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 68

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 68

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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

The presentation to the county of the Salvation Army fountain at the entrance of the courthouse park was made by D. E. Nichols in May, 1895. It was a boon as thousands have slaked their thirst here during the hot and sweltering summer months. The city long afterwards erected four spout drinking fountains about the city. All are iced in the summer.

The fifty-year franchise to the San Joaquin Electric Company was granted in September, 1895.

The spectacular fire that created such havoc in the central and original portion of the courthouse building and in the topping bronze cupola broke out on the night of July 29, 1895. Defective electric wire insulation was the cause of the fire in the dome. The flames were at such a height that the fire department could not do anything in subduing them. It rendered efficient service in salvage and the volunteer department was made a gift of $500 by the county in appreciation of its services. An appraisement report was that it would cost $36,256 to repair the damage and in January, 1896, contract for the repairs was awarded the Pacific Bridge and Construction Company for $46,700 and in the reconstruction the corridors were wainscoted with Ellis pink Tennessee marble slabs. The completed work was accepted in November.

The revived rock pile with prisoners in the chain gang like so many wild beasts breaking granite was abolished in May, 1896, but reestablished for a time one year later.

The residence of the late George A. Nourse with its surrounding ten acres on Ventura Avenue was purchased by the county in February, 1897. for an orphanage in charge for many years of a board of trustees of women. It continued until the year 1918, when all charities were placed in the hands of a Public Welfare Department, the orphanage abolished and the orphans boarded out in private homes. The mansion was thereafter to be used as the almshouse.

The first application to lay an oil transportation pipe line was by J. A. Chanslor in November, 1898, from Oil City and Coalinga.

Coalinga's incorporation election was on March 26, 1906-ninety-nine for and twenty-eight against.

To secure the sittings in Fresno of the federal circuit court, tender was made by the county of courtroom facilities in the courthouse in February, 1900, and the offer was taken avail of until the completion of the postoffice building.

Following the 1900 fire, there was rebuilding of the county hospital on substantial lines and on estimates in January, 1903, of $19,700 for the main structure and $23,700 for the wings-total $43,400. Various departures were made from the original plans as emergencies and the cost was $48,450 with departures and emergencies calling for $28.441. In 1917-18 various additions and enlargements were made to meet the crowded conditions at the hospital and the frequent turning away of patients because the institution was full.

The first arched concrete bridge in the county, the one at Pollasky or Friant, was erected in July, 1905, to replace the pioneer Jenny Lind wooden bridge below Millerton. The cost was $49,583. The second at Skaggs Crossing below Herndon was erected in July, 1907, at cost of $44,297. The old Kings River bridge at Reedley was also rebuilt in May, 1906, at a cost of $12,500. being the county's two-thirds share of the reconstruction cost. Every an- cient bridge has been reconstructed, even Lane's in 1917 after a band of cattle had tumbled through the flooring into the San Joaquin in the weakened condition of the structure and overtaxing its carrying possibilities. The bridge on the Kings at Hardwick erected November, 1907, cost $14,983 and the other at Kingston in April, 1908, $8,900.

In the year 1889 there was set out four miles south from Reedley and just over the line of Tulare County a little plant, ten inches high and of knitting needle size. For rapid growth it is given the world's record and

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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

