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 45

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 45

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Yet another interesting and semi-historical visitor to Fresno in May 1910 was R. M. Brereton, M. I., C. E., who pioneered irrigation in this state forty years ago and at the time of visit at the age of eighty years was pioneer- ing pump irrigation. He has been referred to as "The Father of Irrigation" and on that visit was leisurely making a tour of California, proud of "his child," as he remarked. Included in his itinerary was a trip to Coalinga to behold the famous Mohawk oil gusher of the day.

After building railroads in India, Brereton came to California in the late 60's and later interested W. C. Ralston of the Bank of California in irrigation in this state and also presented the subject to President U. S. Grant and Secretary of State J. G. Blaine. One result of his early recognition of the possibilities of utilizing the snow of the Sierras on the parched and waterless plains was the present reclamation system of the United States. Of those who then made a report on irrigation in California in 1872 were living in 1910, Mr. Brereton and Prof. George Davidson of the Coast and Geodetic Survey (since deceased).

Mr. Brereton surveyed this valley for a comprehensive system of irriga- tion in the early 70's and built the West Side Canal from Firebaugh to Los Banos. This system is worth thousands today to Miller & Lux. Ralston and others were the financial backers and to evidence his own faith in the project, Brereton invested all his money in the ditch amounting to $40,000. Then the bank collapsed one day and Ralston found surcease in the waters of San

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Francisco bay at North Beach, off Selby's smelting works east of Black Point, now Fort McDowell. In the smash up, Brereton sought to recover his money or some portion of it out of the ditch. He approached Charles Lux on the subject. The latter would only offer $1,000. It was that or nothing. The ditch proved such a profitable enterprise that it was one of the assets that helped to reestablish the bank through its large land investments.

The M. J. Church system of irrigation in this county followed the plans of Brereton but it was for others to reap the financial profits. In the early irrigation days Brereton knew well the late M. Theo. Kearney as a clerk in San Francisco with W. S. Chapman, land speculator. He induced Kearney to come to Fresno and settle on the FruitVale Estate. Later in London this early acquaintanceship was renewed but Kearney was to him the man of mystery as he was with every one. Brereton last made his home at Port- land, Ore., and was the author of a paper on "Well Irrigation for Small Farms," having particular reference to the great valleys of California and Oregon.

In May 1872 it was, as stated, that the Contract and Finance Company as a subsidiary of the Central Pacific Railroad surveyed and staked out the ground on which the town of Fresno was located. The lots were 50x150. Water was no nearer than the San Joaquin and the Kings Rivers. A more desolate, discouraging spot could not elsewhere have been found. It is tradition that Capt. A. Y. Easterby and Moses J. Church were anxiously consulted by the railroad builders and they gave solemn assurances that water would be conveyed to the new town in time. Water was a necessity. The town to be inhabitable must have drinking water supply, being then served by car tanks. It was essential for irrigation in the reclamation of the soil as a supporting and sustaining background for the projected city. Of the possibility of the soil located near water, or as the result of copious winter rains, or where water had been conveyed to it in the few and notable experi- ments that had been made no doubt was entertained, and raisins and fruit not thought of yet. Upon the water problem hung the future of the town. Its railroad founders staked their all on water to make Fresno the produce shipping point of the great interior valley.

The arid aspect of the plains was not to be wondered at. The sandy parched and dry soil, the relentless sun beating down on them, the remote- ness from water and streams made people honestly dubious as to the agri- cultural future of these plains, and the city planted on that desert plain. Early settlers dug wells to depths of forty, sixty, and 100 feet to tap the drinkable water strata. One of the first notable wells was at Fleming's stable- yard at Mariposa and H. It was the gauge for years for noting the rise of the water level with the bringing of irrigation water to saturate the soil. Water in that well tapped at forty feet or more rose to fifteen feet from the surface as the result of irrigation. This was the experience also in the country sur- rounding the city to which ditches were run.

