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 13
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Ownbey never brought so many negroes to the county as he planned, but three or four parties came at different times under contract to work for a year at the wages stated. In the last party were 130 families. Among them were M. Stevens and his wife, Will, Belton and Gideon Vessel ; John, Henry and Joe Pinkney ; A. W. Vessel, Mrs. Susie Hall, Francis Campbell, Henry Caldwell, Anderson Bowen, Mary Bowen, Pleasant Martin and Will Walker and his family, all members of the colored colony of Bakersfield today.
But from Carr's standpoint the bringing of the negroes was not a suc- cess. No sooner had they landed than the missionaries of discontent were among them, pursuading them to disregard their contracts and showing them how much better wages they could secure elsewhere. The result was that the greater number of them never did enough work for Carr to pay their transportation. Some never did a stroke of work for him. Stevens and per- haps a dozen others stayed on the ranches about eleven months, and Tom Perryman, who was given a patch of ground to work for himself, stayed three years. The others found work in Bakersfield or scattered over the state. The importation of the negroes helped to increase the breech that was widen- ing between Carr and a considerable portion of the people around Bakers- field, particularly working men and homesteaders who depended on their wages to finance them and who considered Carr's action an effort to cheapen the price of labor.
The non-success of the cheap labor scheme, on the other hand, put an end to the plan for raising cotton and hops, and helped, in all probability, to confirm the decision of Haggin and Tevis to dispose of their lands.
News Notes of 1886 to 1893
August, 1886-Billy Carr is undertaking to manage both the Democratic and Republican parties in Kern county. At the last general election 394 votes were cast-198 Republican and 196 Democratic. W. W. Drury ships his first crop of ramie-about 500 pounds-to Pittsburg, and the proceeds net him about 5 cents per pound.
September 11, 1886-The adjournment of the legislature without having passed the irrigation bills is heralded as a defeat for Haggin & Carr and a victory for Miller & Lux and their attorney-in-chief, R. E. Houghton.
October, 1886-Clashes are frequent between Carr and settlers on desert lands under the Calloway canal. Carr is accused of trying to prevent settlers from remaining on their claims by fencing the roads and otherwise, and set- tlers make trouble by cutting Carr's fences. Miss Conway, a school teacher who has filed on a desert homestead, chops down a locked gate while Carr's men look on. It is alleged that dead hogs were thrown in Miss . Conway's well.
December 9, 1886-Haggin & Carr are making 400 to 1000 25-pound
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cheeses per month on the Mountain View and Kern Island ranches. From January 1st to September 26th 201,886 pounds of cheese were shipped to Los Angeles and San Francisco.
December 30, 1886-The people of Sumner are discussing the subject of a water supply for fire purposes. The Kern County Immigration Society is organized with H. Hirshfeld, president; A. C. Maude, secretary, and P. Galtes, W. H. Scribner, E. M. Roberts, W. E. Houghton and B. Ardizzi, directors. It is planned to keep a permanent exhibit in Los Angeles.
February 3, 1887-The Bakersfield water works has two eight-inch wells, seventy-five feet deep, and pumps about 133,000 gallons of water per day.
February 5, 1887-A big sandstorm from the east almost stops business in Bakersfield. Complaints are made concerning the large bills presented by the constables and justices.
March. 1887-The Wright irrigation bill becomes a law.
June 2, 1887-A news letter from Delano to the Echo describes that town as having four stores, two hotels, one lodging house, one restaurant, two livery stables, two meat markets, two blacksmith shops, one barber shop, three real estate offices, and a right smart sprinkling of saloons and dance houses-no church, no doctor, no drug store, no lawyer. The spring's ship- ments of wool amounted to 4600 bales.
June, 1887-Mr. Collins, agent of the general land office, concludes an investigation of the Haggin & Carr desert land claims.
June 23, 1887-The Tehachapi Lime Company has recently begun opera- tions.
June 30, 1887-R. M. Pogson buys the old town hall and moves it to Tejon. The agitation begins for a $100,000 bond issue for building roads throughout the county and for the purchase of fair grounds.
July, 1887-In the election of a chief of the Bakersfield fire department, the Alerts and the Neptunes combine on L. F. Burr and defeat W. H. Ream, the candidate of the Eurekas, by a few votes. Other officers elected are : E. R. Jameson, assistant chief ; J. W. Ahern, secretary ; H. A. Blodget, treas- urer.
Charles A. Maul's peach orchard is celebrated in the local press.
