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 73
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The city free library, which in 1917 became a county institution, is located on North I Street between the Odd Fellows' Hall and the Y. M. C. A. The ground on which it is located was donated to the city by adjacent prop- erty owners, who clubbed and bought the lots from the old California Raisin Growers' Association. There was as much difference of opinion as to the loca- tion as there was as to the site of the city hall, half a block away at the corner, but the I Street hustlers won the day on both propositions and there has been a great change in the locality with the erection of these two munic- ipal buildings in that vicinity. The lots donated to the city in 1900 are worth today many times more the $4,000 paid for them. Andrew Carnegie made gift of the building, the property owners gave the lots, Louis Einstein gave $500 for the purchase of books; Robert Kennedy, W. T. Mattingly and others made donations from their private libraries and this was the begin- ning of the library in its own home. With its branches, the library now serves the entire county and the schools besides, an expansion that has been wrought by the efforts of Miss Sarah E. McCardle, the county librarian.
The Parlor Lecture Club house was opened in October, 1908. It is on Van Ness Avenue and club is the representative women's organization of the city.
Building operations in the Fresno city school department were at the crest in the year 1910. A $150,000 bond issue voted during the summer of 1909 realized $168,000 and all that money was spent to secure more room. Fresno ranks seventh in California in point of school attendance, placing it in advance of San Jose and Stockton. The need for more school room had pressed itself for some years upon the attention of the board of education. Fresno had grown so rapidly in population that the school buildings did not keep pace. And yet after those $168,000 were spent, there was no great margin for future expansion, without another bond issue for more school room.
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Twelve lots were bought for an eight-room annex to Lincoln school; four for Emerson and thirteen for Lowell for as large annexes; other additions and improvements were arranged for, but the biggest one thing was the construction and equipment of a polytechnic school annex to the high to cost $60,000, including in the high school building an auditorium with seating capacity for 1,100, a balcony and a stage.
The interest in the city election April 12, 1909, was less as to the officers to be elected, though there were four candidates for mayor, but greater in the contest as to the anti-saloon closing ordinance. The latter was submitted at this election after a vigorous campaign of propaganda by the Anti-Saloon League, led by Rev. Irving B. Bristol as its agent. The ordinance was car- ried by a vote majority of fifty-seven. It would have abolished the bar-room but not the wholesale house nor the liquor serving restaurant after the first of August but that the ruling was made in the test case of Henry P. Black for a recount that the vote on the ordinance was void because the polls on April 12 were closed at five o'clock instead of six, according to the state law. No point on this was made as to the officers chosen at the same election. In September before, the trustees lost out, on a tie vote of four to four, a motion to pass to print an ordinance to close the city saloons on December 1 following. This ordinance was amended to meet certain objections and October 18 was passed to print by a vote of five to two, one member (George Pickford) tendering his resignation rather than be forced to vote. The mayor refused to accept the resignation at the moment and it never was accepted. The ordinance as passed was in brief to confine the liquor traffic to whole- sale dealers, pharmacists and to restaurants at meals under restrictions and regulations. Pickford declared for high license, Sunday closing, and regula- tion and did not consider himself bound to vote for the ordinance popularly accepted because he was an unpledged and independent candidate for trustee at the election and opposed to absolute closing. This ordinance was in the end vetoed by the mayor for the reason that no provisions financial had been made to substitute revenue source for the saloon licenses, that as drawn the ordinance was discriminatory as betweeen classes of citizens and because sentiment had changed on the ordinance since the popular vote. This action on his part brought on him much criticism and even censure from the pulpits and he took this much to heart. However, he and the trustees agreed upon a stringent liquor ordinance and at the meeting on December 6, 1909, it was passed unanimously. This was Ordinance 601 of forty-seven sections and went into effect on passage but placed in actual operation January 1, 1910 because of a decision that a granted liquor license privilege is for one year and quarter license payments having been accepted the privilege could not without cause be suspended before the expiration of the quarter. The adopted ordinance was regarded a drastic one. It raised the retail license from $600 to $800, raised and fixed other license charges, called for midnight and Sun- day closing, prohibited drinking in drug stores, abolished the free lunch, limited the number of all saloon licenses issuable in one year to forty-nine and provided for a reduction of the number of saloons to forty as a maximum and in short called for so many restrictions that on a Sunday not even wine or beer can be had at a meal at a restaurant. This action by the city made it necessary for the supervisors in the county to help make the city ordinance operative. There were three propositions before the supervisors : a prohibited zone about the city with midnight and Sunday closing, or a closed belt from five to eight or ten miles wide, or to extend the closing rule the county throughout or at least around the incorporated cities and towns. The problem was solved at the county election under the Wylie local option law with four of the five supervisorial districts voting "dry," the exception being the third district embracing in large part the city of Fresno. The in- corporated towns all voted "dry" in turn and for a time the only places in the county that were not "dry" were Fresno, Coalinga (which in 1917 so
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voted) and Firebaugh which incorporated as a "wet" town and which derives its town revenue from the liquor licenses. "Boot legging" then became an art in the county.
