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 7

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 7

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Experiment has demonstrated the existence of an orange belt extending practically the entire length of the eastern side of the valley from Bakersfield, in Kern County to Oroville, in Butte County. In this connection there is the interesting fact to be noted that oranges ripen earlier than in Southern

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

California by one month to six weeks, probably because the southern belt is not protected from the ocean winds and cooling fogs as the central is, and the growth and maturation of the fruit is slower. Latitude has apparently little influence on the climate. Near the coast there is in reality only a few degrees difference between the northern and southern temperature, yet there is an earlier appearance of spring fruit, and in the ripening of oranges in the north than in the south. One must seek for other modifying local conditions in the ocean, the wind and in mountain barriers to account for the anomalous climatic variations.

The semi-arid plains were once considered valuable only as stock ranges. Grain was sowed, but with disastrous results in dry years. An industrial change came about with irrigation, and great ranch tracts were subdivided into small ones, which could be better taken care of and yielded larger returns. Fresno County is proof of what irrigation will do and has done. It is one of the pioneer irrigated regions of the coast, the first experiment hav- ing been made in the early 70's near Fresno with four sections in wheat. Fresno is pointed out today as the typical California irrigation district.

Describing this district system, Department of Agriculture Bulletin 237 on "Irrigation in California" said of Fresno: "Considering its area, it is the most highly developed district in the state," It added :

"Before the first irrigation of grain was attempted near Fresno, the land could scarcely be sold at $2.50 an acre, but as soon as the results of irriga- tion became known, land sales increased and twenty-five dollars to thirty dollars an acre was given freely for the raw land, which now when in decidu- ous trees or vines is worth $250 to $500 per acre. The citrus lands of the foothills that now sell for $1,500 to $2,000 per acre when in full bearing groves would be valueless without irrigation."

California's great valley is exceptionally located and conditioned for a much larger population than it now supports. Encompassed as it is by mountains, the drainage channels converge at Carquinez straits, from which there is freightage with the world by deep sea vessels, receiving their car- goes "at the very door of the valley." It is maintained that when the Sacra- mento will have been navigably deepened to Red Bluff and the San Joaquin dredged and by a canal tied in with the more southern Tulare and Kern basins, the great region will be in a position to begin a supplemental devel- opment without bounds. The scheme has been given serious thought and tentative plans for it studied. To help out this water transportation project, the valley is at present served by two transcontinental railroads with num- erous feeders.

The student of history cannot overlook the fact how little the waterways influenced the exploration and settlement of California, or even to aid in the transportation of crops. Save for irrigation, the streams of the state have not assisted inland development, excepting the lower Sacramento, the San Joaquin in the days gone by, and the smaller arms of San Francisco Bay. Yet the economic importance of the streams as sources of power to be developed for commercial and manufacturing enterprises cannot be ig- nored. The electric energy to be generated and transmitted to any point is limitless. There is a woeful waste of the flood waters, so that with the agricultural development of the valley for the greater population to come conservation is imperative, because even now the increased demands require such storage for use in summer, a time when water is needed most and is scarcest.

Of the three largest rivers of the state, the San Joaquin-Sacramento is the most important irrigation water provider with its many branches head- ing in the snow-covered Sierras. The Sacramento in the northern arm of the valley carries water in abundance, it is thought, for all future agricultural needs, besides navigability. The San Joaquin with the other streams of the southern arm carry not so much water as will be required for the larger

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

area to be irrigated. The fuller development of this region, and of California for that matter, will be governed in large measure by careful and rational conservation of the forests and streams. The government has taken up this important subject.

The Great Valley is well adapted for water transportation, and the statement is not such a wild flight of fancy that there will be a day when the natural water courses will have been deepened, and light draught vessels will dot the plains of the interior basin. There is no insurmountable en- gineering difficulty against a canal from Buena Vista Lake at the extreme southern end of the valley northwest through Tulare Lake and via the San Joaquin to tide-water. Indeed such a project in part was once in the air in Fresno County to connect Tulare Lake with the San Joaquin River.

