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 21
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95 | Part 96 | Part 97 | Part 98 | Part 99 | Part 100 | Part 101 | Part 102 | Part 103 | Part 104 | Part 105 | Part 106 | Part 107 | Part 108 | Part 109 | Part 110 | Part 111 | Part 112 | Part 113 | Part 114 | Part 115 | Part 116 | Part 117 | Part 118 | Part 119 | Part 120 | Part 121 | Part 122 | Part 123 | Part 124 | Part 125 | Part 126 | Part 127 | Part 128 | Part 129 | Part 130 | Part 131 | Part 132 | Part 133 | Part 134 | Part 135 | Part 136 | Part 137 | Part 138 | Part 139 | Part 140 | Part 141 | Part 142 | Part 143 | Part 144 | Part 145 | Part 146 | Part 147 | Part 148 | Part 149 | Part 150 | Part 151 | Part 152 | Part 153 | Part 154 | Part 155 | Part 156 | Part 157 | Part 158 | Part 159 | Part 160 | Part 161 | Part 162 | Part 163 | Part 164 | Part 165 | Part 166 | Part 167 | Part 168 | Part 169 | Part 170
As this book is designed mainly for future reading it may be well to leave the future to put its own appraisement on the permanent valtte of the experiments and developments recounted. Suffice it to say that they have
152
HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY
been the means of awakening a new interest in the agricultural and horti- cultural development of the county, and also of raising the market value of the arid plain and mesa lands from almost imperceptible figures to anywhere from $20 to $100 per acre. The higher prices are paid for lands nearer the centers of development. Still higher prices are asked for land close to Bakers- field or for land on which pumping plants have been installed and water de- veloped. It is the common belief that these prices will continue to ascend, although the vast area subject to development and settlement and the moder- ate rate at which these processes so far have proceeded may make any further advance in values equally deliberate.
Status of Fruit Growing in 1913
Figures collected by Kent S. Knowlton, county horticultural commis- sioner, show a total of 444,000 fruit trees in the county, in the summer of 1913, of which 121,500 are bearing and 322,500 non-bearing. and 935 acres of grape vines, 660 acres of which are bearing.
The acreage in grape vines has fallen off greatly since the early days of the Rosedale colony, when large numbers of raisin vineyards were planted. The ill success of the Rosedale colonists and years of low prices for raisins discouraged the raising of grapes, and no great extension of this industry is in sight at present.
That oranges and apples are forging to the front as the county's leading fruits is shown by the following table, which is prepared by the commissioner and which also shows at a glance the recent progress of fruit growing in the county :
Fruit Trees in Kern County in 1913
Variety
Bearing Non-bearing 1 year
2 year 3,000
3 year 3,000
4 year
Apricot
20,000
12,000
4,000 48,000
30,000
10,000
4,500
Fig
1,000
Olive
4,000
15,000
15,000
Peach
50,000
15,000
3,000
3,500
3,500
25,000
Pear
1,500
65,000
20,000
35,000
15,000
10,000
Plum
5,000
6,000
2,000
2,000
1,000
1,000
Prune
20,000
2,000
1,000
500
500
Orange
10,000
115,000
25,000
45,000
25,000
20,000
These figures, of course, do not include trees in family orchards, and small orchards of lemons, cherries, almonds and walnuts are omitted. Most of the apple and pear trees are in the Tehachapi country, and the bulk of the orange trees are around Edison and Delano.
Bakersfield in 1904
As will be noted more fully in the chapters devoted to the oil industry, the enormous increase in oil production from 1902 to 1904 resulted in a com- plete demoralization of the market and brought not only the threat of bank- ruptcy to the producers, but general depression to all lines of business in Bakersfield, which by that time had become a distinctively oil town, recog- nized as the center of the oil industry of the state and chiefly dependent on that industry for its prosperity and growth. As a matter of fact, Bakersfield continued to grow and business remained reasonably good even during the summer of 1904, which saw the price of oil drop to the ruinous figure of
2,000
Apple
10,000
92,500
153
HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY
eleven and two-thirds cents per barrel. But the air was blue with pessimism. On the street corners it was alternately predicted that consumption never would overtake production, and that the Kern river field was going to water and its derricks would be sold for kindling wood in a few years more.
