History of Kern 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, Part 12

Author: Morgan, Wallace Melvin, 1868- [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1914
Publisher: Los Angeles, Cal., Historic record company
Number of Pages: 1682

USA > California > Kern County > History of Kern 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 > Part 12

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HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY

building canals and ditches could be prosecuted with the financial aid of his powerful firm, offered wages to the stockholders, management and authority to the directors and water to the patrons of the ditch, who usually were the stockholders themselves.

Testimony respecting the treatment of the minority stockholders after Carr & Haggin had acquired control of the canal companies differs according to the alliance and experience of the witness. Pioneers of unimpeachable character and unquestioned sincerity who were directors and officers of canal companies when Carr began his overtures and for a long time thereafter declare that the alliance was always to the benefit of the farmers. "We did not have money to build weirs and headgates, but Haggin did," says one of these pioneers. "Carr paid us wages for working on canals, his engineers ran out the lines so that we got the water in the right place, and it was my experience that when it came to dividing the water we always got our share. Carr said he did not care to manage the canals-that he would rather we did it. Carr used to come to the directors' meetings, but he let us run things as we pleased."

"Did you ever notice a big cow standing over a water trough when there was only a little stream running in from the pump? Did you ever notice how she gets all the water and the little cows have to stand back? And did you ever notice that when she gets all she wants to drink the big cow is in no hurry to move away and let the little cows have a chance? Well, that gives you an idea of the way Haggin and Carr and the little farmers handled the water in the early days." This is the statement in brief, of another pio- neer of equal standing and reputation and with equal opportunity for informa- tion and observation. Between the two opinions the reader may make his guess, or he may let the puzzle go with the knowledge that Carr's control of the canals and the water in them finally became an accomplished fact.

But another factor entered into the method of Carr's acquisition of water rights and into all his dealings with the settlers. He clearly foresaw, as testi- mony abundantly verifies, the fierce contest that was coming over the use of the waters of Kern river, and he made it a matter of distinct and settled policy to ally his interests with the interests of the people wherever it was possible to do so. The wisdom of his course showed in the great suit of Lux against Haggin, and in the celebrated Miller-Haggin agreement Carr's policy was carried to its logical, ultimate application by making all present and future land owners within the reach of the river parties to the terms under which its waters should be disposed.

Plans to Gather In the Desert Lands

While they were gathering up the large and luscious remnants of swamp land which the earlier comers had overlooked and were buying railroad lands, homesteads and school lands and were getting a firm grasp on water rights, Haggin & Carr were by no means overlooking the desert lands. In March, 1877, just as Carr was getting well established in Kern county, Congress most opportunely passed the desert land act that is known by that date. Already, on May 4, 1875, water to the amount of 850 cubic feet per second had been appropriated under Carr's direction for the express purpose of irrigating desert land, and work on the great Calloway canal which was to carry the water to this desert land had been commenced. The first work on the canal was begun by Carr & Haggin's men and teams, but a little later a contract for excavation was given to Vining Barker. In 1877, the year the desert land act

HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY

was passed, a contract to complete the canal a distance of about twenty-five miles was taken by Broad & Roberts.

The Calloway canal takes water from the north side of Kern river almost opposite the center of Bakersfield, bears west through the northeastern part of Rosedale and then swings to the northwest over a great territory that needed only water to transform it into the finest of fruit and farming land. Broad & Roberts took the contract to complete the canal at seven cents per cubic yard for dirt and nine cents per cubic yard for hardpan Mr. Roberts says they found nothing that they could not plow with eight mules in all the length of the ditch. It took about a year to finish the job, and meantime Carr & Haggin were busy securing entrymen to take up the land.