Articles of incorporation of the enterprise were filed, and the town- plat of Fresno City was recorded as on Fresno Slough, or the South Branch of the San Joaquin, by A. J. Downer as the agent for C. A. Hawley and W. B. Cummings, on April 25, 1860. The plat pictured an ambitious town of eighty-nine blocks on both sides of the slough channel, located a mile or two from what is today Tranquillity town in the big farm colony of that name. La Casa Blanca (White House) the principal structure of the town on paper, occupied as headquarters and the upper floor as a hotel, stood for years a landmark on the slough after the project was abandoned.

About the time of this enterprise two men, Stone and Harvey, attempted to reach Tulare Lake with the small stern-wheeler, Alta, de- scended the San Joaquin and the Kings River Slough as far as Summit Lake, near the southern boundary line of the county and bordering on the Laguna de Tache grant, but there it was stranded in one of the slough branches and abandoned upon subsidence of the water in the slough by drainage consequent upon the dredging of the section nearest the San Joaquin, upon the proof of which labor land patent had issued.

Noncompliance however with the law in other respects in the disposal of the reclaimed land resulted in successful litigation in San Francisco to void the patent, and the enterprise came to naught, leaving the stern-wheeler with its smoke-stack as another strange landmark to excite the curiosity of the mail-stage passenger and of the lone traveler or wanderer on the inhos- pitable and drear West Side plains.

Later the stack was removed and did service for years for one of the steam sawmills in the mountain forests in the county.

The only craft that ever passed from Tulare Lake to tidewater was in 1868, when Richard Swift took a small scow-boat, 16x18, through, loading it with a ton of honey at the mouth of Kings River, passing through Summit Lake and Fish Slough, thence through what was known as Fresno Slough into the San Joaquin. It was with the hope of the successful issue of the canal enterprise that on January 21, 1860, the steamboat, Visalia, was com- pleted on Tulare Lake for the navigation of the San Joaquin between Stock- ton and Fresno City, where the overland stages halted and near which at the head of Fresno Slough steamers landed freight up to a few years before the valley railroad extension from Lathrop.

The 1911 agitation to open the river to navigation came to naught be- cause the government engineers reported that the traffic in promise would not warrant the expense of dredging and improving the river channel to make it navigable. At any rate the community succeeded some years later in doing away with the discriminatory terminal freight rate against Fresno and river navigation was left as a matter for agitation for future years. It is like harking back to the dim past to read the following newspaper publi- cation of forty years ago (June, 1878) of practically the last attempt at river navigation :

"The steamer Clara Belle, Capt. Jack Greier, unloaded lumber and posts for Gustavus Herminghaus at Parker's old store, last Monday. This is only

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

fourteen miles below the railroad on the San Joaquin at Sycamore and is the highest point on the river ever reached by steamer, and the only time a steamer has come up so far since 1867."

And in explanation thereof the following :

"Gustavus Herminghaus, who owns a very large tract of land bordering the San Joaquin River and the Fresno Slough, has already received 250,000 feet of lumber by steamer, from San Francisco and will fence in some 15,000 acres of fine grazing land. The fence will follow the line of surveyed road from White's to Fresno, and will force travel from its present and long used route along the river."

CHAPTER VII

"THE HELL OF '49". MANIFESTED SHIPMENTS OF GOLD. DISPUTED DATE OF DISCOVERY. NO HINT IN LEGEND OR TRADITION. ALL FLOCKED TO THE MINES. PREVIOUSLY REPORTED FINDS. VAL- LEYS EXPLORED AS NEVER BEFORE. CALIFORNIA STAMPEDE LIKENED TO THAT OF THE CRUSADER DAYS. A WILD AND RECK- LESS POPULATION GATHERS. SOME FIGURES ON THE EXTRA- ORDINARY ACCESSIONS BY LAND AND SEA. ARRIVALS FAR EX- CEED DEPARTURES FOR THE YEARS 1852 TO 1856.

Total manifested gold shipments from California ports via Panama from April, 1849, to the close of 1856, not including unascertained sums taken on privately, are given as $365,505,454. Estimated yield is reported as $596,- 162,061. Known receipts from this state foot up $522,505,454, not including foreign shipments other than to England, nor quantity manufactured in the United States, indicating a state total yield after analysis of the figures of about $600,000,000. Estimate has been made that since discovery, gold bul- lion in an amount exceeding $1,500,000,000 in value has been produced in California.