is said to be the largest known tree of its kind and age in existence. It is an eucalyptus viminalis, a branch of the gum tree, semi tropical and native of Australia but different from the so-called gum tree of the southern states. This tree is a curiosity. It has been photographed hundreds of times and has been illustrated more than twenty-five times in newspapers, magazines and booklets. Thousands of visitors, many from distant parts of the world have gazed upon it enraptured and amazed over its grandeur and beauty. A register has been placed in a case for visitors to inscribe their names. The tract of land on which the tree stands has been sold but a clause in the deed reserves the tree from destruction. This tree at the age of twenty-seven years measured September 12, 1916, seventeen feet and eight inches in circum- ference three feet above the ground and twenty-three feet three inches at the ground. Measurements were begun in August, 1896, and data covering them are on file in the office of the U. S. Forestry Service at Washington, D. C. The tree in question is popularly known as the Manna gum. Having planted the tree with his own hands at a time when the district began transition from the desert and having observed its unparalleled growth, it is natural that a seeming personality on its part should at times cause J. C. McCubbin of Reedley to experience a feeling not unlike that engendered by ties of parental consanguinity. The Australian gum was a favorite planting in the early colonization of Fresno, because of its rapid growth and shade where there was no vegetation or wood growth save on the creek and river banks, and also for their economic value in firewood with frequent topping and trimming. A greater combination of more favorable conditions in soil. water, sunshine and absence of strong winds for the growth of the eucalyptus is found in the San Joaquin Valley than elsewhere in the world, saving per- haps in Australia where the tree is indigenous. In 1909 when the Reedley tree had a circumference of eighteen feet six inches above the ground four inches, it was 120 feet tall with a spread of bough of eighty-eight feet six inches. On account of its spreading habit, it has form unlike the ordinary gum tree, and for that reason was discernible by the traveller miles away on the approach.

The freighter and the stage coach driver were picturesque personages in the mining days of the county and for years thereafter. The story of them has yet to be written. The principal early stages ran from Sacramento and Stockton, which were then as now water terminal points from which all interior travel started from San Francisco. Stages conveyed passengers, baggage, mail, express matter and bullion in quantities ranging from $10,000 to $20,000 per coach. As may be supposed stage hold-ups were many. There was a record of over 400 of them. The Mariposa journey was the longest, 120 miles, and it took two days to cover them. In 1850 the fare was thirty dol- lars, and ten years later twelve dollars, the average fare being ten cents a mile. Staging was a nerve racking, long and tedious experience with every inconvenience of summer heat and dust or winter rain and mud, besides the ever present danger of an enforced contribution on the journey by some intercepting "road agent." The stage business fell into . the control of monopolies ; on the northern routes to the California Stage Company and on the southern to Dooley & Company and Fisher & Company. In the 50's the mining camps consumed the major portion of food products and of material and the freighting business was the employment of thousands of commission men, teamsters and animals. From Sacramento to the Northern and from Stockton to the Southern mines transportation was by pack mules. Fifty to 100 animals composed a pack-train. Later wagons were used be- cause costing less, saving time and better securing freight. Mountain trails were widened and graded and the "prairie schooner" became the vogue. Six hundred tons were transported weekly to the Southern mines and over 1,800 teamsters and 3,000 mules and horses were in the work.

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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

During the cold and frosty spell in December, 1918, Fresno broke on the last day of the year a record with a minimum of eighteen degrees at seven A. M., the lowest since January 6, 1913.

Call was made for a long distance reference on the county free library for books on fruit canning and the like, the inquiry coming from Welling- ton, Cape Town, South Africa, under a December, 1918, date. The inquirer was Mrs. Isabel Bensburg, nee Hoover, formerly of Fresno and the wife of Ferdinand Bensburg, superintendent of one of the seven big farms in the Cape territory and the books for the company. The inquirer was a former assistant in the local library and removed to Africa in September, 1915.

Forty years ago the Gould was one of the notable farms and the boast of the county as "an illustration of what can be done by a little effort on Fresno County's plains where a supply of water can be obtained for irriga- tion." The farm was of about 600 acres, four miles north of Fresno and was laid out by J. L. Gould of Santa Clara in 1873. Of the farm 300 acres were in orchard, vineyard and nursery, the remainder used as pasture, grain and hay lands, with water obtained from the Kings River and Fresno Canal Company's ditch. The Gould was considered "some ranch" with 7.000 almond trees, 2,400 of assorted peaches, 2,400 pear, 1,000 plum, 1,200 oranges, 600 lemon. 700 apricot, 500 cherry, 400 prune, 200 pecan and 100 English walnut, with a young forest of eucalyptus, pepper and other ornamental trees.