This irrigation which was the agency in the reclamation of the desert land to make it wondrously prolific has also been the means of ruining acres of the most fertile cultivated land. Show places of the days of yore are to- day abandoned to Bermuda and salt grass and will grow naught else, because impregnated with the alkali that an overabundance of water and the raising of the levels brought to the surface. A problem is to reclaim once more this land and make it again cultivable and profitable. Equally as important the regulation and control of the subterranean levels against return to the desert and profitless wastes.

About 1910, the Chamber of Commerce and kindred bodies began an agitation for a canal to drain through Selma, Fowler, Fresno, Kerman and all the land on to the slough on the west side of county miles away. The dire consequences of raised water levels were pointed out. It was predicted by experts and observers that the country about Fresno would become a

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swamp unless the drainage canal were built. The country faced then a drought. There had been seasons with only about six inches of rain-no satu- ration of soil and no deposit and packing down of snow for the irrigation season. Irrigation water was not overplenty. The dry season brought about the installation of pumps operated by electric, steam and wind power. Each season added to the number of pumps installed to be independent of the seasonal variations. Population was ever increasing. Canal company water supply was irregular when water was most in demand. Canal company sold more water rights than it could serve. Aside from the agricultural demands, city water systems pumped an ever increasing home and municipal supply. In 1908 Fresno City cellars deeper than six feet were necessarily cemented to keep water out.

When the subway on Fresno street was built across the railroad reserva- tion for traffic to the western side of the city because of the railroad's block- ing of the nearest other street crossings from the city's commercial center, the contractors described it as a great concrete ship floating in an under- ground sea. It was literally true. The water table was lowered at least fifteen feet. In West Park, ten miles from the city, the table, except in the vicinity of the city sewer farm, lowered from four to ten feet. In the Kerman district standing at four feet in many places, it lowered twelve to twenty. · George C. Roeding installed tile drain system on his east of Fresno farm and will never have need of it with the lowering of the table. Billions of cubic feet of water once in the soil about Fresno have disappeared wafted into the air. Acreage of irrigated land has doubled in a decade. There is no more irrigation water now than there was then. But the ground water has been drawn up, spread on the surface, taken up by the plants and verdure and dissipated.

Estimated it is that it takes 500 to 800 pounds of water to make a pound of dry matter as hay or corn, raisins or a crop of watermelons. An acre of alfalfa producing ten tons of hay would, if it could reach all the surface water it needs in the production of that hay, reduce the water level from fifty to sixty feet, taking all the soil water that could be contained in fifty feet of soil under 160 rods in the production of those ten tons. These figures illus- trate what would result with this soil water with no application to the surface and no underground flow. Before irrigation in the county the water table was forty to 100 feet from the surface. Pump irrigation was considered im- practical. In the Dos Palos district, Miller & Lux forbade pumping water for irrigation for the reason that the water in the soil was placed there by them and to take it up was to infringe upon their rights. In the foothill orange districts wells that started at twenty-five feet are as low as 200. A test well in the Kerman district to gauge pumping possibilities lowered the table for a half mile around as determined by small test wells. After several weeks of operation of this pump the table in the vicinity was drawn down from four to seventeen feet, the depth decreasing gradually over the radius of half a mile.

Increased cost of water must result from a lowering of water in the wells in the increased cost of sinking them and of lifting the water. Increased irri- gation cost lowers the land value and decreases the profits. The solution offered is in storage of flood water with drainage canal to offset the land depreciation and reduced crop production with decreased profits. The prac- tical operation of such a drain was one of the arguments in favor of the con- necting canal between Fresno and the river in the agitation for the opening to navigation of the San Joaquin to give Fresno water transportation to compete with a reduction of freight rates against the discriminating terminal point charge. It is one of the strong arguments being made in support of the Pine Flat and other flood water impounding projects.

A popularly entertained belief going back to early days and strengthened by so oft repetition in Chamber of Commerce and other boom literature that it has been accepted as a fact is that Fresno County is the geographical center

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of the state and Fresno the center of that center because the center stone is there within her limits in a surveyor's monument in Russiantown, across the track, in the alley between C and D, just south of Kern, and not far from the Japanese Buddhist mission building. This block of stone has been the subject of conjecture and discussion for years. The markings on the stone disclose its purpose. On the top is the chiseled legend :

LONGITUDE AND LATITUDE MARK U. S. Geographical Survey West of the 100th Meridian War Dept.

