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 65

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 65

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The first all woman jury in the county and all married impanelled be- fore Justice C. C. Hudson of Fowler found guilty on the night of February 21, 1917, Apel Tikijian, aged twenty-two, as the first of eight co-defendants accused of sabotage in the wanton burning and destruction of 8,000 raisin trays on the A. Rustigian vineyard, located two miles east of Fowler. The offense was committed January 24 and 25, 1917. during the height of the "drive" for signatures to continue the corporate life of the raisin association, Rustigian being a non-signer. The formal accusation was malicious mischief.

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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

The value of the trays was ten to fifteen cents each but with prevailing labor and material prices, they could probably not be replaced for less than eighteen cents each. The women were not moved by the sophistry of the appeal to sentiment and prejudice of the community in the virtual plea that the end justified the means. The fine imposed was a nominal one, afterward remitted and all were permitted to go free. The trial was the sensation of the district. The jurors were Mesdames A. B. Armstrong, J. W. Jones, L. Crawford, George James, R. R. Giffen, T. L. Brown, J. S. Manley, T. W. Fork, C. E. Flack, C. E. Powell, R. H. Ramsey and A. L. Donahoo. The tray burning was only one of many overt acts that accentuated the campaign for associa- tion contract signatures and committed by hot headed individuals in the county and publicly denounced and repudiated by the association.

Two large plants estimated to increase the waterpower taken from Big Creek in the Sierras in this county to a total of more than 700,000 horse power is part of the project of the Southern California Edison Company according to formal announcement. These plants will be an addition to the construction work planned, announced and well under way. They will use over again the water impounded by the dams above in Huntington Lake and passing through the upper power house. To double the size and capacity of the Big Creek power producing plants, the dams were raised thirty-one feet giving them a maximum height of 160 feet. This project added $2,000,000 to the Edison undertaking at the lake, bringing the total cost up to $17,000,000. Besides the two plants, a nine-mile tunnel will divert the water of the San Joaquin through the mountain and run it through the lower power houses. This power development would deliver a total of double the power now utilized in Southern California. The plants are the outcome of the belief that the price of fuel oil will not materially decrease and that waterpower must supplant in large part oil generated power, this substitution releasing annually for use by the government in its navy upwards of 600,000 barrels. The company will besides save annually $1,000,000 and thus pay the cost of the improvement in two years. A small army of men began work in September, 1917, on this enlarged project in the raising of the three dams from 129 feet. Approximately 100,000-acre feet would be stored in the lake for the generation for electric power and illumination in Southern California 240 miles from the mountain seat of operations, 1,250,000 inhabitants in the south to be served, 150 cities and towns and approximately 175,000 consumers. An idea of the magnitude of the work in the mountains may be gathered from the fact that daily during the work 1,600 yards of concrete were poured, that 52,000,000 pounds of cement were employed on the work and that the cost of the sacks con- taining it was alone $70,000. Three concrete dams and two power plants with 40,000 horse power capacity each are the original plants. The raised dams will double the storage capacity of the reservoir. The huge project involves a greater power development than the famous Keokuk dam on the Mississippi River with a fall of twenty-three feet in twelve miles. The fall of Big Creek is 4,000 feet in six miles ; the drainage basin covers eighty- eight square miles, the rainfall is eighty inches and the run off fifty. The water is led off through a tunnel and steel pipe line to the first power house half way down. Here it gushes out of six-inch nozzles at 350 feet per second or 240 miles an hour against the impulse bucket wheels of ninety-four inches in diameter. From these it escapes into a creek blocked by dam and diverted into a second tunnel four miles in length and through a long series of conduits to the second power house.

It was a jury before Judge H. Z. Austin in the case of William Louk- onen, accused in six counts of an assault upon a female minor, that on October 4, 1917, exercised for the first time in this county the then recently acquired right to name in verdict the place of confinement of the accused.

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It declared for county jail instead of penitentiary incarceration. The accused was a married man and the prosecutrix a kin.

With the institution of Department 3 of the Superior court in October, 1917, and appointment of D. A. Cashin as the presiding judge, the latter occupied the bench rostrum and desk from which in the county courthouse a quarter of a century before the life sentence was pronounced in the same . apartment on the bandit, Chris Evans. The jury box is the same that was occupied by the twelve men that listened to the testimony on the trial of the famous Evans and Sontag cases. Bench and box are placed in the same positions as they were then. In the long interim, they had been used as the furnishings of Township Justice G. W. Smith's courtroom down town.