Good Times Return
But both prophecies failed. Kern river continued to produce, and fol- lowing the organization of the Independent Oil Producers' Agency prices began to recover. In the spring of 1908 the Agency closed a contract with the Associated for sixty and one-half cents per barrel, and a new oil boom began that presently filled Bakersfield to such a state of overflowing that visitors to the town were compelled to telegraph ahead at least twenty-four hours to secure any sort of sleeping quarters, either in the hotels or in the rooms, in private residences and elsewhere throughout the city, which the hotel pro- prietors had leased to meet the emergency.
Under such circumstances a building boom was inevitable and in 1909 began a rush of construction that involved a total investment in residence and business buildings before the close of 1910 estimated at upward of $2,500,000.
Quite as significant as the size of the investment was the fact that the buildings generally were of a better character than had been erected pre- viously in the city's history. The cost of the business buildings erected during this period ranged from $10,000 to $70,000, and the residences from $1500 to $17,000. Among the business buildings built at this time are the Brower building at Nineteenth and I streets, the Manley apartments at Eighteenth and F, the Security Trust Company's bank at Eighteenth and Chester, Southern hotel annex on Twentieth street, an additional story on the Southern hotel, the Redlick building at Eighteenth and Chester, the Willis building on South Chester, the Rice building and Baer building on diagonal corners at Chester and Twenty-first, the Kosel hotel. Herrington-Cohn build- ing, Bakersfield garage, Southern garage, Kern Valley garage, Webster garage and extensive additions to the Mason & Flickinger garage. The auto- mobile business was in its glory.
It is particularly worthy of note, also, that during this period a great number of well-to-do Bakersfield people who had been living in apartments or rented houses, manifestly because they lacked a feeling of permanence and not from lack of means, cast their lot with the city by building handsome and expensive homes. The change of sentiment that accompanied this action was very marked. Previously a very great proportion of the residents of the city considered themselves as sojourners only, and did not disguise from themselves or others their expectation of making their permanent residence elsewhere when they had accumulated a fortune, a competence or a working capital from the easy money that circulated in the oil town.
Raising the Civic Standards
To this change of attitude may be traced a new public sentiment de- · manding the elimination of various forms of flagrant vice that had been tolerated as symptoms of the general fever of speculation and endurable in a city of temporary sojourn, but instantly recognizable as out of place in a city of permanent homes. The public dance halls, conducted as adjuncts of the more disreputable saloons, went first as the result of a crusade in which a number of prominent private citizens served in the capacity of special officers
154
HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY
to make arrests. Efforts to curb illegal forms of gambling continued long with vacillating symptoms of success and failure. Gradually the worst places were closed, and the professional gambler sought less troubled fields of oper- ation in the new West Side oil towns. The slot machines vanished in a day when the state law making it an offense to have them on one's premises went into effect. In the spring of 1911 an effort on the part of the city trustees to narrow the boundaries of the redlight district provoked a war between keepers of rival resorts and an injunction suit brought at the instance of one of the parties closed every known disorderly house in town. Strenuous efforts were made to effect a compromise, but public sentiment refused to permit any retrogression, and two years later the old redlight district remains prac- tically deserted.
Consolidation of Bakersfield and Kern
Occasional movements for the consolidation of Bakersfield and the rival town which the Southern Pacific railroad founded under the name of Sumner and incorporated later under the name of Kern, resulted finally on February 25, 1908, in an election in which the union was defeated by ten votes in Kern, although the voters of Bakersfield approved it by a majority of 342. On December 21, 1909, however, a second election resulted in a vote of 265 for, to 154 against, in Kern, and 518 for, to 186 against, in Bakersfield. The first election of the consolidated city, held on July 18, 1910, resulted in the selection of the following officers: Trustees, W. V. Matlack, J. R. Williams, F. L. Gribble, H. S. Dumble, P. L. Jewett ; board of education, L. G. Pauly, George Hay, H. A. Blodget, G. L. Snider and Celsus Brower ; city clerk, H. F. Mur- dock ; city attorney, Matthew S. Platz; marshal, James McKamy ; treasurer, A. Weaber ; recorder, W. H. Thomas; assessor, Ben L. Brundage. In April. 1911, the date of the regular elections for cities of the fifth class-which class the consolidated city assumed-the trustees and nearly all the other city officials were re-elected.
Bakersfield Paves Her Streets
The same new feeling of permanence and proprietorship in the city's future that prompted the building of many residences and the improvement of moral conditions showed further evidence in the demand for better streets, and following the consolidation of Bakersfield and Kern and the election of a new board of city trustees in the summer of 1910 systematic preparations for a long campaign of street paving were begun. The city leased a gravel pit at the west end of Panorama heights, installed a screening plant and purchased a steam traction roller and other street-building apparatus. All of these were placed at the disposal of street contractors for the purpose of inducing favorable bids for paving.