According to a decision of June 6, 1919, by the state railroad commis- sion, water service rates by the Fresno Canal and Land Company were fixed at 621/2 cents per acre annually. All other rates were ordered abated as dis- criminatory, excepting that certain customers who had enjoyed free service in return for granted water rights may continue to receive that special con- sideration. The further order was that the practice of collecting an initial charge of $500 to $1,600 on every 160 acres, for so-called water rights, is ab- solutely illegal and the decision was to hold the company a public utility. The decision was of public interest, in settlement of a case initiated by the company more than three years before. Some 300 users had their rates in- creased. Some 30 would continue to enjoy the free water privilege. The 300 paying as low as 16 cents an acre faced the standard 621/2 cents charge to pre- vent discrimination. This was a ruling favoring the canal company as was that which declared it a public utility, and that its rates are subject to adjust- ment by the commission. Fifty "free-water-right" users operated their own community owned irrigating ditches and systems years ago, but deeded them to the corporation in consideration of perpetual free-water rights. The pub- lic utility ruling was of special moment. There had been discussion and debate what the rates would be after the expiration in 1921 of the present contracts. It is now settled that the commission will have the fixing of them. The canal company declared that there were only about 1,100 acres involved in the free-water contingent; 300 would pay the standard rate and some had been paying as low as $25 for a quarter of a section, while the regu- lar rate is $100. Others paid $37.50. The installation charge was of no great moment, as under the new management, as successor to all previous inter- ests, the company was not collecting that charge.

The Japanese community furnished evidence of the prosperity that it enjoys in the county when, June 5, 1919, the Industrial Bank of Fresno, a Nipponese financial concern doing exclusively a business with that race, filed notice, in accordance with the decision of the stockholders on May 17th, of the increase of its capital stock from $28,300 to $100,000, and the number of shares from 283 to 1,000. Paid capital is $60,000. The bank is in the Chinese quarter in its own building at F and Tulare.

A largely attended meeting of the Armenian population held at the city auditorium, June 1, 1919, resulted in pledges of $30,000 for immediate aid for the Armenian refugees in the old country who were being decimated by the after-the-war starvation process. The contribution was to have been doubled 28

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by committee canvass and the total within a fortnight cabled to the Armenian delegation at Paris, to be transferred to the relief committees operating in conjunction with American relief committees. The executive committee that had for weeks prepared for the meeting was Rev. Theodore Isaacs, H. Mir- zoian, Richard Yezdan, H. Vartanian, George Elanassian and Arpaz Setra- kian.

On the night of May 24, 1919, closed the centenary anniversary of the Methodist churches and the observance of it in a nation-wide effort to raise $105,000,000 to place the churches and their institutions on a financial basis for the coming five years. For a century previous, the financing of the Metho- dist Church has been by appeal to sentiment and generosity, as missionaries returned from foreign shores and told of the needs for carrying on the work among the benighted. The reports were that the drive proved successful. In the San Francisco area, with quota of $3,300,000, there had been raised $4,452,510: in the Fresno district, quota $268,210, there was raised $240,000, not all churches reporting ; in the Fresno church group, $62,000 was raised on a $53,000 quota; Bakersfield group, $43,567 on $37,895; Lindsay group, $54,969 on $50,840; Hanford group. $24,975.

According to a statement put out in May, 1919, by the Fresno Irriga- tion District, sub-irrigation of the soil will soon be a thing of the past because of the drainage and the pumping of water, with resultant lowering of level in the county. Organization of the irrigationists under the Wright law was declared to be the solution of the problem for owners of arid land or sub- irrigated land that will become arid. The fact was noted that not so many years ago it was difficult to dig a cellar under many houses in Fresno city without encountering water, whereas the Bank of Italy put down its founda- tions over twelve feet without touching water. Alexander Gordon, living just outside of town, told how, a few years ago, he could dig in his vineyard three to four feet at most and strike water, but that in boring wells for lands just sold the first water was reached at ten feet. If this lowering of the water level continues, sub-irrigation is doomed. Experts declared that some- thing more than a light rainfall must account for the low water table. Pumping and drainage were declared to be the causes. With seventeen pumps at work supplying the city alone and hundreds of pumps going in the county over, the answer to the question must be evident, and the waste water from the Kings River must be conserved.

