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 23
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July 3-The east levee of Buena Vista lake breaks and floods the old swamp lands to the east border of Kern lake, doing damage estimated at $250,000.
July 11-Southern Pacific will continue its pipe line to Port Costa.
July 12-J. W. Wiley is appointed code commissioner.
July 15-Work of repairing break in Buena Vista levee begins.
July 20-Judge Paul W. Bennett is acting as trustee to secure titles from the government to Havilah town lots. Havilah was built on unsurveyed land, and the residents have held their lots all these years by right of occu- pation only.
July 20-Mr. and Mrs. S. J. Swift, driving a Ford auto from Los Angeles to San Francisco on their wedding trip, let the empty machine run off the grade in Tejon cañon and fall eighty feet to the bottom. Swift, who is a machinist, rebuilds the car with an old saw, an axe, a jack knife and a lot of bailing wire and drives it into town, making a record in emergency auto re- pairing.
August 6-Trustees sell sewer bonds to Los Angeles Trust Company for par and accrued interest to date of delivery.
August 9-Enormous deposits of rich ore uncovered in Clear Creek cañon.
August 11-Destructive forest fire burns over several thousand acres in the Greenhorn mountain.
August 31-Sunset Road Oil Company makes contract with the Salt
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Lake Road to supply them with fuel oil for a period of five years at thirty to fifty cents.
September 14-Eight hundred pupils are enrolled in the city schools.
September 17-Illegal gambling closed again.
September 18-Kern county oil takes prize at the State Fair.
September 20-Eagles hold first meeting in new hall.
September 25-The pipe organ for the Episcopal church arrives.
October 1-Trustees order census of Kern and Bakersfield in prepara- tion for consolidation.
October 10-Truxtun Beale presents to trustees plans for a Greek the- atre to be built in Beale park. It is built later at Beale's expense.
October 22-A valuable collection of pictures, the gift of Truxtun Beale, was placed in the new high school building.
October 27-Census returns for the city of Bakersfield, 7,338, and for Kern, 3,422.
October 31-The first tract is sold in the Mountain View Colony.
November 5-The contract for the Hall of Records is let to Weymouth Crowell of Los Angeles for $44,340.
November 14-Thomas B. Larson, a pioneer of Linns Valley district dies in San Francisco aged eighty-two years.
December 4-Trustees call for bids for sewer construction. M. W. Buff- ington qualifies as city engineer.
December 5-Supervisors plan to raise saloon tax from $100 to $300.
December 8-Work begins on Greek theatre.
December 19-The Bakersfield band is organized.
December 31-Thirty-one thousand acres of the Cox ranch sold.
January 1, 1908-The Santa Fe is finishing its new thirty-five-stall round house.
January 7-City trustees let contract to Glass & Fisher to build new sewer system for $53,877.
January 10-City trustees call Bakersfield and Kern consolidation elec- tion for February 25th.
January 11-F. A. Tracy, pioneer, dies.
January 11-Congressman Smith has introduced a bill to provide a post office building for Bakersfield and the post office department has asked for statistics regarding the town and the business of the office.
January 14-W. S. Tevis files libel suit against San Francisco Bulletin.
January 31-The Independent Agency is standing pat on its demand for seventy-five cents per barrel from the Associated. First meeting is held to organize a branch of the Lincoln-Roosevelt League in Bakersfield.
February 11-The Woman's club plans to issue bonds to cover its in- debtedness of $2400.
February 18-Mayor Bailey introduces an ordinance to reduce the price of gas to $1. It never passed, but it caused a long controversy and great ex- pectations.
February 19-Independent Oil Producers Agency closes contract with the Associated for the sale of its oil for two years at sixty and one-half cents for the first year and sixty-three for the second year.
February 25-The first election for the consolidating of Bakersfield and Kern is carried in Bakersfield but is lost in Kern.
March 4-Disorderly saloons are under investigation and Trustee Everett St. Clair promises to introduce the afterward famous St. Clair ordi- nance, to close dance halls and side and rear entrances of the saloons.
March 9-St. Clair ordinances are introduced at a meeting attended by the largest audience the city trustees ever had.
March 11-Municipal reform is the chief talk of the town.
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March 13-Lincoln-Roosevelt League organized by Chester H. Rowell. March 16-St. Clair ordinances are passed.
March 17-Santa Fe round house is accepted.
March 20-Walter Stiern and Drury Wieman win third intercollegiate debate for Kern county high school, making three annual victories for the local school.