The first ambitious job undertaken was the paving of East Nineteenth street, Grove and Park streets, connecting the business centers of East Bakersfield and the main portion of the city. This main thoroughfare of the city had been in a chronic state of bad order from time immemorial, owing to the heavy traffic and the light, friable soil of which the roadbed was made. Nothing short of a standard pavement would answer the requirements. and the fact that a large percentage of the abutting property was vacant and producing no revenue discouraged the hope that the owners would bear the expense of paving. However, the city trustees adopted a resolution ordering
KERN COUNTY COURT HOUSE, BAKERSFIELD
-
>> 355
155
HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY
the work done under the Vrooman act, and the proceedings went through without protest.
Long before the paving of East Nineteenth street was completed prop- erty owners on other streets began filing petitions for similar improvements at their expense, and for two years the work has continued without inter- ruption about as fast as the facilities at hand would conveniently permit. During this time about 200 blocks have been paved at a cost of a little over half a million dollars, and indications are that the campaign will continue for many ensuing months.
Bonds for County Roads
Considerations similar to those that prompted the paving of Bakers- field streets, coupled with a desire to bind together the several centers of development in the county, led, in the summer and fall of 1912, to a county- wide agitation in favor of a county system of permanent roads. At this time the preliminary survey for the state highway had been completed through the county, following the Southern Pacific railroad from the north county line to Bakersfield, and running thence in a nearly southerly direction through Tejon cañon to Los Angeles. People interested in the Tehachapi and desert sections of the county continued their efforts to have the state road routed past the mountain town, but it was officially assumed that the Tejon route would be adopted, and the county highway commission, con- sisting of C. E. Getchell, A. J. Woody and J. L. Evans, laid out a proposed system of county roads branching from the line of the proposed state high- way and reaching all the important centers of population of the county save Randsburg and the farthest eastern portion of the desert section. This plan was submitted to the voters of the county on July 8, 1913, and was approved, together with a bond issue of $2,500,000 for carrying it out. The vote was: For the bonds, 2,529; against the bonds, 693.
The bond issue as submitted to the voters provided for improving the following roads at the estimated costs indicated : Delano to the Tulare county line, 8.5 miles, $37,243; Wasco to McFarland, 11.6 miles, $66,327 ; Wasco to Lost Hills, 21.3 miles, $274,766; Rio Bravo to Wasco, 18 miles, $87,237 ; Bakersfield to McKittrick, 37.6 miles, $325,207 ; McKittrick to Maricopa, 25.5 miles, $249,244; Bakersfield to Taft, 37.1 miles, $378,609; Old River school house to Maricopa, 28.7 miles (connecting with road from Taft to Bakersfield) $252,314; Bakersfield to Oil Center, 7.4 miles, $67,405; Bakersfield to Sand Cut, 21.5 miles, $90,086; Weed Patch loop, 13.3 miles, $69,010; all the fore- going graded and paved, and the following only graded: Oil Center to Glennville, 30.5 miles, $80,775 ; Sand Cut to Tehachapi, 28.2 miles, $300.663 ; Tehachapi to Mojave, 20.8 miles, $86,483 ; Caliente to Kernville, 38.5 miles, $80,775 ; Randsburg-Johannesburg-Stringer district highways, 14.5 miles, $53,850.
Public Buildings of 1900-13
The new county court house heads the list of important public buildings erected in the county in the past decade. A $400,000 bond issue for its erection was approved by the voters on September 14, 1909, and construction was be- gun in July, 1910. F. J. Amweg of San Francisco secured the contract for $340,827. The site, which includes two blocks on the east side of Chester avenue between Truxtun avenue and Fifteenth street, was bought from Miller & Lux and R. E. Houghton for $16,000, and about $50,000 was spent on the interior furnishings and the improvement of the grounds. The build-
156
HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY
ing is of white Manti stone, is three stories and basement and covers a ground space of eighty-two by two hundred and forty-five feet.
The old court house occupying the block across Chester avenue to the west, was sold to the city of Bakersfield for a city hall for $125,000 on July 9, 1913. Funds for the purpose and $25,000 additional for the remodelling of the building were voted by the city on June 18, 1912, at which time, also, were approved bond issues as follows: For the construction of a supple- mental sewer system, $210,000; for the construction of two new fire stations and the purchase of a new auto-driven equipment, $60,000; for a library building and site for East Bakersfield, $27,000.
