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 51

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 51

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June 14-C. B. Overholzer and I. W. Byington of the colony are the town's teamsters. ... W. D. Grady and R. H. Daly are associated as lawyers with office in the courthouse. . .. Sheep are selling in the county by the embarrassed at fifty to sixty cents a head. . .. A. H. Statham has located as a stable keeper at Tulare and I. . . . The Eisen vineyard is experimenting with the growing of pineapples. . .. Monday the 12th there was alarm over a report that the courthouse dome was on fire. Investigation disclosed that "an immense band of flying ants circling about the dome" gave the appearance of smoke rising through the windows. .. . R. P. Mace of Borden will be the president of the day on the 4th of July.

June 21-Notice is given of dissolution of the Barth & Froelich bank- ing firm, Thomas Fowler becoming the owner of the Barth interest and he,

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Froelich and Dr. Leach to organize and incorporate a banking institution with larger capital. . . . They had hot days. Here are samples: Sunday the 11th, 100 degrees; 12th, 105 degrees; 13th, 110 degrees; 14th and 15th, 106 degrees ; 16th, 113 degrees, that Friday afternoon a strong wind set in and continued Saturday but the thermometer went up to 106 degrees. The ground was so heated that the air seemed like a blast from a furnace and leaves on plants were withered and scorched as if by fire, so intensely hot were the rays of the sun.

June 28-A. M. Clark and James McCardle elected Fresno school dis- trict trustees. . .. Census shows 158 children between five and seventeen years of age in the district.

July 5-A son was born on the 4th to the wife of Jans Hansen of Central Colony. The Hansens were among the first settlers of the colony, having come to better their fortunes. With the birth of the colony, they married, and on the national holiday the first born saw the light of day. . .. Fire broke out on Tuesday on the west side of the colony and spread rapidly. There was considerable damage on the Jo Spinney tract and the dwelling was with difficulty saved. The flames extended south and east burning everything in the path across the land, destroying 900 acres of dry feed of A. T. Covell, 400 of Rowell Bros. and 200 of W. F. Coughell, and burning over 2,500 acres. The fire started from the spark of a stove pipe. . . . Nearly eight miles were constructed of the extension of the Fresno Canal and Irrigation Company's ditch west of the colony. . .. It was said to have been the best 4th of July celebration yet had in the county, notwithstanding the unexpected opposition that it encountered.

July 12-The church fund was started with ten $100 subscriptions. . . . There is a deficit of $175 in the 4th of July expense fund. ... Ex Judge A. C. Bradford is chosen secretary of the California Society of Pioneers.

July 26-Operations on the western extension of the canal are suspended for the season after reaching out twelve miles. . . . A Tilden & Hendricks and a Hayes & Wheeler club liven up town politics.

'August 2-Wells have raised two feet during the summer, attributable to the irrigation ditches, though none was within three miles of the city. The phenomenon was even more remarkable at Borden. At Central Cali- fornia Colony the water level rose five feet. . . . Tilden & Hendricks Club organized with 153 members. On the Saturday following, it raised a ninety- foot flag pole in front of headquarters. It was a pine tree cut in the moun- tains. Report is that $1,800 was subscribed for the church building fund, the Missionary Society of the M. E. Church South to furnish $500 additional. . The California Lumber Company's flume has been completed to the railroad. Ice is sold in Fresno at three cents a pound. .. . McCollough & Andrews announce readiness to supply water, if the public will give them encouragement in the enterprise.

August 9-Henry Glass of the Clipper mill announces rough lumber at mills in quantities of 50,000 feet nine dollars cash per thousand, in less quan- tities ten dollars per thousand cash and eleven dollars on credit. Clear lum-

ber at mill cash eighteen dollars. At Tollhouse at an advance of six dollars per 1,000 on above prices. ... Jerry Ryan is building a two-story brick house at Mariposa and I. . . . Dr. Leach vaccinated forty-seven on Sunday and twenty on Monday because of small pox epidemic in San Francisco. . .. According to the Expositor, "the baker's dozen constituting the Repub- lican Club of Fresno" named Dr. Chester Rowell and Samuel Goldstein as delegates to the "Radical state convention." . The Centennial mining dis- trict was formed to cover the placer mines discovered by Fresnans and Tulareans in old Mill Creek in the eastern part of the county-George Sar- geant president, W. F. Flournoy secretary and Nelson Harlan recorder. The placers were said to be of coarse wash gold with evidence of quartz vein drift, similar to the gold taken from Sycamore Creek in earlier days, the