In his statement published in 1880 Haggin describes his operations in Kern county with special reference to the desert lands, which at that time were the object of much discussion. He runs briefly over the subject of his first activities in the county, stating that the Belle View and McClung ranches were established under the direction of George F. Thornton. On account of the malaria bred by Buena Vista and Kern lakes Haggin bought them, and a large amount of swamp land around them with a view to reclaiming them. He proceeded to divert the water of the river from the lakes to land formerly considered worthless for agriculture. He then built Goose lake slough. canal to carry off the excess water, but this was not sufficient to handle it all. In March, 1877, the statement continues, Congress passed the desert land act. Haggin bought large numbers of odd-numbered sections north of the river, and induced his friends to enter the even-numbered sections adjoining. He bought more water rights and built canals to irrigate a much larger area of land and to utilize all the surplus waters of the river. Haggin states that he desired the co-operation of the owners of even-numbered sections and desired to have them pay their share of the expense of constructing the irrigation system. In order to avoid conflict with strangers he got nearly all the even-numbered sections entered by friendly parties. Since the lands were entered, the state- ment continues, "invidious and designing persons have grossly misrepre- sented the facts touching the character of these lands," and efforts had been made to induce unusual rulings by the department of the interior to have the entries cancelled. Haggin had a government commission previously ap- pointed visit the lands in question and make a report to the authorities. In conclusion he made the statement of policy already referred to, to the effect that he did not desire to monopolize lands, but intended to offer them for sale on liberal terms.

In some cases, it appears, agreements were made with parties to enter the desert lands giving the entrymen the alternative of paying a certain amount for having the water placed on the lands, or selling their equities to Haggin & Carr at a stipulated price. In other cases the entrymen's names seem to have been loaned gratis or for a small fee without the expectation that they would figure in the ownership of the land after it was reclaimed. In either event there were not lacking arguments to show that the bargain was fair and advantageous to all concerned. The lands could be irrigated by no other means known and practicable at the time than by canal from Kern river, and such a canal could be built only by the expenditure of large sums of money. The state or federal government might have taken up the task but aside from these methods there was no alternative that would not

HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY

necessitate the bonding of individual entries to meet their share of the ex- pense.

But the invidious and designing persons got the ear of the general land office authorities, and orders were issued suspending all action with regard to the entries. In February, 1891, the order of suspension was revoked, after something like 50,000 acres of land had been withheld from settlement and development for a little over thirteen years. Meantime the original entrymen, homesteaders and pre-emptors generally had become discouraged and abandoned their claims; some of the friends of Haggin who had allowed him to use their names were dead, others had moved away, and generally the plans for gathering in the desert lands were badly disarranged.

Enter Miller & Lux at Rear of Stage

During all of the busy and important scenes just described, Miller & Lux lingered at the back of the stage. Their lands lay mostly to the north of Buena Vista Lake, twenty miles or more west of Bakersfield, and about the same distance from the center of the contests between Carr and Liver- more over the water rights. It must be borne in mind, however, that Miller's interest in the disposal of the waters of Kern river was quite as great as was that of Haggin, and it must be remembered, also, that his position on the river bore the same relation to that of Haggin as the position of Haggin bore to that of Livermore & Chester. When Livermore & Chester put a dam across the river to force the water into the Kern Island canal it left dry the canals in which Carr & Haggin had acquired the controlling interest. Later, when Carr & Haggin built the Calloway weir to force the water into the Calloway canal the result was to dry up Miller's newly-planted alfalfa fields, and the tule swamps where his herds gathered rough forage. The sloughs and natural water courses through which the remnants of Kern river had meandered leisurely through the broad, flat trough of the valley to Tulare lake changed from clear, though limpid and leisurely streams, to green and slimy sinks of stagnant water. Then they became nothing but streaks of mud in which the feet of the weakened cattle were held fast until the vaqueros came to drag the poor beasts out by riatas about their horns. A little later all the sloughs and swamps were parched as dry as the naked, gray expanses of alkali desert that bordered them, and where the waters had been, great cracks opened in the earth down which a walking stick could be thrust its entire length. Only in deep holes, puddled by the feet of many starving cattle and fouled by the carcasses of dead brutes, was any water left in all the fifty miles of swamp land between Buena Vista and Tulare lakes.

Of course such a state of affairs could lead but to vigorous defensive action on the part of Miller & Lux, and so the suit of Lux versus Haggin was filed. and after the usual delay was brought to trial on April 15, 1881, before B. Brundage, judge of the superior court of Kern county.

However, before I take up the story of this great contest of rival cor- porations, let me tell how lesser factors in the development of the county were faring, relate the stories of some disconnected incidents of importance, and show by transient items of interest something of the daily doings of the citizens of those days.