One historical tree of the county is the giant fig at the I. N. Parlier home, a landmark of the county and one of the largest trees in the United States. It was thirty-two years ago that the pineer farmer and town-builder of Parlier (named for him) planted the cutting for shade, and he made the journey to Centerville, then a village in its prime, to secure the cutting, of nameless variety, but since called Calimyrna. He planted it near his house and little did he dream of the size it would attain. Three times was the house removed that it might not embarrass the growth of that tree! The third removal was to such a distance that it was thought that a future removal would never be necessary, while yet furnishing shade from its luxuriant and spreading foliage. Today the tree is reaching out as if a fourth removal might have to be made. The huge tree has spread so that supports are re- quired that the limbs may not break with their weight of fruit and foliage. Electric lights are placed in the branches and the area under the tree has been made a playground. Five years ago Mr. and Mrs. I. N. Parlier cele- brated their golden wedding anniversary and 300 persons gathered under that tree at a feast, and there was room for more. This tree is the largest in this part of the valley and probably one of the largest fig trees anywhere, if not the largest. At its greatest stretch it has a spread of eighty-eight feet. The trunk is small for the great top, measuring nine feet in circumference two feet from the ground. At a height of four feet, nine large branches shoot out to support the canopy. No record has been kept of its fruitfulness, but it has

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borne heavily yearly. The planter of the cutting is dead, but the tree lives on.

Miss Felita M. Smith, a teacher of the Fresno Normal School, was ap- pointed a member of the county board of education in June, 1919, to fill an unexpired term. It was stated that she was the first woman appointee in the history of the county, but the fact is that, during the 1897-1900 supervisor- ship term of the late J. H. Sayre, Mrs. Carrie J. Goodwin, nee Weaver, and Miss Mollie McLaren were members of that board. Miss Smith is the sister of Mrs. Chase Sayre, wife of the son of the late supervisor. Supervisor Robert Lochead, who voted to appoint her a board member, also voted on her first appointment as a school teacher in the city department twelve years before.

During the week of June 8-14, 1919, the announcement was made of the. close of the deal, under a renewal of option that had expired in January, for the purchase of the Shaver Lake milling and timber property in the Sierras, by the Southern California Edison Company, as an electric power generating project, from the Fresno Lumber and Irrigation Company which, with the deaths of C. B. Shaver and Harvey W. Swift, had undergone several stock ownership changes and was in the market for sale after the last absorption by a syndicate of Michigan lumbermen. At the time of the last sale the mill property had been inoperative since the season of 1914. Confirmation of the deal was given June 18th by the filing of incorporation papers by the Shaver Lake Lumber Company. It took over the interests of the Fresno Lumber Company and its virgin timber lands in the Dinkey Creek district, capitalized for $1,200,000, in 1,200 shares, the incorporators holding for the electric company being Southern Californians. The sale involved 30,000 acres of land and the milling plant at Shaver Lake. The sale was said to have been for $2,000,000. The project is to develop an $8,000,000 electric- power generating-plant to supply Los Angeles with cheaper power, and as an adjunct, the enlargement of the Big Creek-Lake Huntington plant, and making of the combined units the largest power-generating enterprise in Central California. The outlined plans involve a notable enlargement of Shaver Lake by means of a dam 215 feet high, for the conservation of water, considerable land to be submerged, and the enterprise to vie with nature itself to change the aspect of the Shaver Lake vicinity, in the creation of a new fish- ing and scenic region, with twenty-one miles of railroad to the lake for construction material and transportation from Auberry. The forty-five miles of flume for floating lumber to the yards at Clovis will be abandoned, the Shaver Lake plant and another, a few miles further back in the Sierras at Big Creek and Huntington Lake, ultimately serving to supplant the steam- operated plants. The demand for electric power in Southern California, it was stated, is so great and insistent that, although there are ten plants in operation on various streams in that section, these steam plants are used to supplement the water-power stations. Two of the latter are in the San Joa- quin Valley, one at Big Creek and the other on the Kern River, and the third to be at Shaver, the first and third on streams tributary to the San Joaquin. Popular disapproval followed the policy announced by the Edison Company, to exclude campers and fishermen from the territory surrounding. Shaver Lake, and to close it as a public resort and playground, a privilege that the people of the county had enjoyed for a quarter of a century under the regime of the former owners of the mill property. The supervisors and other public bodies took measures to combat this policy and secure a continuance of the privilege in an exchange of concessions, the Edison Company being desirous of diverting the water from Pitman Creek by means of a tunnel across the ridge from Shaver, to the lake, to make the latter a larger water- impounding body for the operation of its power-generating plant.