September, 1887-The Crocker ranch south of town, largely in alfalfa and with a good house on it sells for $32,000-$100 per acre.
September, 1887-The Southern Hotel Association incorporates.
September, 1887-L. P. St. Clair buys for $2400 a block of land southwest of the courthouse, afterward the site of the first St. Francis hospital at G and Fourteenth streets.
September, 1887-Articles of incorporation are filed in San Francisco by the San Francisco & San Joaquin Valley Railroad Company. A camp of workmen in Tejon cañon is doing work preliminary to grading-supposed to be for the Santa Fe. The Tejon lemon and orange trees are in bearing.
September 29, 1887-General Beale has given a right of way across his Tejon lands for a railroad from Mojave to Bakersfield. The road is to be completed to Bakersfield within three years.
November 1, 1887-Cornerstone of Masonic temple is laid.
December 26, 1887-Superintendent J. S. Hambleton, drilling on land owned by the Union Oil & Land Company, reports a strike at 720 feet on section 19. 30-22. The drill went through oil standstone into a bed of gravel, and gas forced oil, sand, and gravel the size of walnuts thirty or forty feet
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in the air. The well flowed for some little time, and the gas was so suffo- cating that the workmen were driven back from the well. The Sunset Oil Company is daily expecting machinery from the cast, when it will begin drilling. Hirshfeld Brothers and R. T. Norris will soon begin prospecting for oil eight or nine miles from Bakersfield in the direction of Kern river cañon at a point where gas is detected coming from the ground.
December 25, 1887-Fire Chief Burr brings to town the new Silsby fire engine, and the day being Sunday and Christmas, a great crowd gathers on the street to inspect the new acquisition. Alex Heyman is foreman of the Eureka engine company.
January 10, 1888-An immigrant car at the rear of a Southern Pacific passenger train, while coming down the grade from Tehachapi, breaks a wheel, is wrenched loose from the train, leaves the track, rolls over and over down a seventy-five-foot embankment, and is burned up by a fire which starts from the heating stove. All the passengers escape by crawling through the car windows, Charles Ankrum and his wife (colored) being the worst injured. Ankrum's shoulder was dislocated, and the fire burned a hole in the back of his coat just as he was getting through the window.
January 26, 1888-Clerks begin agitation for Sunday closing of stores in Bakersfield. Rabbit drives are frequent in the county. About 40,000 jack rabbits were killed in drives during January, February and March, 1888.
February 16, 1888-The Kern River Cañon Irrigation Company, which owns 25,000 acres of land east and north of Sumner, and which plans to take water out of the river near the cañon to irrigate lands east of Sumner and as far south as the Weed Patch, has bonded its lands and franchise to San Francisco people for thirty days. (Plans never materialized.)
March, 1888-Bakersfield Drum Corps organized at R. A. Edmonds' store.
May 10, 1888-The Porterville branch of the Southern Pacific is graded from Fresno to Porterville.
June 14, 1888-Work has been started on the Southern hotel.
July 12, 1888-The Woman's Relief Corps is organized.
July 19, 1888-Work begins on the new railroad shops at Sumner.
July 26, 1888-The details of the Miller-Haggin agreement are pub- lished. The only opposition appears to come from the owners of the McCord ditch. The immediate effect of the agreement is to advance the price of land around Bakersfield. Large land owners subscribe to a fund totaling between $3000 and $4000 for the purpose of advertising Kern county. Carr contri- buted $1500.
September, 1888-County supervisors give L. P. St. Clair a franchise for a gas and electric light system for Bakersfield. Work on the plant is to be commenced in six months and be completed within a year. Briggs, Fergu- son & Co. announce a great auction sale of Haggin lands beginning Monday, December 17, 1888. In two hours ninety-two towns lots were sold. On Tues- day thirty purchasers bought nineteen colony lots of five acres each and 145 town lots. The grand jury recommends that the saloon licenses be raised from $25 to $75 per quarter.
January 24, 1889-J. S. Hambleton, superintendent of the Sunset Oil Company (Jewett & Blodget), has brought in on section 16, 11-23, at a depth of 110 feet, an oil well that flows five barrels per day. The county officials are suing the county for fees which they claim they needlessly paid into the county treasury.
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March 14, 1889-H. A. Blodget, H. H. Fish and Jeff Packard get a franchise for a street railway down Chester avenue, past the site of the "new Southern Pacific depot" (which was never built) and out to the river bridge.