Singular it is that the exact date of Marshall's discovery near Coloma, on the south fork of the American River, should be a disputed question. . Hittell gives January 19, 1848, as the date. Bancroft says on Marshall's authority that the find was made between the 18th and 20th, but that the 19th has generally been accepted as the date. Marshall was so confused as to time that Bancroft by other records fixed the day as the 24th. And yet the event has been ranked second only in importance to California's dis- covery and later settlement by the padres.

A commission had been appointed by Gov. William D. Stephens of California under the authority of a legislative bill, the inspiration of that exclusively Californian fraternal order, of three members of the Native Sons of the Golden West, to make research of historical data to ascertain, if pos- sible, the date of the discovery of gold and also to correct the date of in- scription on Marshall's monument at Coloma. Under Assembly Concurrent Resolution No. 25 (42nd Session) the committee named by the governor, Phillip B. Bekeart representing the Pioneers of California, Fred H. Jung the N. S. G. W. and Grace S. Stoermer the N. D. G. W., made report October 15, 1918, based on entries in historical diaries, recorded statements and conclusions drawn therefrom, to find that January 24, 1848, and not the 19th, is the correct date of the discovery of gold in California and to recom- mend that the inscription on the monument of Marshall at Coloma in El Dorado County be corrected accordingly.

Little dreamed the Mexicans of the value of the land they ceded, other than as to its probable future value commercially. As little, the buyers-

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

how fat the soil with wealth untold and that rivers flowed over golden beds. Between the discovery and cession periods of the territory, many examina- tions were made by enterprising and inquisitive officers and civilians, but none discovered that the Sierra Nevada streams poured golden sands into the valleys of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin. No hint of it in legend or tradition was learned from white or red man. As Historian John Frost remarks: "A nation's ransom lay within their grasp but strange to say it escaped their notice-it flashed and sparkled all in vain." Capt. Sutter, despite a residence of ten years in the vicinity of the discovered placer re- gions, was none the richer or wiser for the treasure about him lightly concealed under the surface soil.

It is a remarkable fact, which has been more or less commented upon, that with the insatiable greed for gold the Spaniard, and those that followed him, never made investigation to ascertain the existence or non-existence of it, or that if they did and made discovery that the secret was kept invio- late. The fact is, however, that the existence of gold was unknown by them and the Indians. The latter had no golden ornaments-in fact did not know of the value of gold, until the white man taught him it in barter at the trading post stores, and then further presumed on his ignorance by exchang- ing gold ounce for commodity or whiskey ounce, glass bottle included.

Governmental examinations had been made but no discoveries of minerals resulted. True, there was conjecture that from the region's un- doubted volcanic origin and peculiar geological features gold or other valu- able mineral deposits might exist. Chance disclosed what inquiry had failed to reveal, and in a few weeks California was agitated to fever heat, nearly all the population became infected and flocked to the mines. By August some 4,000 people, including Indians, were washing the river sands and gravel for gold, the washings confined to the low wet grounds and the margins of the streams and the daily yields from ten dollars to fifty dollars. per man but often much exceeded.

Every stream in the valleys came under scrutiny. Gold was found on almost every tributary of the Sacramento, and the richest earth on the Feather and its branches, the Yuba and the Bear, and on Weber's creek, a tributary of the American fork. Prospectings in the valley of the San Joa- quin also resulted, but later, in gold discoveries on the Cosumnes, the San Joaquin, Fresno, Chowchilla, Merced and Tuolumne, besides in lesser quan- tities in the ravines of the western Coast Range as far as Los Angeles.

The valleys were explored as never before, and with the spread of the contagion man came to know the San Joaquin Valley, up to now the stamp- ing ground of wild Indians and outlaws, the grazing ranges of immense herds of elk, antelope and wild mustangs, with the plains in their wake foot- printed by the stalking grizzly bear and the loping coyote. The territory now comprising Fresno County was absolutely unknown and with state government was yet to be a part of Mariposa until independent county organization in April, 1856.