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purest in the county and bringing eighteen and one-half dollars an ounce. The existence of these placers was known but the winter water had always been so high as to cover the gold channel in the creek bed. ... Bank of Fresno incorporated with a capitalization of $250,000. . .. School opening on the 28th with John Dooner in charge and R. H. Bramlet of the primary department. Bramlet was afterward county auditor, and when he retired from public office remarked that he had no complaint for the people of Fresno had been good to him in permitting him at fifty-one years of age to have spent seventeen years or one-third of his natural life in office. . . . Dr. Leach appointed by the supervisors city health officer for six months from August 9. He was at the time county physician in charge of the county hospital and in both positions continued for years. ... Frank Dusy and F. B. C. Duff report discovery of good gravel diggings on one of the bars in Dinkey Creek, yielding an average of three dollars a day per man. Some excitement and prospectors' claims located. ... Dr. Chester Rowell elected Republican central committeeman from the county. The Expositor says he is "the most zealous Republican in the district without a doubt." ... The passenger train schedule to be changed from midnight to daylight running time. ... Ex Senator Thomas Fowler subscribes $50,000 to the banking fund.

August 28-William Markwood for whom Markwood's Meadows are named died on the 15th following an accident. On Sunday the 13th he and Abe Childers engaged in horse racing on the grade near Tripp's old store. The horses shied and carried the riders over the bluff. Childers recovered consciousness afterward. ... Conflicting reports circulated concerning the lat- est reported gold discoveries. ... Friday the 18th the dry grass in the cemetery on Elm Avenue caught fire and 160 acres were burned over. Sup- position was that the fire started from a joss stick on a Chinese grave. . . . Machinery is placed at the Eisen vineyard for the making of wine. ... H. H. Granice indicted at Merced for murder.

August 30-On this Wednesday appeared the first call for grapes as . a commercial commodity as follows :

Grapes Will Be Bought at $30 per Ton at Eisen's Vineyard, East of Easterby Farm. Apply to F. T. EISEN.

. .. "The new Golcondas," as the gold placers are described, are pronounced a fraud. ... The frame work is up to support the water works tank on Fresno Street, west of J, so long afterward a city landmark.

September 6-Meeting of Republicans announced for the 14th to be addressed by John F. Swift, or as the Expositor stated to "flaunt the bloody shirt in this village." ... The railroad having been completed to Los An- geles an extra freight emigrant train was placed on the run from Tulare to San Francisco, meeting a similar train from the city here at seven A. M.

September 13-The grand jury finds the county hospital a building "to- tally unfit" for the purpose.

September 20-The California Lumber Company is fluming as much as 30,000 feet of lumber daily from the mountains to the plains at Madera. . . . Fresno's assessment roll totals $8,025,381.

September 27 - Sunday the 26th, the jail was without a pris- oner for the first time since occupation of the courthouse, the last one on hand having been shipped after sentence to San Quentin.

October 4-Construction is progressing on the 36x60 M. E. Church South building at Fresno and L, with ceiling sixteen feet in the clear, belfry and exterior corniced and as planned "an ornament to the town."

October 11-The California Lumber Company announces the sale of town lots at Madera for Tuesday, October 24. ... Banquet is given Saturday the 14th at Faber's by citizens to McCollough & Andrews in appreciation of

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their enterprise in construction of water works which are in operation. Tests of pressure made on Mariposa Street for fire purposes showed that it was satisfactory.

October 18-There is gratification over the advance in land values. Land that had gone begging at three dollars an acre four years before is held at fifteen dollars and twenty dollars-some irrigated land including water priv- ileges selling as high as fifty dollars an acre. There is much land open yet to preemption and homesteading. ... The Fresno Bank organizes with Thomas Fowler, Dr. Lewis Leach, William Faymonville, J. A. Blasingame, Jesse Morrow, Otto Froelich and H. C. Daulton as directors to open for business December 1. . . . There are 1,671 names on the great register.

November 8 C. E. Brimson from Tulare succeeds J. R. Hooper as rail- road station agent. ... Notice published of the marriage November 8 at San Buenaventura of C. G. Sayle and Miss Nettie Burks, and at Visalia November 5 of Lefonso Burks and Miss Mollie Sayle.

November 22-August Weihe sells to H. Voorman and W. S. Chapman the Henrietta ranch of 18,186.40 acres for $8,000, a very low price. . .. M. A. Schultz died Friday, November 24.