Same date-Another Haggin land sale is announced. The sales will be: First day, at the Cotton ranch ; second day, in Bakersfield; third day, at the hop ranch. Barbecues first and third days. Baldwin and McAfee conduct the sale. Town lots sell at $142 to $640. Colony lots at $57 to $135 per acre.
April 4, 1889-Hirshfeld brothers, who have been in the mercantile busi- ness in the county continuously for twenty-five years, sell to Dinkelspiel brothers.
May 13, 1889-The county, by a vote of 852 to 281, elects to issue bonds in the sum of $250,000 to build a new jail, a county hospital, an addition to the court house and to improve highways.
Same date-Second sale of Haggin's irrigated lands begins under the direction of L. C. McAfee, who is now the manager, with C. Brower, of the land department of J. B. Haggin. McAfee announces that it is Haggin's policy to dispose of all his Kern county lands. McAfee and Brower have their first office where the Odd Fellows hall is now.
Same date-Plans of the Poso irrigation district are submitted.
July 7, 1889-The entire business section of Bakersfield is destroyed by fire. Soon after the great fire property owners in the business section began laying asphalt sidewalks.
August 31, 1890-Carr & Haggin are working 300 head of horses ex- tending canals to the lands which they will colonize next winter. J. J. Mack is here from San Francisco to organize the Bank of Bakersfield.
September, 1890-The Kern County Land Company is incorporated in San Francisco. Report says that S. W. Ferguson is to be the resident mana- ger. Lloyd Tevis is anxious to dispose of the Kern county lands, as he pre- fers other investments.
October 1, 1890-James Herrington is tarred and feathered by citizens who disapprove of his activity in jumping lands and filing contests against homesteaders.
October 27, 1890-Work begins on the Poso irrigation district canal. Engineers are here surveying for the valley railroad.
A bi-partisan committee is named by Republicans and Democrats to pre- vent "ward heelers and toughs" from dominating the coming election.
November 1, 1890-Milo McKee has both arms blown off while firing a salute with the old brass cannon in honor of Senator Stanford, who had just arrived in Bakersfield on a speaking tour. On the same day at Tulare, W. Baker had one arm blown off in almost the same manner, also while firing a salute to Senator Stanford, and the engine that hauled Senator Stan- ford's special train to Bakersfield, while returning light to Tulare ran over and killed Wallace and Ed Ray, two Delano boys who were riding a railroad bicycle to Alila to attend a dance. The headlight of the engine was broken and it was running dark.
January 1, 1891-Ten tons of asphalt in boxes are shipped east.
January, 1891-Judge Arick dies, and Governor Waterman appoints A. R. Conklin of Inyo county to succeed him on the superior bench.
Stores in Bakersfield agree to close on Sunday after March 1, 1891.
February, 1891-The ruling of the interior department of September
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12, 1877, suspending desert land entries Nos. 1 to 337, inclusive, is revoked, and old applications to contest are recognized.
An amendment to the desert land act of 1877, just passed, validates as- signments of desert entries, and permits Haggin to complete and present proof of reclamation of his hundreds of desert claims under the Calloway.
February, 1891-The bonds of the Kern and Tulare irrigation district are sold.
April 2, 1891-John Barker has developed a gas well on his ranch be- tween Bakersfield and the Kern cañon and has piped it to his house for cooking and lighting.
April 30, 1891-President Harrison speaks from rear of train.
April, 1891-Colonization Agent Knewing of the Kern County Land Company arrives from England with thirty young English colonists.
July 17, 1891-At a meeting in Sumner, George C. Doherty and John Barker explain their plan for the Doherty canal, which would take over water rights to 30,000 miner's inches of water located by John Barker in 1878, build a canal down the river to a point opposite Sumner, run a tunnel under the hill to the mesa north and east of Sumner. The company was to be incorporated for $1,000,000, the promoters proposed to sell perpetual water rights for $11.25 per acre, and planned to irrigate 80,000 acres. (This plan was never carried out, of course, but it was believed at the time to have been partly responsible for the building of the East Side canal, which covers part of the territory which the Doherty canal was to water.)
The state legislature has placed a bounty on coyote scalps.
August 25, 1892-E. M. Roberts is given a contract to construct the East Side canal, which is to take a portion of the water allowed to the Kern Island canal under the Miller-Haggin agreement, and which is planned to irrigate 30,000 acres of land.