March 23-Illegal gambling gets "another death blow."
March 23-The Thomas flyer, America's car in the International New York to Paris automobile race, goes through Bakersfield.
March 24-It is announced that a railroad will be built from Los Ange- les to San Francisco via the Tejon cañon and the west side oil fields. (It has not yet materialized.)
March 26-Oil men meet to urge passage of Smith oil land bill.
March 31-To the tune of "Auld Lang Syne," "Home Sweet Home" and "There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight." the dance halls closed at midnight in compliance with the St. Clair ordinance. The Owl and Stand- ard will continue to sell soft drinks.
April 5-Gambling is in full blast again.
April 7-Soft drink dance halls are dull.
April 13-Woman's Club urges park improvement.
April 13-It is announced that City Trustee George A. Tilton will resign from the board as the result of an effort to get him to introduce amendments to the St. Clair ordinances.
April 16-Labor council endorses Trustee Tilton and petitions are in cir- culation asking the trustees to appoint G. J. Planz to the expected vacancy. Fred Gunther is also advanced as a candidate for the place.
April 21-Trustee Tilton resigned.
April 27-The Wasco Congregationalists are building a church.
April 28-The Delonega stage and four horses roll 200 feet down a cliff. The passengers jump and escape with varying degrees of injury.
April 30-Kern city is discussing municipal water works, but never takes final action.
May 2-The Order of Owls, Bakersfield Nest, is organized with twenty- one charter members.
May 2-Ardizzi-Olcese plant five acres to oranges on the Kern Heights.
May 3-R. G. Hill, cattleman of Tehachapi, buys twenty-five sections of the Towne ranch.
May 5-Second movement for consolidation of Bakersfield and Kern starts with petitions circulating in both towns.
May 7-The funeral of Wellington Canfield, pioneer ranch owner. is held in Bakersfield.
May 14-Mr. and Mrs. Placido Giglo are experimenting with silk culture in Bakersfield.
May 15-Kernites saw the. big fleet of war ships at San Francisco.
June 4-Kern City stores close during funeral of James L. Depauli.
June 5-Anti-saloon league presents petition with 624 signatures asking the county supervisors to pass an ordinance giving each precinct local option. The ordinance was never passed.
June 11-Bakersfield buys the west half of section 3. 30-28 from the Southern Pacific for a sewer farm. Price $2.50 an acre.
June 27-Bakersfield will spend $2200 celebrating the Fourth.
June 27-An organization of citizens is making a crusade against illegal gambling. Constable D. B. Newell and citizen deputies raid crap and rou- lette games at 1215 Twenty-first street and M. H. Sisson swears to complaint against the gamblers.
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July 3-Undersheriff T. A. Baker, Constable Newell and thirty citizens raid the Palace, Standard and Owl dance halls and arrest the keepers.
July 16-The jury disagrees in the first gambling trial.
July 19-The county assessment roll shows an increase of $2,371,641 over 1907. Present total, $26,712.953.
July 21-The Sisters of Mercy buy the L. P. St. Clair residence at H. and Fourteenth streets for a hospital.
July 27-Kern County Anti-saloon League organized.
August 4-State Federation of Colored Woman's Clubs meets in Bakers- field. Colored Odd Fellows open district lodge.
August 6-Charles P. Fox launches the California Oil World, a weekly devoted to the state oil industry.
September 6-The St. Clair Hospital, afterward Mercy Hospital, is opened.
September 7-Kern County High School opens with two new depart- ments, manual training and domestic science. Delano installs first street light.
September 7-Bakersfield city schools show attendance of 792; High School 211 ; Kern city schools 440.
September 9-A. F. Stoner is appointed city trustee to fill vacancy left by George A. Tilton's resignation.
September 10-New hall of records is accepted. Cost, $50,000.
September 11-Gamblers arrested in citizens' crusade plead guilty. Crap and roulette tables will be shipped to Nevada.
September 22-State convention of county assessors meets in Bakersfield. September 23-Woodmen of the World adopt plans for building at I and Eighteenth streets.
October 7-Dance hall cases go on trial before Justice of the Peace Black and Slim Moore is acquitted.
October 10-John McWilliams buys 5000 acres of Lerdo Land from Kern County Land Company.
November 13-Building boom strikes Bakersfield.
November 18-First probation committee appointed.
December 3-Mrs. F. A. Tracy gives two acres of land to Children's Shelter in memory of her husband, F. A. Tracy.