ST. MALACHY'S CATHOLIC CHURCH, TEHACHAPI

HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY

CHAPTER X

A Collection of Disconnected Stories

So long as the traditions of the pioneer stockmen of California remain, the drought of 1877 will be remembered as a period of ruin and disaster. Possibly the year was not so dry as 1864, but there were more stock in the state to suffer from hunger and starvation and more stockmen to wear out the days and nights with anxiety and frantic efforts to save the remnants of their flocks and herds. In Kern county the stock industry was better estab- lished than any other line of productive enterprise, and the heavy blows dealt the cattle and sheep men in the long, pitiless months when not a drop of moisture fell from the skies and not a green blade nor a dry and withered stem of grass was left to cover the absolute nakedness of the desert, left scars that were not effaced until many prosperous years were passed.

In 1877 Harry Quinn, starved out of his magnificent range on Rag gulch, drove 18,000 sheep to Nevada and brought back 2700; 15,000 of the flock per- ished in a great storm east of the Sierras that piled the snow waist deep on the level plain. Other sheep men of the county who had less resource and stayed at home, saw their flocks literally wiped out. The cattle men fared little better. While the river continued to flow down the swamps and there were tules to be eaten, the cattle survived, but finally there was no water save what was taken out in the irrigation ditches, the tule lands were dry, and the few remaining pools of water grew stagnant, black and poisonous.

A very few men, like the Jewetts, who had irrigated fields and could grow forage despite the failure of the rains, were able to buy cattle and sheep at almost nothing a head, and so profited as much as they lost by the long continued drought. But the irrigated fields were few in those days.

The next season the feed was good, and the next was dry again. It was then that Hill & Rivers sold out their interest in the stock at Tejon to General Beale, and Jose Lopez, to reduce the Tejon flocks, drove 16,000 sheep to Green River in Wyoming, whence they were shipped to Cheyenne. Lopez and his herders were six months on the trail, and established a record, not only for distance traveled, but for small percentage of loss and general success on the exceedingly difficult expedition. In 1880 General Beale bought out Boggs, the remaining partner in the firm of Hills, Rivers & Co. The sheep were gradually closed out on the Tejon ranches, and the herds of cattle were in- creased to a maximum of 29,000 head.

The Town of Tehachapi

The town of Tehachapi was founded in the summer of 1876, when the Southern Pacific railroad finally surmounted the difficulties of the grade up the mountains and reached the little valley at the summit. Prior to that time Old Tehachapi (or Old Town, as it soon came to be known) was a thriving and active little place of 200 or 300 inhabitants. Old Town drew its sus- tenance from the miners who washed gold from the sands and gravels of China hill and from the stockmen who had established themselves in the fertile Tehachapi, Brite's, Cummings and Bear valleys and were pasturing their herds on the meadows and mountain sides. J. J. Murphy and Hirsh- feld Brothers were the pioneer merchants of Old Town, Spencer & Durnal kept a hotel, and four or five saloons dispensed liquid refreshments.

HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY

Among the early stockmen were the Brite and Cummings families (after each of which one of the valleys was named), the Cuddebacks, Matt Tyler, John Hickey, the Fickerts of Bear valley, Dan Davenport, Joe Kaiser, Henry Seegur, George Rand, and Antone Pauly, one of the few permanent settlers around the Tehachapi who raised sheep. There were traveling sheepmen in the Tehachapi country in the early day, and at Pauly's corral in fall and spring many sheep were shorn. The other shepherds, however, did not own land or maintain established headquarters there.

The placer mining around Tehachapi dates back to the early '60s. As elsewhere the white miners were followed by Chinamen, who worked over the abandoned placer sands with considerable profit.

The railroad missed Old Town by about three miles to the east, and a rival village was started about the station. Of course the new town got the business, but it was not until 1883 or thereabout that Old Town began to move over, bodily, to the railroad.

Lime burning began around Tehachapi a little before 1880, but not until the Union Lime Company of Santa Cruz established a branch at Tehachapi and built an up-to-date kiln in 1883 or 1884, was the lime industry any great success. From that time on, however, the great lime deposits in the Tehachapi mountains continued to grow in importance until they now constitute one of the large factors in the county's wealth.

