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 7

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 7

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).

Wild cattle and wild horses added to the resources available to the early settlers in the Kern delta. In dry seasons when the early cattle raisers on the coast had not enough feed to keep their stock from starving, they used to drive a portion of their herds over a range into this valley and leave them to shift for themselves until the next rains replenished the home pastures. Before their owners returned to seek them, many of these cattle had wan- dered too far to be gathered together.

Beginning of the Sheep Industry

Conspicuous figures in the history of the sheep industry of Kern county are the Jewett brothers, Solomon and Philo D., who, as related in a former chapter, bought out the flocks of Colonel Vineyard at Tejon; Gustav Sanger ; the Troys; Harry Quinn, pioneer of the northern Kern foothills whose camp at Rag gulch was known as a landmark and a hospitable watering place since 3

HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY

the early '70s; Peter Lambert of Long Tom; A. Pauly of Tehachapi; L. C. Flores, who kept a store and shearing camp at San Emidio in the '70s when there was Mexican settlement at that place and many sheep in the hills thereabout ; the Borgwardts, who ran sheep on Poso creek; Jesse Stark, who was out at Tejon in the early days, and later on Ardizzi-Olcese Company, who were headquarters and outfitters for the itinerant French sheep men ; F. M. Noriega, M. Cesmat, J. B. Berges, A. P. Eyraud, all of whom made enough money in the sheep business to launch them in other ventures; Andre Vieux and Faure Brothers of Delano; Pierre Giraud, "Little Pete", and scores of men less famous who followed their bands to the mountains and the wide ranges beyond in summer and came back to Kern county's warm mesas for the February lambing and shearing time.

The Jewetts have been shepherds for three generations. Solomon W. Jewett, father of Solomon and Philo, the Kern county pioneers, was a sheep and wool grower of Vermont, and Philo Jewett, one of the sons of the second Solomon Jewett, is today one of the largest owners of flocks in Kern county. After they had purchased Colonel Vineyard's sheep in 1860, Solomon and Philo Jewett established themselves on the Rio Bravo ranch about a dozen miles up Kern river from Bakersfield. Later they acquired land adjoining the townsite of Bakersfield and west of Bakersfield in what is now the Rosedale country. On some of the latter land Philo Jewett now has his shearing camp, but the Indians who sheared the fleeces from his father's and uncle's sheep in the days before the Civil war have given place to men with shearing machines driven by a gasoline engine.

Next to the Jewetts in point of years and permanence of location is Harry Quinn, who first came to spy out the land in 1868 and came to settle permanently in 1874, bringing 8000 or 9000 sheep belonging in part to him and in part to Archibald Leach. A few years later Quinn bought out the band, and increased his flocks and his acres until he had eventually some 20,000 acres of land and one of the largest bands of sheep in the county. Quinn is now closing out his sheep and has sold part of his range for orange land and leased most of the remainder for possible oil land. Young & Riley and W. L. Smith on White river and Templeton on Rag Gulch are among the other pioneer sheep men of the northern part of the county.

While his varied career makes him hard to classify, Capt. John Barker figures quite prominently in the early sheep industry of the county, having run large bands on Kern river in the same vicinity as the scene of the Jewett's first ventures.

The setting apart of a very great area of mountain land as a federal forest reserve and the exclusion of the sheep men from the free ranges which they had formerly enjoyed therein, was the cause of curtailing to a considerable extent the sheep industry in the county, particularly affecting the wandering shepherds, the Frenchmen and Basques who own little or no land and depend on leasing cheap ranges and driving their flocks from section to section to meet the changes of the varying season.

Whether the total number of sheep in the county will again increase is doubtful. The cheap ranges are being put to more profitable purposes, and it will soon be a matter for the shepherds to decide whether or not it pays to raise sheep inside good pastures where beef cattle and dairy cows will thrive.

The Mexican Settlement

What was known in the early days as the Mexican settlement where Panama now is, was founded in 1865 or thereabout, by Dolores Montano, who settled on section 26, 30-27. Ventura Cuen came about the same time and settled on section 23, 30-27, both of which places were later a part of the Panama ranch of Miller & Lux. Montano went back to Sonora, Mexico, to die, but Cuen still lives a short distance south of the cemetery on Union

HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY

avenue with his daughter, Mrs. Joseph Sunega. Tomas Castro, patriarch of the present Castro clan, came here in 1868 from Magdalena, Mexico, where he had been driven from his home by the floods of 1867-68, as severe in Mexico as they were in California. Castro located on the Montano place, later moving to section 12, 30-27, where he took up a homestead and reared his family of eight sons and one daughter.