What was probably the largest payment made to the state as inheritance tax, on an estate in the county, was the one of June 20, 1919, in the estate of the late Judge E. W. Risley. Value of estate was placed at $430,957.75 gross.

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and clear market value, $426,344.75. The son, Thomas E. Risley, paid, as tax on his share, $21,284.47, and as trustee for his married sister, Marguerite Rowe, $3,350 additional ; total, $24,634.47. The trustee is to pay her and any children $500 a month during life, paying all taxes and depositing mortgage, as security for payment, in the sum of $100,000, said mortgage redeemable at any time by paying in that sum in government bonds or other collateral securities and a delivery of $10,000 in Liberty bonds having been made.

Estimate by the officials of the California Associated Raisin Company of Fresno, as a basis for the 1919 marketing, was that there would be a crop of 200,000 tons of raisins in the lower San Joaquin Valley this year. This will be an excess of 30,000 tons over any year in the history of the industry. And although the greatest crop in history, market conditions were such that the entire product would be practically sold out in advance of drying. Controll- ing 90 per cent., the association had, at the close of June, 1919, made no an- nouncement of opening prices.

The Forest Service of the Department of Agriculture has taken the ini- tiative to make Huntington Lake, in the Fresno Sierra National Reserve, the greatest popular summer-camping resort, where people of moderate means can establish summer homes at $15 a year and enjoy lake-boating, lake and stream trout-fishing and backwoods hunting of big game. The Forest Serv- ice and the county are building a six-and-one-half-mile scenic road around the lake, as a land route to the people's playground at the head of the lake, and service employes have laid out sites for summer tents or cottage homes, with a half acre of ground for campers and tourists. More than one hundred of these sites have been taken and half a hundred cottages erected. Sanitary conditions will he rigidly enforced and also building restrictions against marring the natural landscape. Sites have been reserved further back for tent and cheaper structures. Fresno sent, the year before, two thousand people to the lake. It is the mountain resort most accessible to Fresno, seventy miles from the city, and has the highest altitude of any resort within that distance. The lake is a fine body of water five miles long and averaging one-half mile in width, stocked with trout in season from May to November. So attractive scenically is the neighborhood that two motion picture compa- nies are there almost continuously during the season. Following a visit, in 1918, of Landscape Engineer Waugh from Boston, the recreational area was so laid out as not to mar the scenic beauty. The resort may he reached by wagon or auto, by the new road to be finished this season. The road will start from Dam No. 3 and run to the north side of the lake, following the shore where possible and taking in the camping-places as a combination scenic- service road. There are public camping-grounds for the tourist, and 150 boats will be placed on the lake. Home-rented sites will be secure, as the land cannot be taken for agricultural or for other purposes, and may be leased from year to year.

The oil and gas production for the year 1918 is shown in the following figures : Oil production in 1918-eight counties. 99,459,177 barrels; increase over 1917, 5,025,630 barrels; increase over 1916, 12,395,982 barrels. Oil pro- duction in Fresno County, in 1918. 16,068,919 barrels; decrease on 1917, 912,- 122 barrels. Gas production, in 1918, eight counties, 3,216,149 (units of ten thousand cubic feet) : increase over 1917, 490,095. Gas production, in 1918, Fresno County, 80,300 (units) ; increase over 1917, 21,111. Land (acres), in eight counties, 89,212; Fresno County, 13,319. Wells, in eight counties, 9,188; Fresno County, 1,168. The oil production of 1918 was second only to that of 1914, a demonstration that regulation is not a hindrance to develop- ment. The increased oil acreage is 1,852.

The county election held in May to vote on a $4,800,000 bond issue for a county road system, supplementary to that of the state with its highways, was carried by a majority of almost 7 to 1. Total vote, 14,157; for bonds, 12,187; against, 1,970. Sale by the supervisors of the first million-dollar

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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 68

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