The second all woman jury in the county was the one that before Justice of the Peace L. S. Beall of Clovis failed October 1, 1917, after deliberating for two hours, to agree upon a verdict in a case between two women for a malicious diverting of the water from a lateral irrigation ditch. A jury of men also disagreed the month before in a similar case before the same magistrate. The later case was one of a jury of married women, namely Mesdames C. M. W. Smith, Percy Magill, Carl S. Merriman, Milo Hole, Sterling Williams, William Otts, Edyth Hyatt, Ovid Ingmire, Iva Sprague, Chris Castner, William Heiskell and H. E. Armstrong.

Fresno bank clearings for the month of October, 1917, disclosed an increase of $5,000,000 over the month previous and of more than 235 per cent. over the corresponding month of 1916. The 1917 figures were $14,118,389.92 as against $9,241,729.80 for September of that year, and $6,139,991.26 for October, 1916. Bank officials declared the increase a remarkable one, prob- ably unequalled in the state. It was a record not easy to duplicate by any city of equal population with Fresno. In monthly bank clearings Fresno has consistently exceeded its old-time rival, Stockton.

The county's record for phenomenally large damage awards by court juries was a second time cinched in September, 1917, before Judge H. Z. Austin with an award of $64,000 in the case of Mrs. Harriett C. James against the Campbell Electric Company of Lynn, Mass., and the Bowman Drug Company of Oakland, Cal., for the fatal poisoning of her dentist husband with barium carbonate, administered preparatory to an X-ray demonstra- tion during the state medical society meeting in this city in 1916. The judgment prayed for was for $100,000 and on one of the informal ballots by the deliberating jurors four voted for the full award. March 28, 1919, the appellate court in San Francisco ordered the judgment reversed and the case remanded for another trial. Next day the attorneys appeared before the Fresno superior court and Judge Austin and on the testimony given at the former trial a stipulated judgment for the widow was entered for $25,000 and $700 costs. The entire proceeding with regard to the reduced judgment award beginning with the reversal on appeal was the result of a compromise stipulation. The judgment was paid in court with check. The rapidity with which final proceedings were had was the feature in the matter. Lawyers declared that this original verdict in the case for damages for accidental death is the largest ever returned by a jury in the county and also in the state. The larger verdict in the Zibbell case was for injuries received for being run over and mutilated by a railroad switch engine.

Twenty-six years ago in November, 1892, workmen were erecting the frame work foundation support for the new dome of the county courthouse. Some of these timbers were sixty feet in length and heavy in proportion. The dome was several times larger than the one preceding it, being forty feet wide at the base, octagonal and rising 120 feet above the courthouse roof. From the ground to the apex of the dome, the height is 180 feet.

Under date of August 24, 1917, record was made of the gobbling up by the Southern Pacific Company of the forty-two and seven-hundredths-mile

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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

feeder line in the Hanford & Summit Lake Railway Company. The stated purchase price was $58,305.26.

Contract was placed of record under date of April 16, 1916, by D. J. Guggenhime of San Francisco of the sale to Joseph E. Foster of Fresno and Berthold Guggenhime and Bert Katz of San Francisco of a portion of the Home ranch for $125,000 and of the Fortuna for $75,000 as land described in a trust deed to the seller from the Abraham Gartenlaub estate. The con- tract stipulated that the interests shall not pass from control of seller for five years from date of contract and establishing prices of sale in the event of the death of any.

One of the largest lease transactions in a long time was the one con- summated August 2, 1917, involving the Kings County vineyard holdings of West & Son of Stockton-the Lucerne, Little Lucerne, Felicia and Central Lucerne-embracing 1,880 acres of Muscat and seedless grapes. The lease was to Wylie M. Giffen of the California Associated Raisin Company. paying $55,000 for a five-year leasehold, part of said sum secured by crop mortgage. The lease was made with the approval of the San Joaquin County Superior court for the West minors.

The crop in 1913, which was the first vear that the associated raisin com- pany did business, amounted to about 70,000 tons, a practical average for the preceding five vears. In 1914 it was about 98.000 tons, in 1915 about 130,000, in 1916 about 132,000 and would have run to 150,000 had it not been for the loss on account of rain. The 1917 crop was as much. In five years that the association has been in business, the crop has practically doubled, due in a measure to increased planting of Seedless Thompson vines and in a large measure to better cultivation of old vineyards with double production in many instances.