December 5-First Children's Shelter tag day is held and $6,000 is raised. December 17-Union Oil Company has leased 6000 acres of land from the Sunset Road Oil Company.
December 22-Bakersfield new sewer system is finished.
January 15, 1909-High water in Kern river threatens levees. The river is carrying about 15,000 cubic feet of water per second.
January 21-H. L. Packard dies in San Francisco.
February 3-O. D. Fish dies in Los Angeles.
February 5-Supervisors create Aqueduct and Standard School districts. February 7-W. T. Jameson dies at his ranch.
February 25-The Edison Land & Water Company is organized.
February 27-Mrs. W. M. Beckman and four children are burned to death in their beds when their home is consumed by fire. The origin of the fire still remains a mystery.
March 13-The edict goes forth that illegal gambling in the West Side oil towns must cease.
April 15-The Independent Oil Producers' Agency asks producers to curtail the production of oil for six months on account of the increasing surplus.
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April 20-Henry J. Martens lands here with fifty Mennonites to found the Lerdo colony. The colony failed because Martens could not give title to the land, and the colonists scattered to other parts of the county and the state. The first children's playground in Bakersfield is opened under the supervision of Miss Evelyn Pluss.
April 21-Admiral Robley D. Evans lectures in Bakersfield.
April 25-A Kern county steer weighing 2500 pounds live weight and standing twenty hands high, is slaughtered in San Francisco by Miller & Lux, who claim that it is the record for size.
April 28-The Associated Oil Company votes $25,000,000 bonds to build pipe lines from Coalinga to Port Costa and from its west side holdings to Gaviota and for other improvements.
April 29-A $55,000 school bond election called for May 22 to build an addition to the Lowell school and buy sites for two more buildings.
May 6-There are over 200 motor cars in Kern county.
May 6-The Elks are excavating for their building on South Chester.
The Bakersfield band is playing at Nineteenth and Chester every Saturday night during the summer.
May 9-The Kern County High School captures the pennant in the valley inter-scholastic track meet. Lloyd Stroud, Cecil Baker, Gordon Baker, John Stroud, Antone Wegis and Drury Wieman are the stars.
May 12-William Harrison Lowell, Civil war veteran and Kern county pioneer, dies.
May 21-Plans are drawn for the Producers' Transportation Company's pipe line to the coast. Capt. John Barker, pioneer, dies at his home in Bakers- field.
June 2-The school census shows 5039 school children in the county.
June 7-The supervisors decide to call an election to vote $400,000 in bonds for a new court house.
June 11-The Producers' Transportation Company files incorporation papers.
June 11-Bakersfield merchants organize the Kern County Credit Asso- ciation to protect its members from bad debts.
June 15-Caliente is wiped out by fire. Loss, $46,800.
June 17-The subject of better levee protection is discussed in Bakersfield.
July 5-The Eagles celebrate with a big picnic and barbecue.
July 9-The Druids are finishing their hall in East Bakersfield.
July 16-The county supervisors decide to add an agricultural department to the High School. A small plot of rented ground was used for experimental purposes for a time and later the Hudnut Park tract of twenty-six acres was bought by the county from the Kern County Fair Association.
July 20-The county assessment roll totals $31,787,898.
August 21-The county's hay and grain crop is estimated at $1.271,000.
August 25-A Santa Fe freight train with forty-seven loaded cars runs away down the Tehachapi grade and collides with a switch engine in the yards at Mojave. Five men killed; property loss, $200,000.
August 30-Dr. A. F. Schafer is experimenting with the manufacture of serums for the cure of acute diseases.
September 12-City schools open with 965 pupils and twenty-four teach- ers ; High School, 205 pupils.
September 14-Kern county votes $400,000 to build a new court house.
September 22-Miller & Lux are extending the old Kern Valley Water
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Company's canal north along the west side of the swamp and plan eventu- ally to continue it to Tulare lake.
September 25-A new movement is launched to consolidate Bakersfield and Kern.
September 27-The historic oil land withdrawal order is made, and many thousands of acres of oil land claims in the West Side fields are clouded.
October 1-The Bakersfield Baseball Association is organized and a valley league is planned.
October 2-The Kern County Land Company sells five sections for the Mountain View colonization project.
Much general interest is taken in oil lands on the North McKittrick front.
October 10-President Taft speaks to many thousands from a platform near the Southern Pacific depot in East Bakersfield.
October 13-The Edison Land & Water Company is subdividing its land at $200 per acre with an interest in pumping plants and cement irrigation systems.