Twenty years ago December 15, 1908, at night broke out one of the costliest fires in the history of the city. It was in the rear of the Radin & Kamp White Front department stores on I Street near Tulare. The flames were extinguished after about two hours of work but fire smoldered for days. The property was a wreck. The loss of about $150,000 made it a memorable fire.
On the night of December 4, 1918, the lights were turned on for the first time and the Kearney Boulevard electrolier system was turned over to the city. The system extends from the Southern Pacific Railroad sub- way at Fresno Street and along that eighty-foot thoroughfare to the western city limits turning into the boulevard drive for half a mile to Tehama Street. This part of the electrolier system was installed at a cost of about $20,000, an expense borne by the property on the line of the system and more especially benefitting the district known as Kearney Boulevard Heights. In the system are 118 electroliers, the unit stretching twenty-eight blocks with four and five lights in a block for over two miles, being the longest unit in the city. The lighting of the boulevard at night makes the drive one of the show places for the touring autoist.
Of the twelve larger cities in the state Fresno held fifth place in Novem- ber, 1918, for bank clearings-$14,423,195 as against $15,586,608 for the same month one year before. All fruit growing centers show a similar decline due to losses on account of the unseasonable rain which cut the crop totals. Building permits were $45,946 as against $294,391 for the year before month and in the larger cities no larger than Fresno's record for the fall of 1917. War restrictions of course caused these conditions.
At the general election November 5, 1918, Fresno electors ratified by a vote of 3,582 for and 1,829 against a proposed charter submitted by a board of fifteen freeholders. It called for a combination commission-city manager form of government, and for that reason attracted not a little public atten- tion at home and elsewhere in the state. The proposed charter was to supersede the one ratified by the election held on October 19, 1899, with amendments also ratified February 13, 1905. That 1899 charter was considered a model fundamental city guide. The dollar tax limit was one of its features with other limitations which the times at the framing of the document demanded. It was a charter that for years had withstood every test and attack. It was such a hard and fast document that it lacked flexi- bility to keep pace with the times, growth and changed conditions and de- mands of the city and especially in not providing sufficient revenue for the enlarged needs of the city which avails itself of the services of the county assessor in the annual property valuation assessments. For some years re- peated effort had been made in Fresno to secure a new charter adequate to the demands of the city and the efforts were in new charter drafts or needed and imperative amendments to the existing charter. All these efforts resulted in failures. When therefore after all these vain efforts the proposed charter of 1918 was ratified, theoretical and experimental as it was in many of its features, it was thought that one great advance had been made and a clear path was discerned following which the city might avoid all the stumbling blocks against its progress and expansion. Another disappointment was, however, in prospect. After the ratification of the proposed charter more electors began to read and study that charter than had done so before the election-in other words people had voted on a charter while knowing little or nothing of that document and had voted for it on the general prin- ciple that, as the cry had been for years for a new charter, anything the free-holders offered would be acceptable and fill the bill. To make a long story short the proposed charter was attacked in many particulars, especially 30
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in a lack of definitiveness and in not conferring necessary powers on the commissioners to make the charter operative. Here was a pretty how-do ye-do. The charter had yet to be approved by the legislature but the legisla- tors elect were not for reporting it for approval because they considered it in- operative and inadequate and so confusion was worse confounded. Confer- ences were held with a view to decline to certify the charter to the legisla- ture, whereupon mandamus was sued out for a test case to ascertain whether the charter was constitutional and operative. The mandamus case proved an abortive effort. Such legal questions had been raised as to the validity of the charter that the city's representatives in the legislature would not as- sume the responsibility of offering it for ratification because it invited costly litigation and because the city would be thrown out in its financial arrange- ments and these were chances that could not be taken. To make a long and complicated story short, the opinion of a committee of the Fresno Bar Asso- ciation-namely, L. L. Cory, H. M. Johnston and L. B. Hayhurst-was ac- cepted that the charter was never properly ratified by the citizens, that in no respect had the statutory requirements been complied with, for all purposes the election was invalid and any attempt to have charter ratified by the legis- lature would be to plunge the city into confusion. On the unanimous vote of the city trustees the model and reform charter was relegated to limbo and another charter is not a possibility before two years hence and the next legislative session for ratification.