November 29-Wine is offered for sale as a native product for the first time at the Eisen vinevard. . .. The Fresno bank will open Friday, Decem- ber 2, Thomas Fowler president, Dr. Leach vice president and Otto Froe- lich cashier. . . . M. Theo. Kearney receives appointment as managing agent at San Francisco for the proprietors of the Central California Colony and the Expositor stated that as he is largely interested in land in this county he will therefore feel an extraordinary interest in the success of the colony.

December 2-Granice was convicted at Merced of murder in the second degree after the jury had deliberated for twelve hours. Judge Campbell of Fresno sentenced him to thirty years imprisonment.

December 6-Mrs. Black and Miss Williams announce themselves as fashionable dressmakers located on I Street, near the Statham residence. The county asks for plans and specifications for a hospital to accom- modate at least twenty-five patients and to cost not to exceed $9,500, the award of seventy-five dollars to be made for the best plans. ... Report is that a new front is being put on Kramer's saloon. This with other recent improvements will give a solid frontage on H Street in city block sixty-one.

Waterpipe mains are being laid in the alleys for distribution of the fluid. December 31-M. Theo. Kearney was a caller in Fresno on the last day of the year.

January 10, 1877, appeared an advertisement of the Central California Colony for the sale of its lands through M. Theo. Kearney as manager, also of lands of W. S. Chapman, adjoining the colony, through him as agent. This was the beginning of Kearney's career in Fresno County.

The Expositor published a brief review and an enumeration of structures in the town at the end of 1876, showing 253 dwellings, ten stores, black- smiths three, barbers two, butchers two, livery stables three, boots and shoes two. saddleries two, saloons twenty, paint shops one, planing mill in con- struction one, drug stores two, photograph gallery one, lawyers' offices four, I. O. O. F. hall one, public hall one, county hospital one, church one, bank one, school one, printeries two, doctors' offices two, court house one, twenty- five buildings and the water works were under construction, two lumber vards and a third contemplated, two physicians, two ministers and nine lawyers. When the railroad was completed, there was not a habitation; at this time the boast was of over 320, not including those in the Chinese quarter.

It may be added that the city steam planing-mill enterprise was never launched. Late in 1876 C. M. Jones bought the two Whitlock lots and on the

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brick basement foundations built a flouring mill. The location was on the east side of I Street between Mariposa and Tulare, in part covered today by the Mason block. It did not operate long. The historic flouring mills was the Champion of M. J. Church on the site of the Sperry mills at Fresno and N. It was later destroyed by fire. It was operated by a water wheel in a ditch carrying water from Fancher Creek, the surplus conveyed by canal (which was bridged at intervals and for safety covered in parts) through the town along the center of Fresno Street to land of the Church's west of town and beyond the Kearney Fruitvale Estate.

In time this canal became a public nuisance as a dumping ground for refuse and offal. Time and again the board of health declared it a nuisance to be condemned, and the city council ordered it discontinued. Long con- troversy and litigation followed and despite an existing injunction irate citi- zens aided, abetted, encouraged and assisted by the health board took the matter in hand one Sunday in the latter 80's after all patience had been ex- hausted and secretly organizing and preparing swooped down on the canal and filled it up with shovelling in of the banks before another injunction could be sued out, or process be served. The late Dr. W. T. Maupin as city health officer was a leader in this popular movement. So ended the Fresno Street Canal. The people had been trifled with too long by the corporation.

CHAPTER LVIII

LOCATED TOWNSITE OF FRESNO A FORLORN AND UNATTRACTIVE SPOT ON SAGEBRUSH DESERT PLAIN. M. K. HARRIS IN DIARY GIVES MENTAL PICTURE OF THE VILLAGE OF 1879. ALL BUSINESS WAS CENTERED ABOUT THE RAILROAD STATION. SALOONS WERE NOT LACKING. BRICK BUILDINGS NUMBERED SIX. ALL OTHER STRUCTURES WERE ONE STORY FRAME OF LIGHTEST AND CHEAP- EST MAKE. SURROUNDINGS NOT AT ALL PLEASING TO THE EX- PECTANT NEWCOMER. COYOTES HOWLED AT NIGHT IN VILLAGE BACKYARDS. A GLIMPSE INTO EARLY POLITICS.