Farming started actively in the Tehachapi country about 1885, and rich new ground and a succession of favorable years brought the mountain val- leys rapidly to the front agriculturally. Moses Hale, about 1880, grew the first apple orchard around Tehachapi, and is entitled to the name of the father of the apple-growing industry, which now promises to give a new value to the Tehachapi lands.

Ben Kessing was the first postmaster of new Tehachapi, and was fol- lowed in that office by P. D. Green, manager of Baldy Hamilton's horse and cattle ranch, justice of the peace and friend and benefactor of everyone in the town who needed his help to draw up a deed, nurse the sick or lay out the dead. Among the first school teachers of Tehachapi were L. A. Beards- ley, W. W. Frazier, Dr. Hoag, and R. L. Stockton.

Delano Making Progress

Meantime the town of Delano had ceased to be a railroad terminus, but it was one of the most important wool-shipping points in the state, and it was gradually coming to be a noted wheat-shipping center. The warm, sunny plains about Delano where feed starts earlier than almost anywhere else in the state, early attracted the itinerant sheep owners, and flocks were driven there from the mountains and desert and from over the range in Nevada for the lambing and shearing time. Grain farmers soon found that the same conditions that made the early grass were good for early wheat, and homesteaders dotted the mesa with their dwellings and began marking out the great fields that were distinctive of the wheat farming districts of the valley before the advent of the orchardists and the alfalfa growers.

By this time the South Fork valley, the Kernville country, Linn's valley, Woody, and all the other mountain districts were developing under the hands of stockmen and farmers into permanent and prosperous communities, able to weather droughts and other periods of adversity with less relative loss, perhaps, than any other portion of the county.

HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY

The Last of Old Clubfoot

In 1879 Old Clubfoot made his last trip north past Tejon and back to his principal haunts in the San Bernardino mountains. Since the days of the earliest settlements, Old Clubfoot was the hero of the principal bear stories of the pioneers. Big as an ox, and easily identified by sight or by his tracks from the fact that his right fore paw had been chewed off-prob- ably by a trap in his infancy-the great beast used to make his pilgrimage into the mountains of Kern county every summer, always coming by one trail and returning by another. A party of twelve men met Old Clubfoot one day on the Alamos trail as they were going to Los Angeles from the Kern River mines. The bear did not offer to fight, nor did he exhibit the slightest disposition to retreat. He simply stood there, calm and statuesque, his big body filling the road from cliff to precipice-or at least leaving no clear space on either side down which the miners cared to venture. Clubfoot got the right of way. What became of him at last neither history nor tradition records. After 1879 the Tejon herders saw him no more, and no more is known of him.

The Lynching of an Outlaw Gang

It was while the long and ineffectual battle to save the life of the out- law, Tiburcio Vasquez, was dragging in the courts and before the governor that a number of vaqueros and amateur horsethieves started out to emulate Tiburcio's notorious career. They stole a number of horses and saddles from livery stables in Bakersfield, went to Caliente, robbed the depot, shot up the town and were preparing a dastardly assault on a woman when the con- struction train with a gang of workmen came along and frightened them away.

Determined to nip this new outburst of lawlessness in the tender bud, cattlemen, ranchers and residents of Bakersfield took instantly to arms. Jim Young, a cattleman, saw the gang on its way to the Utah trail and gathered a small posse composed of himself, Sam Young, Bull Williams and perhaps one or two others. "Bull" Williams got his name from the fact (veraciously reported by his friends) that when he started in the cattle business as a. tenderfoot the old timers sold him a hundred head of bull calves as a nucleus for his herd. A very few years later Williams sold twelve hundred cattle as the increase of his band, which indicates that he did not remain a tender- foot all the rest of his life.

The Youngs and Bull Williams found the outlaws in a house near the Alamos ranch beyond Gorman station, and got between them and their guns. Five Mexicans and a young man named Elias were brought to the jail in Bakersfield, and then a meeting of the men who had been hunting them was held at the office of Justice of the Peace W. S. Adams. Adams was requested to retire, and an agreement was drafted and signed in which the men present pledged their support and loyalty to each other.