Since 1888 there have been ten city bond issues voted. Not all submitted to vote carried. There were elections at which the result was indecisive, or the issue defeated, or not carried by the two-thirds majority required. The first bond issue was for fire apparatus and land for engine houses, bonds issued in 1888. They expired in 1908. For a sewer system $100.000 was issued in 1887, and in 1895 $40.000 to complete and enlarge it. In 1905 there was an issue on a vote of October 31 of $175,000 for a sewer farm and septic tank system 1.778 to seventy-one, besides $75,000 for a city hall 1.598 to 215. January 20, 1902, there had been an indecisive vote to bond for $55,000; for the system, a majority 408 to 234; for the bonding a majority (but not a two- thirds), 364 to 216; and the direct tax defeated. 197 to 297. March 31. 1903, the sewer $55,000 bond issue was defeated, 271 for as against 355 in the negative. June 3. 1904, a proposed issue of $20,000 for sewer and septic tank was also lost not having been carried by a two-thirds vote. March 19, 1910, $60,000 was voted for playgrounds-847 to 299. May 3, 1916, $500,000 was voted for a storm and sanitary sewer system to meet the growth of the city-1,822 to 710. In 1912, $45,000 was voted to complete the municipal auditorium, originally contemplated to be a part of the playgrounds depart- ment but with failure to erect it by popular subscriptions. This auditorium was one of the hobbies of the late Mayor Rowell and its non-realization ac- cording to his preconceived plans one of the disappointments of his regime, necessitating a $45,000 bond issue in 1912 for its completion according to the accepted plans.
October 21, 1912, Mrs. Julia Fink-Smith made gift to the city of Block 362, excepting lots 11-16, for a playground. The Einstein Estate later made gift to the city for the same purpose in an equipped playground. February, 1914, Fairmont Park was donated by a land company to be added to the city park system.
All proposed amendments to the existing charter were lost at the elec- tion held January 25, 1913. The years 1912 and 1913 were a time for special bond and annexation elections, with varying results and incidentally an elec- tion April 14, 1913, on the liquor ordinance which was the storm center of an agitation by the Anti-Saloon League.
The first election for the annexation of Arlington Heights to the city was defeated November 25, 1912-110 to 114. Arlington and Fresno Heights voted July 3, 1914, to come into the city-170 to 157, and October 15 the
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city voted in the territory and Dean Park-436 to fifty-four and 428 to forty- two, the latter having voted itself in September 4, 1914-twelve to nothing. Hazelwood Addition voted itself in August 7, 1914-forty-seven to twelve- and November 5 was annexed-316 to three.
The municipal Labor Bureau was placed in operation February 19, 1914.
The Fresno Interurban Railway Company was franchised in January, 1915. It was promoted by one John B. Rogers. It proved a failure and never went further than to build an electric railway to near Clovis, the con- struction bankrupting the contractors, who took stock in the enterprise in pay. The company abandoned its city franchise in the fall of 1918 and the railroad commissioners after a hearing upheld it in December in that action, because it was not a paying investment though the abandoning of the fran- chise had preceded the hearing by a month or more. The company is a bankrupt institution.
South Fresno including the Russian-German quarter voted September 24, 1915, by fifty-six to seventy against annexation to the city ; so did North Fresno by 146 to 208. North Fresno voted to annex in 1918 and a section with a population of some 5,000 has come into the city.
The citizens' City Beautiful Commission was an inspiration of the year 1913-14 followed in March, 1915, by the establishment of the City Planning Commission under the state law. The latter's work was purely advisory but it laid out a groundwork plan before it ceased operations and was rele- gated to innocuous desuetude in 1918 by reason of the war-time restrictions and the disinclination of the city trustees to continue it by making appropri- ation in the budget for the continuance of its work.