It is a long stretch for the imagination to play upon between the finan- cial statement of the county for the fiscal year 1917-18 and that for the July 1-December 1, period of the year 1856 when the county was organized. During this latter period, the receipts were $6,281.15, and also $1,200 monthly collected as foreign miners' tax ; the expenditures, $4,268; the value of the taxable property, mainly stock, $400,000. The 1917-18 receipts were $5,085,256.50 less a balance of $1,394,947, and $551,532.93 of the total city money. Total disbursed was $4,014,450.54 and of this sum $827,334.06 city money. Balance at the end of the year in various general and special school funds was $1,070,805.06. Many a present school district handles more money than did the county during the first years of its political existence. During the period covered by the report, the county used in its various departments $5,080.75 alone in postage stamps. The War Exemption Board cost $7,438.98. The schools cost $1,437,223.95.

Articles of incorporation of the California Fig Company with a capital- ization of $500,000 were filed October 4, 1917, to finance the fig culture ex- perimenting on the Bullard tract by the incorporators with 1,400 acres already planted, including all standard varieties with the Smyrna as the specialty.

The following tabulation is of interest as showing the final crop price paid for the varieties of raisins to members of the association since its operation as their selling agent :

Variety

1913

1914

1915

1916

Feherzagos

$50.00

$60.00

$ 61.00

Malagas

60.00

50.00

60.00

76.49

Muscats

69.30

66.20

72.72

84.18

Sultanas

65.66

77.28

88.81

118.10

Thompson's

78.27

92.50

99.67

131.51

Not in twenty-five years had two successive crops sold for so high an average as the last two; never a crop larger than the last and never a more

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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

favorable season for curing. The associated members were urged to invest their settlement money in Liberty bonds.

It was a little more than ten years ago that court officials came from Los Angeles and packing up the last court property in the county court house for removal prepared also the new quarters for the May, 1908, session and first sitting of the federal tribunal in the completed postoffice building.

It was in October, 1917, that mining lease under date of August 22 was recorded by the Copper King Mining Company of Texas with option to buy 225 acres from the Wabash Mining Company, a corporation that had forfeited its franchise in 1909 for failure to pay the corporation license tax. The valu- ation of the leased property was placed at $175,000, a figure named as the pur- chase price, if the Copper King people should exercise the right to buy during the life of the three-year lease. They were to pay twelve and one-half cents royalty on net smelter returns, expend $6,000 in improvments during the first year and $12,000 during the second and third. The property in this county includes thirteen Wabash and Lode mining claims of 224.97 acres.

As far back as the year 1888 when the boom was yet at its zenith, the county rated sixth among the eight leading counties of the state for property values. The assessed value of real estate and improvements in the state was returned at $900,440,491 and the personal property at $170,661,836. Fresno's figures were $30,112,433 and $3,381,896.

The first orange trees planted in the county were seedlings set out in 1867, nearly fifty-two years ago, on the Kings River at Centerville by Wil- liam Hazleton.

There were in 1889 in the Fresno district twenty-three commercial raisin packers. During the year cooperative packing houses were established, notably two in Oleander and one each at Fowler, Selma and Malaga. Fresno alone had fourteen packing houses, four large ones employing from 300 to 400 hands each and boxing 100,000 each. The largest and finest raisins were undoubtedly packed by the larger home growers. The crops and packing of the Butler and Forsyth vineyards and others were never surpassed even in Spain. It is of historical interest to enumerate some of the larger packers and the brands that they made known in the markets in the establishment of a new industry in America and which in the end crowded Spain out of the field. They are these: Fresno-American Raisin Co., Eagle and Star ; A. D. Barling, El Modelo and Golden Gate; A. B. Butler, Butler's and Gordon's: California Raisin and Fruit Co., Seal and Eclipse; H. E. Cook, Cook's; William Forsyth, Imperial, Tiger, Forget-me-not; Fresno Fruit and Raisin Co., Lion and Golden Gate; Griffin & Skelley, Griffin & Skelley's; Geo. and John H. Leslie, Liberty and Royal; J. W. Reese, Cartons; Barton Estate Co., Peacock ; James Miller ; Mau, Sadler & Co., Sierra Park and Parrot : Malaga-E. H. Gould, Olivet and El Monte; N. Viau, Vian's : S. P. Vian ; Oleander-Curtis Fruit Co., Greyhound and San Joaquin; Fresno Raisin Co., American Flag: Fowler- Fowler Fruit & Raisin Co., Pride of California and Comet ; Rodda & Nobmann, Maple Park; Selma-S. B. Hol- ton, Golden West : Tulare-Page & Morton, P. & M. and Brown & Co.

Fire destroyed November 12, 1889, what was declared to have been at Centerville the first two-story house erected in the county.