Admittedly "a new and wonderful country," there was in the village of Fresno in the year 1879 little as yet to attract to the spot that in 1872 had been described as uninhabited save by wild cattle, mustang horses, antelope and coyotes. There was as yet not much of a village. What little there was covered the four blocks from Tulare to Fresno, and from H to K, east of the railroad station, with fringes of widely scattered abodes but many more vacant spots than occupied ones in the habited territory.

First courthouse had been erected and was the most prominent structure in the village or town and continued such for years. The four blocks which it centered were levelled and trees planted that year. The first public owned schoolhouse had been put up at L and Tulare Streets, just across the court- house park. The nine graves in the first city cemetery, a few blocks from the courthouse site, had crowded the living with their suggestive propinquity and had been removed.

Streets, blocks and lots were staked out on the rough rolling prairie land as it was when town was located by the railroad on the limitless plain. The very first demand for a townsite in drinking water supply was lacking. Windmills to pump up water from the deepest wells marked the inhospitable landscape in the first years. The sale of water for beast was the first com- mercial enterprise by the pioneer settler. Vacant blocks and lots fringing the town habited quarter were traversed by cow and footpaths to objective points. Streets there were none; neither sidewalks. Walked you four to six blocks in any direction east of the railroad, and you had passed the last

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habitation ; you were out in the country and on the rolling hog-wallow plain, with the vision on a clear day unobstructed as far as the eye could see on the undulating plain. Trees and shade? Heaven save the mark! There were none and the sun shone blisteringly and swelteringly hot. Another early en- terprise was the digging of deep cellar on H Street near Tulare where the thirsty congregated and in the subterranean cool guzzled Philadelphia Brew- ery beer imported from San Francisco. When, nearly thirty years after, ex- cavations were made in the tearing down of the Ogle House for the larger Collins Hotel they came on a portion of the unfilled cellar, people wondered what the excavation was and wrote to the papers until some pioneer solved the question by recalling the cool beer-guzzling cellar.

Can you imagine the one time Burleigh premises at J and Merced Streets, today one block from the city hall, and two from the nearest corner of the courthouse square, located so far from the center of town as to be connected by ground sluice ditch to convey water from the mill race ditch waste on Fresno Street with which to irrigate ornamental and vegetable garden? A two-story house was a thing to gaze at in wonder for its rarity. The prevail- ing architecture was the one-story, rude, clapboard shack such as would not even tax the constructive ingenuity of the carpenter with only saw, hammer and nails. Where ground space ownership was limited, steps to upper story or attic loft were hung outside the house if location was conveniently on street or alley corner.

At what are today the corners of Fresno and I and Tulare and J-the Shannon and Ferguson corners-were orange and fruit orchards as sore temptations for the small boy. The blocks between Tulare and Kern and J and M formed the ridge of a hilly prominence, six to ten feet above the present street level, sloping to naturally low ground with surface-water drain- age channels on Inyo Street on the one side, on Fresno and Merced on the other, with deep depressions as at J and Tulare and at J and Mariposa con- tinuing as far as the railroad station for the formation of spreading sheets of water during rainy winters, when with later street grading and levelling the natural drainage channels were destroyed. Verily it passeth understand- ing why the railroad located the town where it did. It was the most unlikely and god-forsaken place imaginable. But having located it, it has always been remarked that the mistake was made in not placing it on the west side of the railroad on the higher ground for the more commanding position and the better drainage which always has been a problem in its present low loca- tion. Still it was no better and no worse than other locations on the railroad when building through the valley with original town locations invariably almost on the left side traveling southward.

A mental picture of what Fresno was in 1878 is recorded in a diary of M. K. Harris, who came from Tennessee arriving August 15, 1878, as a young lawyer graduate to grow up with the town and the country, to sit twice on the bench of the superior court, early in his career to enter the field of politics, and today one of the best known practicing lawyers in the county and an estimable gentleman. The diary has its interest as a record.

"I arrived here about ten o'clock in the morning on a Saturday," runs the diary. "Coming down on the train, I met Mr. Ashbrook of Liberty and he was the first new acquaintance I made in the country. That night I stopped at the French Hotel, a little two-story building on H Street and run by Simon Camy, a clever Frenchman, who was killed in the mountains in 1883 in a difficulty over range for sheep. The next morning I looked over the town, presented a few letters of introduction to gentlemen, went into the cupola of the courthouse and took a view of the surrounding country. I cannot say that I was at all pleased with my surroundings, or with my fu- ture prospects, but there have been such marvelous changes both in the town and the surrounding country that I pause to recall and describe what I saw during the few months following my arrival.