The first bond issue October 29, 1887, for $12,500 for fire protection and $25,000 for schools carried 219 to two, also $12,500 for flood preventive measures carried by 218 to two. The $100,000 issue voted in December for a sewer system had only three votes against it. Bonds sold at par in April, 1888, and they expired in 1907.
The first annexation election was on June 14, 1890, in the Bartholomew barn in Woodward's Addition. Vote was ten against two; in the city seventy-seven to four. The second decisive one was in October to annex Roberts precinct and additions. It was lost-eighty-seven for and eighty- eight against and in the city 207 for against thirty-one.
The election September 29, 1885, for the incorporation of the City of Fresno was carried by a vote of 277 for, 185 against. The elect and candi- dates for city officers at this election were the following named with the returned vote, names marked with asterisk being of those that have since died: Trustees-W. L. Graves* 351, J. M. Braly* 344, A. Tombs* 262, T. E. Hughes* 250, William Faymonville* 210, Dr. Lewis Leach* 192, Dr. A. J. Pedlar* 200. WV. T. Riggs* and T. R. Brown* 142, W. M. Muller 178. School Board-J. F. Wharton* 313, Dr. C. D. Latimer* 313, W. WV. Phillips 306, George E. Church 246, M. K. Harris 228, A. Tombs* 201, S. W. Henry* 121, D. S. Snodgrass* 150, W. H. Mckenzie* 146, E. J. Griffith 195. Assessor- W. B. Dennett* 235, K. G. Luke* 186. Marshal-C. T. Swain* 230, J. H. Bartlett# 225. Treasurer-\V. H. Mckenzie* 445. Recorder-S. H. Hill* 262, Frank H. Short 190. The vote was canvassed October 5, 1885.
At the November 18, 1885, meeting of the city council citizens asked for concrete action against the impending overflow of the southern part of town and the Southern Pacific reservation which was on low ground, and M. J. Donahoo was appointed to supervise the ditch and levee in the threat- ened territory and to do this the city had to borrow $1,000, being at the start necessarily without funds. In December the city was so church poor that it had to borrow $100 to "pay small bills." Various flood claims were re- jected in November as insignificant in damage and caused by seepages on J and K Streets.
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November 28, 1885, Ordinance 7 was enacted establishing municipal regulations in 510 sections. Evidently the town needed salutary regulationing.
The second city council chamber was located in December, 1885, in a suite in the C. G. Hutchinson building at Mariposa and J Streets on the present site of the bank building. It was rented for fourteen dollars a month.
The demoralizing influence of the Chinese population was attested as early as December, 1885. It was deemed necessary to enact an ordinance against the oriental practice of the use of opium.
Street grades were established at the council meeting December 22, 1885, for the baby incorporated town, and at this meeting town lots were also designated by numbers by Ordinance 11.
February 1, 1886, the city took over the first engine house on J, near Fresno, and the nucleus apparatus of the volunteer department that was organized was a hand engine and hose, a hook and ladder, an extinguisher and an alarm bell. The fire company was in debt seven dollars and seventy cents. J. M. Braly, H. P. Hedges and Dr. A. J. Pedlar made the tender to the city.
Conditions were such in the new city that in January, 1886, an ordinance was necessary for the impounding of estray dogs. Before incorporation Fresno city was regulated by the supervisors under the general county ordinances.
The first public action against the Church irrigation ditch running through the middle of town along the center line of Fresno Street was in March 22, 1886, in a protest to the city by Judge Baly, School Superintendent B. A. Hawkins and T. S. Duncan with a warning that all lawful remedies would be invoked against said nuisance and prosecuted.
The juvenile population came under notice at an early period of the newly incorporated town of Fresno. In July, 1886, ordinance was enacted against the sale of cigarettes to youths under sixteen, and there was the ringing of the curfew bell at eight-thirty P. M. as a warning to all under twelve to "scoot home."