August, 1892-Construction trains are working on both ends of the Mc- Kittrick branch railroad.
November, 1892-A hot campaign and an election contest results in the election of H. A. Jastro as supervisor from the Fifth district, defeating H. F. Condict by three votes.
February 10, 1893-Kern river breaks its levee and floods the northern and western part of town. The water was a foot deep at I and Nineteenth street on Thursday, but by Friday noon it had disappeared everywhere in town except in very low places.
February 23, 1893-Celsus Brower is chosen to go to the world's fair at Chicago in charge of the Kern county exhibit.
March 6, 1893-Rosedale colonists meet to discuss water rates and re- solve that "no individual or corporation should have the right to fix the rates at which a necessity of life shall be sold." (The Land Company was offering the colonists for signature an agreement fixing the rate for irriga- tion water at $1.50 per acre per year, the contract to be perpetual and the charge for water to become a lien on the land if not paid.)
February 4, 1893-President Cleveland signs the proclamation creating the Sierra forest reserve, including a great territory in the mountains of Kern county.
The people of Delano are discussing the possibility of getting water from the Calloway and Beardsley canals.
6
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May 25, 1893-Company G, National Guard, is mustered in with Captain, W. H. Cook; first lieutenant, H. A. Blodget ; second lieutenant, H. P. Bender.
August, 1893-At an anti-Chinese meeting in Kern City, is drafted a letter to the United States district attorney stating that there are 1500 Chinese in Kern county who are not registered under the Geary law. It is proposed to remove the Chinese, but by peaceable methods only.
September 21, 1893-Fruit shippers catch seven men stealing fruit from cars, and haul them out to a quiet place and spank them on the bare skin. Fresh peaches are bringing $1 for a twenty-pound box in Chicago. The freight is sixty-five cents per box, leaving the shipper thirty-five cents.
CHAPTER XI
The Great Lux-Haggin Water Suit
While the short but interesting preliminary between Carr & Haggin and Livermore & Chester was being fought to a finish, Miller and Lux were getting established in Kern county and gathering about them able leaders and captains, of whom J. C. Crocker, S. W. Wible and Capt. John Barker were types. Long before this time Miller & Lux had acquired great ranches and ranges around Gilroy, along the San Joaquin river and far up along the northern coast. In 1872, in conjunction with W. S. Chapman, owner of the Chowchilla ranch, Miller & Lux as owners of the Columbia ranch had begun a canal, the largest and longest in the state, which took water from the San Joaquin river at the mouth of Fresno slough and extended for seventy-five miles across Fresno and Merced and a part of Stanislaus counties.
Miller's activities in Kern county (Miller was the active member of the firm) were an extension of the operations along the San Joaquin. It is not unlikely that Miller at some time had pleasant visions of a great cattle and sheep ranch extending in an unbroken sweep through the rich, black tule lands from Stockton to Bakersfield. During his fight with Haggin & Carr, Miller is commonly reported as assuring them that he would make them "pack their blankets out of Kern county," and there were not lacking admirers of the doughty and vigorous old German who fully expected to sec him make his threat good.
Jim Crocker had been in Miller's employ on the San Joaquin and was sent to Kern county to lay the foundations for the Miller occupancy here. Crocker was the sort of a man Miller would be expected to choose for the job. A quiet, self-contained man, but a good mixer in spite of his reserve and a man of native force and personality that made him a natural leader. He was bred to get up in the morning at 4 o'clock and go out on hard jaunts with the vaqueros. Chasing down and breaking up organized bands of horse and cattle thieves appears to have been his favorite pastime. If a friend or fellow stockman was in trouble, financial or otherwise, Crocker was ready to go on his bail to the extent of his possessions. Men rallied to the standard of Crocker because of their friendship and confidence and because they liked to fight with a fighter. The men who fought under Carr's colors did so more usually because they believed their personal interest lay in that direction. It was Carr's strong point of strategy, as we have
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seen, to make the personal interest of many people lie in the same direction as his own.