Then they went to the jail, where the jailor was easily overpowered, took the outlaws to the courtroom and organized' a court by appointing a judge, jury and prosecuting attorney and attorney for the defense. Mean- time, that there might be no delay in the workings of the wheels of justice, another man was appointed to put ropes to soak and lay a heavy timber between the crotches of two willow trees at the rear of the court house yard. He also placed a plank across two barrels underneath the heavy timber.

In the morning, very early, a great crowd gathered in the court house

HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY

yard to see six bodies hanging stiffly by their necks. They were cut down and laid out side by side on the floor of the hall in the courthouse, and a coroner's jury promptly summoned promptly found that the deceased per- sons came to their death from being hanged by a person or persons to this jury unknown. At least the jury swore truly so far as its official cognizance was concerned, for no testimony touching the identity of the executioners was introduced at the inquest.

Not a few people condemned the hanging of the boy Elias, and a large number of Mexican citizens considered the affair an affront to their race. There was some talk of asking the Mexican consul to interfere, and a small fire starting in the alley back of the Arlington hotel gave rise to a report that an attempt had been made to burn the town in resentment of the lynch- ing. Guards were sworn in and stationed about the streets for a night or two, but the excitement died out as the Mexicans were convinced that no discrimination between races had been intended or had been made.

This was the last organized gang of thieves and outlaws to ply their profession in Kern county.

The Tehachapi Train Wreck

On January 20, 1883, occurred the train wreck on the Tehachapi grade, still remembered with horror. The Southern Pacific passenger train reached Tehachapi at 2:30 a. m. with seven cars, a postal car, baggage car, express car, two sleepers, smoking car and day coach in the order named. The con- ductor, B. F. Reid, got off to register and get the train orders, the head brake- man, C. Maltby, went to turn the switch when the engines were discon- nected and the helper engine was being detached, and the rear brakeman, John Patten, left his post to show a lady passenger the way to the depot. The night was very dark, and a strong and bitterly cold wind was blowing over the mountain from the south. The last man of the train crew had hardly left the cars before they began moving backward. The grade at the station was twenty feet to the mile, and rapidly grew steeper, and besides there was the wind to help give the runaway train velocity. The train was making furious headway before anyone inside noticed that anything was wrong. Then Eli Nabro, a passenger, set the hand brakes on the sleepers. This checked the forward part of the train so that the smoker and day coach broke loose and dashed on ahead. The hand brakes however, were insufficient to hold the cars on the steep grade, and new velocity was gained. Two miles and a half below the station, the sleepers left the track just after they had passed over a deep fill. The first was thrown against the wall of a cut and crushed to splinters, the second turned completely over in the air and landed on the bank. Both caught fire, and the first was completely consumed with every- one in it. From the other sleeper and from the postal, express and baggage cars, all of which rolled over the fill to the bottom of the gulch, eighteen or twenty persons escaped, all more or less seriously hurt. A Miss Squires, caught in the wreck unhurt, was burned to death before the eyes of other passengers who were powerless to help her. The smoker and day coach raced on a mile and a half farther, where the efforts of the passengers served to stop them. Just how many people were killed in the wreck was never accurately established. The testimony at the inquest tended to show that the brakes never were set at the station, though railroad officials maintained that the brakes were set, but that tramps released them with the intention of robbing the passengers. The body of one tramp was found in the wreck.

HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY

Importation of the Negroes

Haggin & Carr inherited from Livermore & Chester and the Cotton Growers' Association the idea that cotton growing should be one of the most profitable purposes to which the delta lands could be put, and as a means of securing suitable labor in the cotton fields Carr undertook the importation of negroes from the southern states. The St. Louis Chronicle of November 13, 1884, records that F. M. Ownbey was there on that date arranging to bring to Kern county 1100 negroes to work on the Haggin lands, and states that the immigrants were offered wages at the rate of $12 per month for men, $8 for women, and $6 for boys and girls.

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History of Kern 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, Part 12

Author: Morgan, Wallace Melvin, 1868- [from old catalog] Publication date: 1914 Publisher: Los Angeles, Cal., Historic record company Number of Pages: 1682

Author: Morgan, Wallace Melvin, 1868- [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1914
Publisher: Los Angeles, Cal., Historic record company
Number of Pages: 1682