An "S" (South) on one side and an "N" (North) on the other mark the bearings of the stone. It may mark the geographical center of the state. It it does not, no need of splitting hairs from an engineer's or surveyor's view point. It comes very nearly marking that center and the monument has been accepted as the state's center stone. It has been so regarded as far back as 1876 and who will gainsay it today and shatter a popularly accepted myth?

The townsite's streets were laid parallel with or at right angles with the railroad running on a due line northwest and southeast. The section corner which is the accepted basis for all surveys is reputed to be in the center of K Street, a few feet north of what would be the present property line on Mariposa Street extended across to the courthouse park. At any rate there was there once upon a time a post set in charcoal to preserve it from the rotting in the soil's moisture, but post was splintered and ground down by traffic. Charles C. Baley is authority for the statement that he and Gus Whitthouse carried a broken iron axle from Simon W. Henry's smithy at Tulare and J to the spot, set it up in place in the charcoal with top showing a few inches above the surface, rammed back the wooden post to steady it and that later when streets were graded and hollows filled in the section axle mark was buried under several feet of surface soil. The point is the common corner of north Sections 3 and 4 and south Sections 9 and 10, 14 S., 20 E., M. D. M. The line between Sections 9 and 10 were it run from Blackstone Avenue on would come to the corner; carried on would bisect the Bank of Italy building at Tulare and J Streets and con- tinted across town would strike the line of Elm Avenue to the south.

There was an extensive depression in this vicinity, running clear across the Fresno Street side of the courthouse reservation and so low that in rainy season a large pond of rain water formed, and it is recalled that the small boy, who was in existence even in that day, navigated the pond on rafts and in punts.

At the northeast corner of the property at Stanislaus and J stands a plain granite monument with elevation above the sea level. It is the guide for establishing official street grades and sewer levels of the city. The elevation at this point is 292.50 above sea level. Tradition is that presumably the Coast and Geodetic Survey placed other such bench marks about town, but that this is the only known one now.

Fresno City in its early days, and for years after for that matter, was admittedly the sorriest and most woe-begone little settlement on the map. Town was located on and a pretense of cross streets was made on the ground as it was when a vast prairie, with all the natural water courses left intact and no effort to grade or level humps, bumps or hog wallows that the sweep of the wind over the limitless plain had raised or scooped out. Mariposa Street, the main artery, was a rough depression, billowy, dusty in dry weather and in winter a mud hole for its three blocks to the railroad station.

GEOGRAPHICAL CENTER OF CALIFORNIA

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Mariposa and J was a deep depression and there the Grand Central was afterward located. It has today a full basement underground. The depression stretched across the block to the Ferguson print shop in the hollow at J and Tulare, said shop on stilts to bring it four or five feet to the surrounding level and then with steps entrance.

Mariposa and H was another large depressed area with the railroad reservation block, now a park, a great hole in which winter rains were im- pounded. Eventually it was filled in with coal clinkers and general scraps and refuse. The wonder is that anything will grow in that park with the thin soil surface. This reservation block was such a pitfall that after night no one dared traverse its footpaths, even only to go to the hotels facing it on H Street, without being lantern lighted. Near the townsite to the north was the sink on the plains of the waters of Dry Creek. Along Mariposa Street property owners set up on stilts and props lumber or packing box walk-paths. These were at levels according to the original conformation of the ground. A promenade along these walks was a continuous stepping up and down, according to whether walk was in depression or on bump. Off the four or five main blocks, there was not even the semblance of these makeshifts. It was a beautiful vista of flat land and space. There was so little to obstruct the vision beyond the clustering shacks nearest the rail- road station that the small boy played hide-and-seek in the close by first cemetery to take advantage of the few graves as places of concealment. Horses and cows but especially canines and hogs roamed the village at will.