In August the school board estimated that $9,155 would be required for the department of principal, vice and eight teachers and a nine months' term commencing September 1, 1886. There were 680 census school chil- dren. The city tax assessment roll totalled $1,861,202. The tax was one dollar on the $100 apportioned as follows: General fund forty cents, street twenty-five, school fifteen, sewer ten and river and harbor ten. A com- mission assumed control of drainage and flood conditions, which were an an- nual winter menace. The 1886 appointed commissioners were: Thomas E. Hughes, W. L. Graves, M. J. Church and William Helm.
Salaries were small with the start of the incorporated Fresno city as witnesseth the following in April, 1886: city clerk eighty dollars, marshal ditto, policemen sixty dollars. street superintendent twenty-five dollars, recorder the like sum and civil fees, city attorney twenty-five dollars. It is amusing to read in the records that the city had at this time nine fire hy- drants. There were also some fire cisterns. September 30, 1886, offer was made to sell to the city a Silsby fire engine for $3,000 at seven per cent. for three years. The offer was accepted for $2,750 and wait for your money. The Silsby remained in the department as a reserve until the very last and motorization of the apparatus in 1918. That Silsby was a fearful consumer of coal and during her service had spent on her in repairs many times the cost of the original purchase price. Working at a fire the old Silsby was a grand imitation of a Fourth of July pyrotechnic show.
Things were yet in primitive condition as late as November, 1886, when Ordinance 36 of Municipal Regulations was expanded to 838 sections and that year in December, J. A. Campbell asked the council that O, Mariposa and Fresno Streets be opened to traffic back of the courthouse by bridging the
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gullies and water gulches and filling the holes on the line of the streets. It was during this month that I, J and K were opened throughout their length and Mariposa between K and H in the middle of town was guttered. January, 1887, the city having been fourteen months incorporated, the town receipts had been $26,563.68, the expenditures $17,717.55 and the cash balance was $8,846.13.
May 16, 1887, lots 26 and 27 in block 85 were bought by the city from A. Tombs for $1,500 for a fire engine house site. In October the fire house was moved to the rear of the premises preparatory to the erection of a city hall and engine house 45x65 with contract awarded to R. G. Wood for $7,500. With the motorization of the apparatus later that old city hall and the lots were sold to Charles H. Riege for $10,000 and the money in- vested in new apparatus. Systematic organization was had in. November, 1887, of the fire department with Silsby engine, hose cart and hook and lad- der, E. R. Higgins and others of the volunteer association turning over the apparatus on acceptance of their tender of services. In December the pur- chase of the Silsby was completed for $2,000, and in January of the year after an Ahrens was bought. Up to September, 1887, the apparatus was horseless and T. E. Hughes presented to the city a fine span of horses and J. C. Herrington the harness for them.
There was such a menacing smallpox scare in March, 1887, that 130 had themselves vaccinated and Dr. Pedlar was authorized to secure 250 more vaccine points.
It is amusing to read in these days that in the efforts at street open- ings and extensions in 1887, the work was impeded by the brick kiln ex- cavations that were encountered as encroachments on the lines of surveyed streets. Also that the various early efforts to raise money by bonding the city for public improvements were sorely trying, vexatious, exacting and altogether fruitless because of the complex and exacting nature of the stat- utes governing such proceedings.
Recalling the day of small beginnings there is the fact that for the twelve months ending with 1887 the receipts of the city were $42,192.89, the expenditures $28,543.40 and the balance on hand $13,649.40.
It was in the early months of 1888 that exhumation began of the city's dead buried in blocks 11 and 12 bounded by Ventura, Santa Clara, B and D, the second city public cemetery. The first was in the vicinity of M and Stanislaus, six blocks east and three north of the then center of town. No more than nine graves were in that pioneer cemetery. The third cemetery was located in low ground near where the Pollasky depot and the traction company barns are located. It was such water soaked ground that it was said the coffins floated. The second cemetery was reached over the prairie land via Elm Avenue. It is recalled that in March, 1917, while grading C Street, near Ventura, the site of the second cemetery, a box was unearthed containing human remains. So also at the building of the Lincoln school in 1902 at C and Mono half a dozen remains were unearthed in excavations for the foundation. Such discoveries in excavations or the digging of cellars have not been infrequent. The dead were supposed to have all been ex- humed in 1888, when the district, now the Russian quarter, was devoted to residences. Apparently many dead of unknown identity or whose graves had been covered over by the shifting sands were left by those engaged in the work of removal. The burials in the third cemetery were few. Mountain View is the fourth city cemetery.
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