October 22-The town of Moron is wiped out by fire. Loss $35,000.
October 28-Two auto loads of gun fighters go out to do battle over the J. C. Yancey oil claims on the North McKittrick front. No blood shed.
Business men are looking for stores to rent in Bakersfield, but none are to be found.
November 2-Bakersfield city trustees pass a 12:30 saloon-closing ordinance.
Transient visitors to Bakersfield have to telegraph several days ahead to secure rooms, the town is so full of people. The 1910 oil boom is getting under way.
November 12-The Children's Shelter is dedicated.
November 25-Flaming arc street lights are being placed along Nine- teenth street by property owners.
December 10-Plans are made for organizing a building trades council.
The Producers' Transportation Company's pipe line will be - finished January 15th.
December 21-Bakersfield and Kern vote to consolidate. Bakersfield, 518. for : 186, against. Kern. 265, for; 154, against.
December 29-Barney Oldfield makes a mile in 1:1012 with an auto- mobile at Hudnut park, lowering the former record of 1:12 for a mile on a half-mile dirt track.
December 30-The year's building record in Bakersfield is estimated at $221.300. and fifty-three buildings are under construction. Building trades- men employed are: Carpenters. 180; plumbers, 25; painters, 50; brick masons, 30 : plasterers, 15: cement workers, 25 : inside wirers, 10; laborers, 100.
December 30-Fifteen Bakersfield architects banquet at the Southern hotel. Building activity is near the top notch in Bakersfield's history.
December 31-Many auto loads of armed men leave Bakersfield for the West Side to post oil land locations with the stroke of midnight, and usher in with the new year the last great contest to take and hold-by force if need be-the rich government oil land of the Midway valley and the Elk and Buena Vista hills.
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CHAPTER XVI
Brief Histories of Kern County Towns
Ever since Bakersfield wrested the county seat from Havilah in 1874 she has been the center of trade, growth and development in the county, and as such her story is closely interwoven with the story of the county, told in the preceding pages. It is not the purpose to repeat this story in detail in this chapter, but only to pick out some of the more important dates and events in the town's history for convenience in reference and for the purpose of furnishing a little clearer picture of Bakersfield's progress than the general history of the county affords.
The location of Bakersfield was fore-ordained from the time the geography of the southern end of the San Joaquin valley was determined. It is located at the point where Kern river leaves the deep furrow which it has ploughed for itself through the higher mesa land and reaches the flat, alluvial plain. It is the point where the water of the river could be most easily and profitably diverted for irrigation, and the soil of the townsite was such as to tempt the first settlers in the valley to locate there.
Bakersfield in 1859
The first of these settlers who established permanent homes on what is now the site of Bakersfield came in 1859 or just before that date. At that time Bakersfield was not a swamp, but Kern river divided just below Pano- rama heights and flowed through the present townsite in two main and one or two lesser channels. The largest of the channels was later known as Panama slough and crossed the townsite diagonally to the southwest, passing the present corner of B and Nineteenth street. The second largest channel was the old south fork, the remains of which are still in evidence just west of the Mill ditch.
In 1859 the Overland stage road or immigrant trail which came through Tejon pass ran through the Lowell addition and crossed the river somewhere west of Panorama heights. Immigrants entering the valley over this road formed the first transient settlement of what is now Bakersfield, and in the winter of 1861-62, at the time of the first flood that history records, this settlement numbered something more than half a dozen families besides na- tive Indians.
The flood came the day after Christmas and cut a new channel for the river-the one it now follows-as is described in more detail in chapter five of this book. Some of the settlers and a good part of the Indian population moved away when the roads got dry enough, but at least four families re- mained, the Shirleys, the Gilberts, Harvey S. Skiles and Lewis Reeder.
Coming of Colonel Baker
In 1862 came Colonel Thomas Baker and Edward Tibbet. Colonel Baker had a contract with the state to reclaim all the swamp land that was over- flowed by Kern river and immediately began the construction of a dam across the south fork below Panorama heights. The other settlers farmed the future townsite.
In 1863 a private school was established in the settlement, and the first public school was opened in 1877. During the Civil war the
.
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mail service over the southern route was discontinued, and the settlers here got their mail from Los Angeles or Visalia by the courtesy of neighbors or travelers. The first post office was established at Bakersfield about 1868.
In the winter of 1867-8 came the second flood, larger than the first, cutting the new channel deeper and strewing the townsite with logs from the mountains.