June 26, 1889, decision was rendered by the late Judge James B. Camp- bell giving so much elation that the residents of Selma and vicinity fired a salvo of 100 guns. The decision found in the celebrated Laguna de Tache grant case that judgment should be entered rescinding and cancelling the agreement of the contestants of date May 1, 1880, upon the payment by the plaintiffs to the defendants of $154,400 and upon payment restore to the plaintiff, Jeremiah Clarke, possession of the lands described in the agree- ment. Clarke was the holder of the title to the ranch, the only old Mexican land grant to a vast domain in this county on the Kings River and like all such grants the subject of litigation. The grant is now the possession of

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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

a corporation with an English lord as its main financial representative. On the trial of the case 239 witnesses were examined and 100 more were sub- poenaed but not called as their testimony as to facts already established was admitted.

A $30,000 fire September 8, 1912, wiped out Coalinga's red light district located on Whiskey Row, facing the railroad depot. It was only a temporary purification and fumigation.

As an aftermath of the excitement and litigation and criminal prosecu- tion following the effort in 1907 to divide the county with all the Coalinga oil field territory to be annexed to Kings County, Fulton G. Berry. Emanuel Katz and Sheriff R. D. Chittenden brought suit in March 1909 against Charles King, one of the pro-annexationists to recover $1,500 on his endorsed note made at Hanford, December 10, 1907, and deposited with the Laton Bank to cover a wager on the election but repudiated by him December 15 when that wager was lost on the result of the election. The case went to trial February 25, 1907, before Judge H. Z. Austin and the plea of the de- fendant was the claim was for a gambling debt, therefore against good morals and public policy. The contention was sustained. Berry had never an idea of recovering judgment and, as he stated, his reason for bringing suit and pressing it to trial was to publish King to the world as a "welcher" and "trimmer." The public feeling over the attempted land grab by Kings County was intense. Fresno's representatives in the legislature were caught napping when the scheme was put through.

April 30 has been set for the annual Fresno Raisin Day celebration and the first vear's campaign was in 1909. The celebration is a part of the county advertising campaign to popularize the raisin as a food product. The celebrations have been uniformly held in Fresno city in splendid parades and symbolic pageants. An incorporation has been formed to promote the annual event.

The two greatest days in the life of County Treasurer A. D. Ewing (best known as "Chill." short for Achilles) were January 7 and 8, 1890. On the first he drew on the Fresno Loan and Savings Bank a check on himself as county tax collector for $200,000 and on the next he tackled the problem of removing to the courthouse, two blocks off, the $195.000 gold in sacks and the $5,000 currency in his pocket. Ewing was the county's first tax collector. the sheriff having been the tax gatherer before him, and Sheriff O. J. Meade the last collector. Ewing was closing the first year of his term of two and the money must be physically transferred in settlement of 1899's taxes into the hands of Treasurer Major Thomas P. Nelson. The bank was given four or five days notice of intention to draw the money in lump sum and the young collector, who was just a man in years, considered his check-drawing the most momentous event of the decade and that when he removed that money he would leave the financial centers of the country dry. The money was on hand on the 6th, the late W. H. Mckenzie was the bank cashier and the sacks of gold were ranged along the floor as they had come from the mint for the count on the 7th, because there must be assurance that $200,000 was there before it was moved and he personally responsible for every dollar. Trust was reposed in only four men to make the transfer. These were David S. Ewing, brother of the collector and deputy in his office, and Nathan Hart, expressman in the employ of Bartlett & Ewing, draymen of the city, H. N. Ewing, father of the collector, and J. H. Bartlett, city marshal. Three were armed, Ewing on watch at the dray while the others transferred the twenty- dollar and ten-dollar sacks from the bank into the dray. The intention was to approach the courthouse at the rear and there make transfer to the treas- urer in same fashion as at the bank. But the count at the bank had delayed matters until five o'clock, night was coming on and a mist and fog gathering. The risk was too great to reach the courthouse by circuitous route so the dray was ordered driven up Mariposa Street and via the main approach

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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

direct for the front steps of the courthouse and arrived as the supervisors and county officials were leaving for the day and wondering what a dray was doing at the front of the courthouse, one block in every direction from the nearest street. The orders were to answer no questions after leaving the bank, but to shoot the first man to approach the dray in menacing mien. The money was transferred but at so late an hour that a verification of the count could not be made until the following day. That night Treas- urer Nelson and two deputy sheriffs slept in the little dark office of the treasurer on the ground floor, the courthouse then not being the large one of today. But with the last sack in, a great weight was lifted from the shoulder of the collector. That same boy tax-collector after thirty years entered on a second elected term as county treasurer. The full story of that exploit was not given to the world until June 14, 1908.