Church Building
That the progress of the churches has kept pace with other lines of improvement during the past decade is witnessed by the fact that nearly every church organization has erected a new building or made extensive additions to its old one during that time. Handsome and commodious brick structures have been built by the Methodist Episcopal, Roman Catholic and Baptist. The German Lutheran, East Bakersfield Methodist and Christian Science churches have built frame buildings, the Methodist Episcopal South and the Christian churches have made important additions, and the Presbyte- rian and Congregationalist are beginning fine brick edifices. Most of the new church buildings are equipped for institutional work to a greater or less degree. The Catholic church has maintained a parochial school for three years past. and the Sisters of Mercy have this year completed a large brick hospital on West Truxtun avenue to supplement a commodious wooden structure which they purchased several years ago.
Progress of the Schools
Recent events of importance in the city and county educational systems include the introduction of manual training in the city schools in January, 1903, and the addition of a thorough course of domestic science under the direction of Mrs. F. B. Thomas in 1906. Inspired by the same practical aim, the high school, which was organized in 1893, added consecutively courses in bookkeeping, commercial law and stenography, manual training, domestic science, agriculture and assaying. Land for a high school farm was leased in 1909, and in June. 1910, the county supervisors purchased for $16,000 the twenty-seven acres comprising the old Hudnut place and used just previously as a county fair ground. This land, which lies in the northern part of the city, is being improved steadily as an experiment station where high school pupils are taught the practical art of husbandry, propagation of plants. breeding of stock, dairying and poultry raising. The manual training depart- ment, meantime, has grown to include a well equipped machine shop, a wood-working department, blacksmith shop and foundry, all housed in a commodious manual arts building of brick and concrete floors, erected in 1911. The first high school building was finished in 1895, and the second in 1906.
At the present time plans are being perfected to add to the regular academic course the first two years' work of the university, which will enable graduates of the high school to enter the state university as juniors, and will much better equip those who end their period of instruction with their high school graduation.
In 1910 there were 5812 school children in the county, eighty school
157
HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY
districts, and 168 teachers. The school property of the county was appraised at $470,667. In the same year Bakersfield and Kern contained 2600 children of school age, and $66,289.36 was expended in their education. Since that time the growth of the city schools has required the building of three new school buildings and the construction of additions practically doubling the capacity of two others, and during all of the time it has been necessary to use temporary buildings to keep pace with the demand.
The Rescue of Lindsey B. Hicks
No more intensely dramatic incident has happened in the history of Kern county than the rescue of Lindsey B. Hicks just before midnight on December 22, 1906, after he had been buried nearly sixteen days under thou- sands of tons of earth by the caving in of the great shaft of the Edison Electric Company at its power generating plant in Kern river cañon about seventeen miles above Bakersfield. The accident occurred in the process of putting the heavy steel and concrete lining in the shaft which carries the water from the forebay down to the power plant eight hundred and sixty-five feet below. The whole length of the shaft is seventeen hundred and twenty-three feet. It was mined upward from the bottom, and as the work progressed the walls were supported by timbers cut and fitted end to end to form a succession of octagons fitting against the earthen sides of the shaft and wedged tightly to hold them in place without nailing or cross braces. The placing of the sections of steel tubing followed the same direction. First the bottom sections were placed, and concrete tamped about between the steel and the walls of the shaft.
In order to protect the workmen engaged at this task from clods or stones that might fall from above, a bulk head of heavy timbers was built across the shaft a little way above them. As the work progressed this bulk- head was moved higher and higher up. On the morning of Friday, December 7th, the bulkhead had been moved successively upward until it was two-thirds or more of the way to the top of the shaft, and the progress of the workmen below had made it necessary to move it once again.
To do this work, Hicks, Gus Anderson (foreman), George Warner, C. D. Robles, H. Parris and John Wilbar were sent down the shaft from the top. Preliminary to moving the bulkhead one of the men was ordered by Anderson to knock loose the lowest of the set of timbers. Some objection was made to doing this on the ground that it was not safe, and it was stated later that express orders had been given against the removal of the timbers. However, on the order being repeated the workinan knocked out the wedge that released the timbers. The reader who is unfamiliar with the subject should understand that the timbers were held in position only by being wedged tightly against the walls of the shaft. No sooner was the first set of timbers collapsed than a cave started that released the second set of timbers. This let down more earth, and in turn released the third octagon. With the falling of the second set of timbers the men turned to flee up the steep incline of the shaft, but the falling of the timbers, one after another, like dominoes that knock each other over in a row, was too fast for them. One man reached a point of safety. The others were caught like rats in a deadfall.