Kern County Created
Kern county was created by an act of the legislature on April 2, 1866, by which the county seat was fixed at Havilah. One of the first acts of the county supervisors, however, was to organize reclamation districts covering the land all around Bakersfield, and the settlement soon took on an activity that foreshadowed its eclipse of the mountain town the legislature had hon- ored.
Bakersfield Formally Laid Out
On December 22, 1869, A. D. Jones, publisher of the Havilalı Courier, moved his plant to Bakersfield, which Colonel Baker had formally laid out the September preceding. In January, 1870, Bakersfield had two stores, Liv- ermore & Chester's and Caswell & Ellis', a telegraph office, printing shop, carriage shop, harness shop, fifty school children, two boarding houses, one doctor, one lawyer and a saloon.
In March, 1870, the town was resurveyed, and in the fall of that year a bill was introduced in the legislature to make it the county seat, but it did not become a law. At that time the whole population of "the island" was placed at 600.
In September, 1871. the surveyors were running preliminary lines through Bakersfield for the Southern Pacific railroad, and a month later it is recorded that Havilah residents were moving to Bakersfield and bringing their houses with them. Colonel Baker died November 24, 1872.
Bakersfield Wins the County Seat
Efforts of Bakersfield to secure the county seat resulted in an election on February 15, 1873, in which Bakersfield was declared the winner by twelve votes. Havilah secured an injunction, however, and litigation followed which resulted in a new count of the ballots on January 26. 1874, in which the figures stood. Bakersfield, 354: Havilah, 332.
For the growth which made this victory possible Bakersfield was indebted to the rich delta lands, which were being hungrily gathered up under the generous swamp reclamation laws. By this time Livermore & Chester had become the dominant factors in the community and were carrying on large operations in land reclamation, teaming, trading and other lines. The town was a center for sheep and cattle men, and was a stopping place for teamsters hauling ore and other products from the south and east to the end of the Southern Pacific railroad, which was then building down the valley.
Bakersfield Is Incorporated
In May, 1873, the county supervisors, acting on a petition of residents, declared Bakersfield an incorporated town, and on May 24th the first city officers were elected as follows: Trustees, W. S. Adams, L. S. Rogers, M. Jacoby. J. B. Tungate, and R. W. Withington.
Early in 1874 W. B. Carr, the fore-runner of J. B. Haggin and the Kern County Land Company, arrived in Bakersfield. That spring the first Meth-
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odist Episcopal church was built. In August the Southern Pacific reached the north side of the river; in September it was getting ready to lay out the town of Sumner, afterward Kern, now East Bakersfield. On September 1, 1874, George B. Chester deeded to the county the old court house block, and on October 5th a contract was let for the erection of a court house at a cost of $29,999.
Bakersfield Disincorporates
A perusal of the fuller accounts in chapters seven and eight will show that this was an era of great expectation for Bakersfield. But the railroad did less for the town than had been expected, and a series of dry years and the beginning of a contest between Livermore & Chester and Haggin & Carr for control of the irrigation waters caused a period of waiting and uncer- tainty that checked the town's growth. In 1876 Bakersfield got tired of paying a town marshal $76 per month for doing nothing, and disincorporated. It was incorporated a second time January 11, 1898.
By 1880 Billy Carr had out-generaled Julius Chester, and Haggin & Carr succeeded Livermore & Chester as the dominant factors in the growth of Bakersfield and Kern county. Then came the contest between Haggin & Carr and Miller & Lux told at length in preceding chapters, and the final com- promise by which the waters of Kern river were divided between the two corporations. This compromise was embodied in an agreement signed on July 28, 1888.
Another Era of Progress
A little later rumor of plans for the colonization of the Haggin lands began to take on apparent substance, and the years 1888 and 1889 seem to have been notable for community progress in Bakersfield. On December 25, 1887, the Silsby fire engine-revered in the memory of the pioneers-arrived in town. In the summer of 1888 work was started on the Southern hotel. That fall L. P. St. Clair got a franchise for gas and electric works, and the next vear H. A. Blodget, H. H. Fish and Jeff Packard got a franchise for the first street railway. In the spring of 1889 Haggin did put a small amount of land on the market, and the county voted $250,000 bonds to build a jail. a county hospital, an addition to the court house and to improve the county roads.
July 7, 1889, fire swept the business section of the hopeful young city and left little more than some acres of ashes with a fringe of dwelling houses around them.
Colonization of Rosedale
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