S. W. Wible, who figures prominently among the Miller forces in the Miller-Haggin contest, was a pioneer of 1852, beginning his western experi- ence as a miner and constructor of miners' canals and sluices and later under- taking the management of larger water engineering enterprises. He came to Kern county in 1874 and built a number of the early canals from Kern river. When the Kern Valley Water Company was formed by Livermore, Redington and others to undertake the reclamation of swamp land district No. 121, Wible was placed in charge as engineer. Celsus Brower had charge of the business affairs of the company. Wible built the great Kern Valley Water Company's canal which extended north from Buena Vista lake for a distance of some twenty-six miles, when first constructed, but which has since been carried much further down the swamp and ultimately is to be built through to Tulare lake. The canal follows the western edge of the swamp and overflowed district, and was 125 feet wide on the bottom and cal- culated to carry a stream seven feet in depth. It was designed to carry all the waters of Kern river that might flow so far, and also was to serve as the feeder for irrigation ditches that would cover 100,000 or more acres of land. When Miller & Lux acquired the Kern Valley Water Company's interests Wible went to the new management, as most of the men who were prominent in the operation of Livermore & Redington's Kern Island projects went over to Haggin & Carr when the latter came into possession of those properties. Wible afterward became the general superintendent for Miller & Lux. He was noted as one of the few men who stood in no awe of Miller when the latter flew into his celebrated fits of passion. It is related that on an occasion when Miller had made the discovery that one of his warehouses had leaked and wet a great quantity of wool and was dividing his time between furiously chopping hole after hole in the wall of the structure and as furiously jumping on his hat when he found new evidences of de- struction, Wible followed his employer along the warehouse wall and jumped on the hat while Miller chopped the holes until the ludicrousness of the per- formance finally appealed to the cattle king and appeased his wrath. In his old age Wible lived true to his pioneer instinct. He was one of the first to respond to the Alaskan mining boom, and summer after summer he donned the great fur overcoat that identified him for years to strangers and new comers, and sailed for the north to meet the melting of the snows above his frozen placers.
Capt. John Barker got into the Miller-Haggin fight partly because he was a riparian owner, although his lands were higher up on the river than the intake of any of the irrigation canals, and partly because, like an old war horse, he could not remain inactive when his nostrils caught the scent of battle. Born in England and bred to the sea, he came to California on the news of the first gold excitement, explored the upper San Joaquin valley on horseback in 1854, fought in the Indian wars of Tulare county in 1856, served in a troop of volunteer cavalry during war times, and came to Kern county in the early '70s. He was a bluff, out-spoken man, a vitriolic writer when his righteous wrath was stirred, and an off-hand orator, the sarcasm of whose phrases was dulled only by the sledge-hammer method of their de- livery. Captain Barker would roast his victim alive, pour carbolic acid over his withered remains and end by quoting a few pages of Shakespeare. Byron
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or Bobby Burns to give a classic flavor to his philippic. He entered no less fervently into his friendships, and between his battles and his benefactions Captain Barker left his record deeply drawn across the history of the county. In his old age, crippled by infirmities, he used to ride about Bakersfield and between the town and the mouth of Kern river canon, driving an old white horse and a roomy phaeton, planning over old plans for the im- provement of the Pierce and Barker ranches and the utilization of resources and opportunities that still lie fallow, waiting till the time is ripe for the fulfillment of the prophecies of the pioneer.
Leaders of the Carr & Haggin Forces
Incidental references in preceding pages have given some insight into the character of W. B. Carr, the generalissimo of the Haggin forces. Fat, aggressive, determined, absolutely unabashed, with bull-dog courage and endurance, he was a typical political boss of the larger and more perfect type. Frequently and fervently cursed and hated, he could walk into a saloon in a hostile ward and in ten minutes have enough sworn allies to insure the victory of his candidates. If a delegation of angry farmers in the days of the bitter water troubles came after Carr with the intention of puncturing him with bullets or stringing him up to a high-branching cottonwood, he met them with an outstretched hand and slaps on their backs and sent them away wreathed in smiles of hope and assurance. Moreover, Carr had the valuable instinct that showed him to a nicety when it was necessary to dispense good coin and valuable favors and when mere promises would suffice. Carr was a finished performer and a skillful tutor, and later actors on the Kern county stage sat at his feet and learned to do politics in the scientific, metropolitan style.
Walter James figured in the water disputes, in court and out, mainly as an expert witness. His long and intimate association with everything that had to do with the appropriation and use of Kern river's waters from 1870 down, aided by a retentive memory and a logical, consecutive manner of stating the salient facts concerning a subject made him invaluable as an authority, and no investigation of water or water rights was complete until Walter James had been examined and cross-examined and with a little nasal drawl and imperturbable deliberation had told just how and why it all happened and came to pass. It is difficult to say whether Walter James in his long record in Kern county shines more as an engineer or as a diplomat, but he is hard to out-class in either capacity.
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