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"As to the town of Fresno, I discovered that the principal business street was H Street, also called Front Street. On this street Einstein conducted a general merchandise business in a one or two-story brick house at the corner of Mariposa. A little further down, Charles De Long had a store in the front part of which was the postoffice over which he presided. About where the Ogle House now stands, J. Brownstone had opened a store which the old time merchants viewed with rather hostile eyes as an intruder. Fred Kramer ran a saloon a little below Einstein and a man named Beagle (Biegel) ran one just north of the French Hotel before mentioned. Edouard Faure con- ducted a small barber shop in the hotel, while George Bates had a small fruit stand next to the barber shop.

· "Mariposa Street began to increase in importance about this time. Kut- ner & Goldstein had just completed a one-story brick building on the corner of H and Mariposa Streets with a number of stores under one roof. William Faymonville and H. S. Dixon occupied adjoining offices in a one-story brick building about half way between H and I Streets on the north side of Mari- posa. L. Burks had a drug store a little further down in a frame building owned by C. G. Sayle and on the northwest corner of I Street Bill Lawren- son had a saloon.

"Across I Street, P. R. Fanning had a little miscellaneous store in a one-story frame house and adjoining it on the east O. J. Meade and Henry Austin conducted a saloon ; next to them was George Bernhard's butcher shop : across the alley was George Studer's residence and tailor shop; next was Judge Winchell's law office, then George McCollough's residence and across J Street was Fleming and Wimmer's livery stable which extended to the alley.

"On the south side of Mariposa Street commencing next to Einstein's brick building was a row of little frame buildings extending to nearly J Street. On the corner of J, where the Farmers' Bank stands now, was the Odd Fellows' hall, a two-story frame house, next to it a few little cabins, while J. W. . Williams owned and ran a blacksmith shop where the Grand Central stands, and this about completes the description of Mariposa Street. The different buildings mentioned were all one-story frame structures of the lightest and cheapest make.

"The only brick buildings in town were Kutner & Goldstein's, Einstein's, Faymonville & Dixon's offices, the Fresno Bank, the courthouse and an old building where the Ogle House now stands. The Expositor office and J. W. Ferguson's residence were located on the ground now occupied by the Fresno National Bank building (The Bank of Italy at Tulare and J).

"I Street between Mariposa and Fresno was built for residences by Kutner, Goldstein and others. Statham's livery stable occupied the northeast corner of I and Tulare. The only school house was a two-roomed one-story frame building standing where are now the Fresno Agricultural Works. The only church was that of the South Methodists on Fresno Street and in which religious worship was had, I think, every two weeks.

"The hotels were the French on H Street, already mentioned, and the Morrow House owned by Jesse Morrow and conducted by Mrs. McElveney on the corner of Tulare and K, which is still there but in an enlarged form. (This is the postoffice corner.) Mrs. Johnson, Dr. Leach, W. H. Creed, and W. D. Tupper lived on K street between Tulare and Kern; also Dr. Rowell and one or two others. About the only houses north of Fresno Street that I remember were the residences of A. M. Clark, H. S. Dixon, J. C. Hoxie, C. L. Wainwright and the Methodist Church. Possibly there might have been others but that part of town was simply a part of the plains on which the wild flowers grew in the spring without the sign of streets or roads. The only buildings east of M Street were the residences of Judge Baley, Mrs. Daly and J. Scott Ashman and they resided on M Street facing the court- house yard. Not a white person lived west of the railroad.

LAW OFFICE OF JUDGE E. C. WINCHELL, 1876-UNION NATIONAL BANK BUILDING SITE

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"The cemetery was just to your right as and before you entered Fresno Colony on Elm Avenue as you left Fresno City. William Faymonville re- sided in a small frame house adjoining the Olcese & Garibaldi building on K Street (corner of Mariposa).

"As to the country. I went into the dome of the courthouse the morn- ing I arrived and could see only two signs of life or habitation, the Central Colony and the Gould ranch. The colony had been started about four years before, I was informed. Temperance and Washington colonies had also been laid out, I think; Eisen vineyard, the only one in the county, had begun to bear crops. All the balance of the country, so far as the vision extended was one bare, hot, sandy, desert plain, which ran right up into the streets of the town, with scarcely one object to relieve the eye or cheer the heart.

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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 51

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