In August, 1872, there was no postoffice in Fresno. Mail was brought sixteen miles. Russell J. Fleming was appointed the first postmaster in September and located the office in livery stable at Mariposa and H, where the Kutner & Goldstein stores were afterward built. In November the town had four hotels and eating houses (all presumably with bars attached), three livery stables, three saloons and two stores. The railroad construction gang of track graders and track layers was housed in tents along its work. The freight depot platform was located along the reservation between Kern and Inyo. In July, 1874, there were fifty-five buildings of all kinds in the village, including the Expositor shop which had been moved from Millerton.

Contrast that Fresno of 1872 with the city of 1918 and recall what the traveling salesman said:

"I have been in the merchandising business for twenty years as a general sales manager and have traveled all over the United States, Canada and Central America. I cannot recall a city anywhere in the United States that has made the rapid and substantial growth that Fresno has. I do not know of a city anywhere with the same population that is as clean and as up-to-date. This growth has been caused by the prosperity of the people and in turn this prosperity has been due to the fact that people have organ- ized and put their business on a solid footing with something back of it. A stranger within the city for the first time has not to ask whether business is good in Fresno. All he has to do is to look up and down the streets and note the hundreds of automobiles parked on either side, then look at the parking space around the courthouse square. Note also the character of the cars parked there. By far the greater number of them are 'automobiles,' few 'flivvers.' All of this denotes prosperity."

According to the state motor vehicle department the registration figures show Fresno County to stand fourth in automobile registration. Considering its population this is an encouraging report on the wealth and prosperity of the residents. Los Angeles County with its many beaches, ten times the county's population, millionaire colonies and boulevards leads with triple the number of its nearest competitor San Francisco, Alameda County with its bay cities to draw from is third and Fresno in the valley and distant the

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greater part of a day's journey from the bay is fourth. Here are the official figures :

Los Angeles County 91,731

San Francisco County 30,568

Alameda County 20,658

Fresno County 15,641

Butte County

13,076

San Diego County 10,725

Santa Clara County 10,164

Total Automobiles in California, in 1918.

311,634.

CHAPTER LIII

FIRST BEGINNINGS IN THE BUILDING UP OF FRESNO CITY. ITS GROWTH FOR TEN YEAR PERIOD WAS A SLOW ONE. LIVERY STABLE AND SALOON PERIODS IN THE VILLAGE. ACTIVITIES ALL CENTERED ON THE COMING OF THE RAILROAD. FIRST WRITE UP OF THE NEW STATION. FIRST LOCOMOTIVE CROSSES SAN JOAQUIN MARCH 23, 1872. RENEWAL OF COUNTY SEAT REMOVAL AGITA- TION. RAILROAD FREIGHT SHIPMENTS ASTONISHINGLY LARGE. FIRST PERMANENT IMPROVEMENTS IN TOWN. PRACTICAL DEMONSTRATIONS IN IRRIGATION. APPEAL MADE TO PLANT SHADE TREES.

The first Republican convention in the county, of which there is public record, is the one that assembled at the Millerton courthouse Saturday April 13, 1872, to chose two delegates to the state convention and a county com- mittee to serve for two years. Russell H. Fleming called the meeting to order, E. Miles was the chairman and Frank Dusy the secretary. M. J. Church and Fleming were chosen as the delegates and the committeemen were the following named: Thomas Seymour, Otto Froelich, Russell Flem- ing of Millerton, Frank Dusy, F. Jensen of Big Dry Creek, E. St. John of Kingston, Jeff Donahoo of Yancey's, J. Minturn of Buchanan, E. A. Morse of New Idria, M. J. Church of Centerville. Seven were in attendance. The names are of historical interest as identifying acknowledged Republicans in the county who dared make known their affiliations.

Considered in the light of events that have come to pass, it was well that on March 23, 1874, the people voted for Fresno as the future county seat. It was about the time that Merced changed its county seat from Snelling to Merced, another new town on the railroad, and that Kern swapped Havilah for Bakersfield, also a new town on the road, though the latter did not come through with bonus and the railroad sought to strangle it at birth, set up Sumner as the railroad station and division point as a rival, but failed dismally in the strangling process.

