

278

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

cated today in a fertile fruit and grape section, it is one of the loveliest vil- lages, and is a strong religious and moral community, the home of thrifty, industrious Swedes induced to locate through the efforts of the late F. D. Rosendahl. Kingsburg and Riverside colonies are prosperous syndicate enterprises.

Kingston on the south bank of the river and twelve miles from Kings- burg was located in a fine body of farming land but held in large tracts for stock raising. Edward Erlanger erected a store there in 1875, but it was long before that the Kings River ferry crossing for all that section of country on the southern highway of travel back to very early days. It counted in 1876 one general store, two hotels, saloon, livery stable and sev- eral residences, and as late as 1879 was accounted "some place" with three hotels, of G. N. Furnish, John Potts and Louis Reichert. It was the scene of one of the Vasquez holdups. It is not on the railroad, wherefore Kingsburg extinguished its future, while later Laton displaced it as the trading point for the Laguna de Tache. Kingston is recalled only for its past.

Riverdale, formerly known as Liberty Settlement, changed its name about 1875. It is located about twenty miles from Fresno near Cole's Slough, a branch of the Kings and ten miles from Kingsburg. It is an alfalfa and dairying country.

Panoche Valley post office and settlement was established in 1870 with R. Burr as postmaster in a fertile and broad nook in the Mt. Diablo chain of the Coast Range on the West Side of the county. Stock raising and farming were and are the pursuits. All this country is now tributary to Coalinga.

Tollhouse, picturesquely located at the foot of the first mountain of the Sierra base, is thirty-two miles from Fresno and was in its day a bustling lumber depot and shipping point for the mills on Pine Ridge. Its 1868 found- ers were Henry Glass as blacksmith and A. C. Yancey as the hotelkeeper. In 1882 250 and more found employment and had homes there, and it had a tri-weekly stage mail service. M. J. Donahoo built there in 1876 a steam planing mill. Thousands have traveled over the old Pine Ridge road to the pineries in the Sierras, chartered in 1866 and sold to the county in 1878, with the stage line and the freighting traffic with the mills adding to the life of the place. Tollhouse was to the Sierra lumber region what Miller- ton was to the county, Centerville to the Upper Kings, Dry Creek to the foothill region, and Kingston to the Lower Kings. Many a pioneer lies at rest in the little cemetery there.

Wildflower, postoffice name of Duke Settlement on the Emigrant Ditch, twelve miles south of Fresno, was a cattle and grain country. Its original settlers were people from the South. General farming and stock raising followed up irrigation.

In 1876-78 Millerton was still classed in statistical works as a town of Fresno but with the fort as the postoffice and Charles A. Hart as postmaster. It was hoped that it would not "entirely disappear" as a town with its mines, forests and fertile soil surroundings but in vain. Its Chinese quarter held out to the very last. In 1879 it was a deserted village beyond the wildest hope of resurrection short of a miracle.

Markwood Meadows in the high mountains, fourteen miles east of Toll- house on the stockmen's earliest trail to the Sierras, form a plateau of preserved virgin forest land and for years have been a favorite summer re- sort for campers, as was Dinkey Creek in the same locality. With the de- nudation of the timber by the mills, the Meadows are a veritable mountain oasis.

Pleasant Valley in the mountain range with New Idria and Panoche was a flourishing stockraising settlement. It is an agricultural tributary to Coalinga.

279

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

Sycamore located in 1872, postofficed in September as Palo Blanco, was a ferry station on the south bank of the San Joaquin at the head of river navigation. Much was expected of it, but the location of Fresno and the failure of the big irrigation enterprise on the river doomed it.

Watson's Ferry as the head of steamboat navigation on the San Joaquin. eight miles above Firebaugh on Fresno Slough, was a busy shearing station, 200,000 sheep having been sheared in a season.

Whitesbridge, ten miles above Firebaugh on Fresno Slough, derives its name from the bridge erected by James R. White, who came a pioneer to Fresno from Mariposa. It was a sheepshearing station, the clip shipped to market by steamer. It is a stock and alfalfa country.

CHAPTER XLVIII

PHANTOM SHELBYVILLE RECALLS A WIDESPREAD SWINDLE OF THE LAND BOOM DAYS. IT WAS A LOTTERY CONCEPTION OF AN EAST- ERN CIRCUIT THEATRICAL MAN. TOWN HAD NO EXISTENCE SAVE IN THE MIND AND ON A FILED MAP. SITE HAS LONG RE- VERTED TO THE STATE FOR UNPAID TAXES. NOT FOR YEARS HAVE THE LOTS BEEN ON THE ASSESSMENT ROLL. FRESNO AS THE FIRST TOWN INCORPORATED IN THE COUNTY. CHANCE DISCOV- ERY OF EARLIEST RECORDED TOWNSITE ON DRY CREEK IN 1865.

Shelbyville? Have you never heard of the phantom town in Fresno that had existence only in an imaginative brain, and on a beautifully designed plat in the county recorder's office?

Shelbyville has been a standing joke at the county courthouse since about 1890 to recall one great swindle of the land boom era, for there were others as the Holland Colony scheme. Hundreds have had deeds to Shelby- ville town lots, and mailing them for recording from all parts of the United States on the bare supposition that they had a valuable present or prospec- tive property learned sorrowfully that they had long before forfeited to the state for non-payment of taxes, and title deed was not worth the postage wasted on the letter of inquiry. Every now and then one of these deeds comes by mail to the surface with anxious inquiry as to the value of the lot or lots that it calls for. So numerous once were these inquiries that the recorder had printed slips run off of a newspaper account of the story of Phantom Shelbyville and printed slip was sent to enlighten the inquirer. Shelbyville is a part of the history of the land boom in Fresno, when $100 was paid in gold for what in land would normally have been worth at most ten dollars.

Shelbyville was the brilliant conception of a theatrical man on the circuit of the Central states as Indiana and Illinois, Ohio and Nebraska. Having drifted through Fresno, he conceived the idea of tempting people to his show with a gift lottery proposition in which Fresno County, then springing into prominence as an agricultural country, flowing with milk and honey, was to figure. Every one patronizing his show was given opportunity to become a lot owner in Shelbyville, Fresno, Cal., so beautifully and regu- larly laid out on plat as a city within close distance from the Raisin Center. The townsite was and is a desert waste. There are never lacking people with eyes wide open to secure something for nothing, and these wise ones argued that if they could obtain a town lot for nothing in Sunny California and in the great and fertile San Joaquin Valley they could either sell out- right for a good sum of money or take possession and await destiny.

280

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

The philanthropist who was deeding away lots thus had good title, and in fact made more money out of the scheme than has any owner of a lot in the visionary town. The highest value ever placed during the boom times on a Shelbyville lot was four dollars, and the big hearted, aforesaid philanthropist collected almost as much from every lot owner for deed, notarial attestation and seal. Hundreds of such deeds are in the recorder's office with recording fee unpaid. The greater part of the townsite is owned by the state, having reverted to it for delinquent taxes. Lots are not worth the taxes assessed against them, and how little that is may be computed on an assessed four-dollar valuation, the highest ever placed on them, with a rate of one dollar and twenty-five cents to one dollar and forty cents on the $100. If all the taxes on deeded lots were paid, it would not compensate for the services of the deputy's handling of the assessment book covering the property.

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

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 40

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