There had been reports of gold discoveries before Marshall's, but if true they created little more than local stirs and did not come to the knowl- edge of the enterprising and wide awake Americans. That Capt. J. D. Smith found gold in 1826 on his first crossing of the Sierras "near Mono Lake" may be true, but if he did it was on the eastern side of the range. In 1841 gold was found in Santa Clara County on Piru Creek, a branch of the Santa Clara, but the find in March, 1842, at San Francisquito near Los Angeles, as mentioned elsewhere, was a genuine one, and it may be said that consider- able gold was extracted in all the region from the Santa Clara River to Mount San Bernardino.

In greater or lesser quantity, it has been found in almost every part of the state, but nowhere and never in such deposits as on the westerir slope of the Sierras in the quartz veins, in the gravel and clay of ancient

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

river beds and in the channels of existing streams. It is another remarkable fact that geology has not been able to explain that gold should be found on the one side and silver on the other of the Sierras. The gold occurs in virgin state, the silver in various ores. The western slope of the Sierras rich in gold, the eastern in silver, the Coast range is equally rich in quicksilver in red cinnabar, especially at New Almaden (1845) south of San Jose, later found at New Idria in San Benito (in a corner formerly of Fresno) and about St. Helena in Napa County.

There never was and has not been since, in history, such a stampede as was started by the discovery at Coloma. In twelve months it attracted to California more than 100,000 people of all nationalities, and commerce sprang up with China, Mexico, Chili and Australia, while yet in govern- mental confusion. The world was wild and delirious, and while only another remarkable incident in the state's history, it did hasten as no other event could have the assumption of state sovereignty and the development so cer- tain to follow acquisition of the land. There was a wild scramble for the mines, the daily gold accumulations ranged from $30,000 to $50,000, the discovery wrought a marvelous and almost incredible change in the char- acter of the country, laborers, professionals and tradesmen tramped the crowded trail for mountain gulch or ravine, soldier and sailor deserted, and there was a social upheaval with excesses and lawlessness for a time, with labor commanding fabulous wages and prices of commodities and foodstuffs prohibitive, even when they could be had. The exodus to California has for its magnitude been likened to that of the Crusades of the Middle Ages. The Annals of San Francisco, published in 1854, records that there was soon gathered a mixed population of the "wildest, bravest, most intelligent yet most reckless and perhaps dangerous beings ever collected into one small district of country." Thousands came after the American occupation not to stay but to pick up a fortune quickly and return home. It was no longer the place "for a slow, an overcautious or a desponding man."

California was in complication over land and mining claims. The Indian resented the taking of his hunting grounds by the miners, and with the uncertainty of things the old regime bewailed the coming of the Gringo, and lamented the discovery that attracted the horde as a green pasture field does the locust or the grasshopper. The dreamy days at the haciendas, life at the old missions with the patriarchal padres, all the idle days were no more. A feverish excitement prevailed with gambling, drunkenness, horse- racing and stealing, claim jumping and worse things. The days of '49 "be- held one of the most reckless, heterogeneous societies ever brought together."

In January, 1849, according to a memorial of Senators Gwin and Fre- mont to Congress, while waiting for the state's admission to take their seats, the estimated population was :

Californians, 13,000; Americans, 8,000; Foreigners, 5,000; Total, 26,000. As a result of the gold find, a population of at least 107,000 was claimed for the state as follows :

Estimate as above 13,000

Pacific ports sea and Sonora land arrivals

January-April '49 8,000

San Francisco sea arrivals, April-December 1849 29,000

Other ports

1,000

Southern overland

8,000

From Mexico 7,000

Deserting sailors 3,000

Overland via Salt Lake. 25,000

Total 107,000

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

All enumerations of the day may be accepted as inflations and little better than wild-eyed estimates because of the shifting character of the popit- lation as well as because of the other difficulties in making any reliable can- vass. The variance of the various reported figures is irreconcilable. The figures emphasize though the immensity of the Californiaward movement of the day. The world had been inoculated with the gold fever, California had a heterogeneous population, but no government, save the makeshift authority exercised by a small and utterly inadequate military force.

California had leaped into world wide importance with Marshall's dis- covery of gold in that mill race on that disputed January day in 1848. The excitement and immigration and the insistent demand for a state government furnish a chapter in history without like in the world. Somewhere someone has written that the brilliant audacity of California's methods for admission into the union is without parallel in the nation's history. Brilliantly audacious it was, truly, but only characteristic of California and the Californians and of the abnormal condition of the times.