Hicks, who was somewhere midway in the group of men, was struck by a falling timber just as he reached a skip-or small car built to run down the shaft on an iron track-and he fell forward beside the car, with the
158
HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY
timber pressing on his back, and the whole mountain above him, apparently thundering down to close him in.
The superintendents and workmen about the tunnel, the shaft and the power plant gathered about the collapsed hole in horror. The coroner was notified, the news of the death of the buried men was telegraphed, and the tremendous task of exhuming the dead bodies began. Seventy hours later, as the muckers were digging away at the top of the cave, Pearl Davis. a shift boss, heard a faint tapping that seemed to come from deep down in the earth. He stood still for a moment while his flesh turned cold, and then he heard the tapping again. He put his ear to the tram rail that led into the collapsed shaft, and heard it again, clearly and distinctly. Someone, down beneath the crumbled mass of earth and boulders, was striking with a piece of steel against the rail. Davis answered the signal and was answered in turn.
The news spread quickly that one or more of the men was alive, but it was not until the 11th (the cave occurred on the 7th) that definite communication was established between the buried miner and the men who now were keyed to the highest tension to effect his rescue. A gaspipe, cleansed and sterilized under the direction of the company's physician, was driven down beside the rail of the tram to where Hicks lay. On the eleventh this work was done and Hicks was breaking his four days' fast with milk and broth poured down the pipe. General Superintendent W. S. Cone of the Edison Electric Company came from San Fernando. General Manager Sinclair came from Los Angeles. The best miners and the cleverest engineers were summoned from the dif- ferent camps, and one of the finest and in many respects most remarkable efforts for the rescue of a human being in the history of the state was begun. Hicks was absolutely an unknown man, without a relative or a special friend on earth so far as was known then or has developed since, but the news of his peril and the heroic work for his rescue was telegraphed twice a day to every section of the United States.
The plan of digging down from the top of the caved shaft was abandoned as unsafe for both Hicks and the rescuers, and a tunnel was started in the shoulder of the mountain a little below and ninety-six feet distant from where the buried miner lay. The mouth of the new tunnel was seven hun- dred feet or more above the river bed, and on the face of a precipice so steep that a scaffolding had to be built from which to start the work.
The earth and crumbled rocks through which the path of the tunnel lay were treacherous, and it was necessary to timber nearly all the way. When nothing else impeded progress, the miners would run against a boulder. Some- times it could be cracked ; once they mined around it, rolled it out of the tun- nel and sent it hurtling down the mountain side. The miners worked in fre- quent shifts, and pick handles never cooled. The last five days the tension was extreme. City editors in cities a hundred and fifty miles away called up the Bakersfield newspapers the last moment before going to press to know if Hicks was rescued yet, or to know the exact number of feet and inches of earth that remained to be penetrated.
Finally, when the tunnel was done, and the foreman of the rescue shift had shaken hands with Hicks and passed him a plug of tobacco, it was necessary to saw the rails of the tram in four places and haul the buried man under the car. A man had to lie on his back and saw the rail over his head.
Newspaper men at the tunnel 'phoned to Bakersfield when the sawing
159
HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY
began, and a crowd of thousands of people walked the streets and waited for further news. Arrangements had been made to ring the fire bell when the first word came that Hicks was safe. For two days and nights J. M. Duty, an old Texas ranger, with two men hired to help him, had kept his irons hot ready to fire a salute of anvils on the lot where the new court house stands, the moment the good news should come.
At 11 o'clock at night someone 'phoned to the engine house that Hicks was out, and Foreman Arthur Nagle sprang to the tower and turned the old bell loose. Duty got his anvils in action, loading them, not with powder, but with dynamite. The crowd on the street went frantic. Newspaper men at this end of the line got in touch with the watchers at the tunnel. Hicks was still beneath the car. A messenger hastened to the engine house, warning the crowds on the sidewalk as he went that the danger was not yet over, that the loosening of the last bit of rail might let the car fall and render fruitless the sixteen days of toil and care. But there was no stopping the premature rejoicing. By that time the engines in the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe vards were sending up their shrill jubilee, society women in the residence districts were beating tin pans, marching and laughing hysterically. Out in the Kern river oil fields the great steam whistles were sounding a sym- phony of joy that floated into Bakersfield like the rushing of a wind in the pine trees. Dell Gamble, custodian of the town clock, was making the big bell in the tower peal off as many hours as Hicks had lain in his living tomb. Church bells were ringing everywhere.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.