August 16, 1911, was the date on which the supreme court on appeal sustained the judgment of Judge G. E. Church in the case against Andrew F. Abbott and some 2,800 others to liquidate the affairs of the California Raisin Growers' Association and on account of the raisin crop of 1903. Approxi- mately $100,000 tied up by the litigation and more to be collected on execut- tion saw distribution. The decision in the case was to adopt as judgment the referee report of W. S. Johnson. The case had been in litigation since September, 1906. With this decision about sixty per cent. of the face value of the claims was realized. The decision on appeal was to hold that there was nothing in the record or in the evidence to show that the association was a trust in restraint of trade. The trustees at the time of the 1903 crop for which accounting was sought were Robert Boot. A. L. Sayre, A. V. Tay- lor, D. D. Allison and T. C. White. The 600 in behalf of whom the appeal was taken gave up the contest and abandoned further proceedings on the notification of their attorneys under dated circular of September 14, 1911.

A landmark, in the fermentation room of the Eisen winery on Belmont Avenue, eight miles from Fresno, and the oldest wine making plant in the valley, was destroyed by fire on the afternoon of September 21, 1911 : loss about $75,000. The fire followed explosion upon explosion of wine vapor in a sherry tank entered by a Chinese employe of twenty years' standing. with a lighted candle to clean it out. There was a loss of 50,000 gallons of fermenting must which flowed at loss in absorption in the soil. The fire burned for four hours.

On a June day of 1914 were recorded in this county five sale contracts of April, 1908, confirming deals involving Coalinga oil lands for $1,406,000 as the principal sums of purchase price, saying nothing of accumulating interest paid off in blocks as high as $24,000 at a clip. One of these recalled sale of land for $2,000 an acre which two years before was unproductive but had risen in valute to $10,000 an acre, not taking into account the improve- ments placed to make it productive. One contract was for the sale by H. U. Maxfield. A. V. Lisenby, and H. H. Welsh to E. L. Doheny and Norman Bridge of Los Angeles 253.3 acres described in Section 30-20-15 for $506,600 or $2,000 an acre. Another was dated two days prior and was for the sale by the Pleasant Valley Farming Company to the American Petroleum Com- pany of 320 acres described in 6-20-15 and 320 in 18-20-15 for $900.000 and at time of recording there were indorsements of $200,000 paid on principal and $45,000 as interest. The deeds called for by the contracts were held in escrow by Los Angeles banks to be delivered when full payments shall have been made. The tale is told that Mr. and Mrs. Lisenby riding about Los Angeles one day passed the Doheny residence and Mrs. Lisenby thought the place a replica of fairyland and went into ecstasies over it. Her enthit- siasm abated after her husband informed hier that while Mr. Doheny owned this section of fairyland he, the husband, had paid for it in selling to him for $2,000 what was then worth $10,000 an acre.

448

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

The mountain natural and artificial lakes in the Sierras and the streams arising therefrom or fed by the snows of winter are the fisherman's paradise for trout as are the lazier streams and sloughs for salmon, bass and cat- fish. The mountain fastnesses are the lairs of the nimble footed deer and of the carnivorous, wild and predatory animals that the huntsman pursues, while the foothills are the hunting grounds for the mountain and valley quail, the orchards the favorite places of the little quail and the cooing dove and the marshes and the sloughs of the honker and the quacker. The Fresno district is the largest and most accessible hunting and fishing ground for the city resident in the state. Fish planting operations in the Sierras are frequent happenings to overcome the over-zealous activities of an ever- growing army of anglers. The operations that were conducted during the summer of 1914 were on a scale unprecedented and of a magnitude never since equalled. The famous Golden trout was transplanted to various bar- ren waters in the Fresno Sierras from Volcano Creek and the few minor streams in the Mount Whitney region which was the exclusive home of this wonderful and most beautiful of the species of the trout. The Wawona hatchery was drawn upon for spotted trout fry. In Yosemite National Park fish were planted in waters that were barren; twenty pack-mule loads of the golden hued trout were brought down to the Kings River water shed, miles upon miles of the unstocked mountain territory were covered and the range of the Golden trout extended for a full 100 miles northward from his native habitat. The season's operations were under the direction of District Deputy Fish and Game Warden Andrew D. Ferguson, consuming from two and one- half to three months in time and completing that season what he could not otherwise have hoped according to the usual mode to have accomplished in ten years. The expansion of this fish planting work was made possible by the increased revenue from the new dollar angling licenses. It also made possible increase of the capacity of the state hatcheries for the propagation of fish.

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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 65

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