Minerva, the mythological goddess typical of endowment of mind and prominent and distinctive as the figure in the foreground of the Great Seal of California, is emblematic and illustrative of its sudden springing into the maturity of statehood as no other before or since of the United States of America.

CHAPTER VIII

FIRST REPORTS FROM MINES EXCITE INCREDULITY. OFFICIAL CONFIR-

MATION IS GIVEN THEM. COLONEL MASON'S EXTRAVAGANT IDEA OF FIGURES. EVERYBODY IN THE EAST TALKED CALIFORNIA, AND PREPARED FOR THE GRAND RUSH. THE PLACERS ARE VISITED AND REPORTED ON. STATE GEOLOGIST TRASK'S PROPHECIES. FRESNO'S CAMPS OF THE SOUTHERN MINES. EARLY PROS- PECTORS WERE A RESTLESS LOT. FIRST LOCAL MINING SETTLE- MENTS. VARIATIONS IN GOLD DUST VALUATIONS.

First reports from Coloma and other placers excited general incredulity. The California Star on March 25, 1849, announced that gold dust was an article of traffic at Sutter's Fort. In size and character of nuggets the mines were pronounced much richer than the fields of Georgia, where gold was first discovered in the United States, also more so than anything ever placered in Mexico. A half pound parcel offered in San Francisco, in April, in pay- ment for provisions was accepted at eight dollars per ounce, and the store was stampeded to stare on the golden dust. On May 29, the Californian, and on June 14, the Star suspended, because the printers had vamoosed for the mines. Every sacrifice was being made to reach the mines.

Thomas O. Larkin, who had been consul at Monterey and secret agent of the government in the intrigue for the acquisition of California, wrote to Secretary of State James Buchanan, at Washington on June 1, 1848, de- scribing conditions at San Francisco, from which then 200 to 300 had gone to the mines out of a population, according to the census of August, 1847, of 459, exclusive of the military and the Mission Dolores, and that about $20,000 of dust had been exchanged for merchandise. Half the houses in the town were closed. Spades and shovels that sold for one dollar commanded ten dollars each in the mines.

In a second letter from Monterey of June 28, Larkin wrote that he had visited the mines and found them all and more than he had anticipated. Miners were scattered over one hundred miles of country from the Sacra-

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

mento to the San Joaquin, between which the placers extended. According to the best estimates, there were then 2,000 people at the mines, nine-tenths of them foreigners. Larkin believed that a few "thousand people in one hundred miles square of the Sacramento would yearly turn out the price that the United States was to pay for the new territory." Three-fourths of the houses in San Francisco were then empty, and were being sold for the cost price of the land. Even Monterey, sleeping the sleep of a Rip Van Winkle, had caught the infection.

The gold discovery had been made during the governorship of Colonel Mason, who on June 17, from Monterey, accompanied by Lieutenant Sher- man, visited the mines, finding en route San Francisco almost deserted and everything going to waste and idle until arrival at Sutter's Fort on July 2, where there was life and business bustle. Mason visited the Lower mines at Mormon Diggings on the American River, where 200 men were at work. At Coloma, a little more than three months after the discovery, upwards of 4,000 were mining. Gold dust was abundant in everybody's hands. He estimated that the yield from the mines was from $30,000 to $50,000 daily, and as they were on public land he seriously debated whether or not to secure a reasonable fee for mining. He resolved not to interfere unless broils and crime demanded. Crime was infrequent though in the mines, and theft and robbery unknown in the early period, despite the insecure deposit places for treasure.

Mason was carried away by the excitement, and while acknowledging in an official letter to the adjutant general that he could not earlier bring him- self to believe the reports concerning the wealth of the gold district he wrote:

"I have no hesitation now in saying that there is more gold in the country drained by the Sacramento and the San Joaquin Rivers than will pay the cost of the present war with Mexico a hundred times over."

No capital was required to obtain gold, as the laboring man required nothing but pick and shovel and tin pan with which to dig and wash the gravel, and many frequently picked gold in pieces of from one to six ounces out of the crevices of the rocks with butcher knives.

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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 7

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