Fresno was not without rivals. Their claims and pretentions were amusing in the light of the present day. True, Fresno had nothing more substantial to offer than they. It had, however, distinct superiority in two things. It was on the railroad and geographically it was central in the county, though possibly not at the time because the population was in the western foothills and mountains, on the San Joaquin on both sides tributary to Millerton, and along the Kings from Kingston to Centerville. Had not Fresno been chosen when it was, it goes without saying that the county seat located anywhere else would have had to be relocated later. The ad- vent of the railroad was the turning over of a page to take up a new chapter. The old timers were disposed to linger longer over the old chapter and disinclined to turn leaf.

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And as to Fresno's claims, Sycamore or Herndon on the San Joaquin, also projected settlements, could maintain them equally. The railroad and the residents in that part of the county north of the river to the Chow- chilla were for a county seat on the river and both boomed it for a time. But it is also history that the north-of-the-river never did agree on anything with the south-of-the-river until they chose to cut loose as Madera County and of this act they afterward also repented.

The growth of Fresno during its first ten years was slow. It required a boom to arouse it. That boom of 1887 was conceived by the new comers. The first decade in the city's history may be described as the livery stable period, when the "long, low, rakish building that was a stable below and a hayloft above," never complete withont outside a weather vane-galloping horse with streaming mane and flowing tail-and inside ill smelling billy- goat at large, was in foremost locations on main streets, when the livery man was the village nabob and law giver, the stable the fountain source of the latest gossip and news transmitted by the stage driver and the barn crowds were the politicians of the day, the statesmen and the sages of the village. As a writer has described this democratic forum :

"The livery stable was the last remnant of the stage coach period. It preserved for three-quarters of a century in the United States the traditions of the inn. In the village and smaller town it was the resort of the mascu- line gossip and the small politician. To be received into the 'barn crowd' was a distinction; to be able to maintain one's place in it was to be able to be considered some day for something in the county convention. The livery stable was the center of democracy. Every man of any consequence dropped into it and left his opinion with the livery man, or with one of the hostlers, or with one or more of the regular patrons or sitters at least once in a week. There was no better place in any neighborhood or small community a few years ago for gauging the trend of popular opinion than the livery stable. In the winter time the livery stable office with its hospi- table drum or straight draft stove would hold the company until the livery man arose, yawned and said he guessed he'd make for home.

"In its place," this writer recalls, "we have the garage instead of the odor of hay: there is the smell of gasolene; instead of the hostler there is the chauffeur : instead of the family carriage there is the automobile. There is nothing in the garage to invite sitters or to hold a group of gossipers or politicians. The atmosphere of hospitality, so characteristic of the livery stable, is absent; the garage is no more inviting as an evening resort than a machine shop. One misses the scent of leather, the clanking of bits, the straining at halters, the sound of restless hoofs on the floor, the soothing voice of the hostler and the whinny of his favorite horse."

Fresno's first days also were to live through the livery stable era. No- where was that period more typical of a region than in the west. Here the pony express. then the stage passenger, mail and mine bullion coach era with all its western romance made the last stands against the on coming railroad and the later automobile. But neither livery stable nor village inn of the eastern states filled a part in the community life as the barroom-the saloon of the west, truthfully and aptly described as "the poor man's club." No institution more typical of the rough and romantic early days than the saloon, none more hospitable. It was the common meeting place.

Millerton and Fresno had their livery stables as popular forums, but both were long on saloons as to number. The Expositor so long the only newspaper in the county was the official organ of them. No activity which the war of 1918 has classed as a "non essential" was so largely advertised and no class received more publicity in the scantily recorded events of the times than the barkeeper. First business activity in newly founded western camp, hamlet or village was always the saloon. Little wonder perhaps that it was classed as "the harbinger of civilizing influences." The early experi-

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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 45

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