Among the other early settlers at Panama were Encarnacion Padres, Averon Sierras, Guadeloupe Gonzoles, Tomas Noriega and Jesus Noriega, his son.

After Miller bought the land included in the Panama ranch, most of the settlers there moved to Saletral, about a mile and a half northwest of Panama, so named on account of a certain excess of alkali in the soil thereabout. The first store at Panama was kept by Lesser Hirshfeld, one of the family of pio- neer merchants whose name figures conspicuously in the early trade of Bakers- field and Tehachapi as well. Panama was about five or six miles east of the old Barnes settlement. Just east of Panama, Howard Cross had a ranch in 1870 or thereabout, but farther east than that in the valley there was prac- tically nothing up to something after that date.

Tomas Castro built the Castro ditch in 1870 and 1871, and both he and his neighbors engaged in general farming and stock-raising along the same line as the other pioneers. Dom Castro, son of Tomas, tells of catching and partially taming the wild Spanish cattle that used to roam the lowlands of the valley. They used to lie in wait for the cattle as they would come from the willows in what is now the Lowell Addition to Bakersfield, lasso and brand them and take them to fenced pastures where they were kept with other cattle until they grew tame enough to be herded or driven in bands. The Spanish cattle were small, light and very inferior as beef animals, but they were excellent runners, if that can be considered a virtue in a cow. An old Spanish cow would weigh perhaps 700 pounds-quite as often consid- erably less. As late as 1880 wild cattle and deer were seen about the Kern river oil fields, antelope were plentiful farther west, and elk roamed in the Elk hills and along the Coast range mesas.

About 1870 Francisco Martinez used to make a business of catching wild horses where the Lost Hills oil field is now located and all along the Coast range hills from Sunflower valley to Carneros springs. Martinez built cor- rals with wide extended wings and drove the wild horses therein, or built snares for them about their watering places. Sometimes he would get twenty- five or thirty of the mustangs in a corral at a drive, and he sold them, either broken or unbroken, for $2.50 to $5 per head. A mustang that had been las- soed and thrown down was broken, and one that would not throw itself over backward when a halter was put on it was a finished product. Tomas Castro used to trade Martinez a hair rope for a mustang, and one day Lee and Dom were sent to bring home a couple of fillies so acquired. But in crossing the river the colts, tied together by their halters, got dizzy and turned round and round until they fell down and drowned in the shallow stream, although the boys did their best to hold their heads above water. Of such value were the wild horses.

Stories of the Outlaw Vasquez

Some of the mustangs of the early day, however, were famous for their speed and endurance. One of these, Pico Blanco (white Bill), is the hero of sundry adventures. One morning before the light began to streak the sky above Bear mountain, Tomas Castro was called from his bed by a voice

HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY

shouting his name from the road. He went out to find Tiburcio Vasquez, the famous outlaw, who said he wanted the best horse on the Castro ranch. Tomas brought out Pico Blanco, and Vasquez mounted him and dashed away-probably pursued by a posse in search of vengeance for some outrage. No more was heard or seen of Pico Blanco for many days, when one morning Vasquez was again heard calling from the road. When Castro appeared Vasquez tossed him $100 in gold and a rope, at the other end of which was a bony shadow of Pico Blanco, took his own horse, which had been kept at the ranch, and disappeared. Pico got back his flesh and his spirit, and in later years, Dom Castro says, Morris Jacoby, a merchant of early Bakersfield, used to ride him to Los Angeles, starting in the morning at 6 o'clock and arriving in the southern city by 7 or 8 in the evening.

Lesser Hirshfeld, who kept the first store in the Panama settlement, tells another story that illustrates the methods of the Vasquez gang. One day a Mexican friend stopped at the store and invited Hirshfeld, or Cristobol, as he was known by his patrons, to come with him to a dance at a road house a few miles down the road. Business was dull, and a part of the science of mercantile success is to maintain friendly relations with one's patrons, so Cristobol saddled his horse. Arriving at the dance, the merchant was impressed by the presence of a large number of strangers and a display of fire arms unusual even for a dance in the early days, and he was not long in deciding the character of his fellow guests. Hirshfeld took a perfunctory part in the festivities and did the proper thing by treating everyone including the outlaws to drinks and cigars, and then making some excuse about a business engagement, he took a circuitous route back to his store, gathered up his cash and galloped by another round-about way to town. He came back next day expecting to find his place robbed, but nothing had happened. This was Thursday, and that night the pioneer merchant again galloped to town with his day's receipts. The same process was repeated Friday and Saturday, and Hirshfeld had about exhausted his ingenuity in inventing reasons to give his clerk for passing the nights in town, but when he got home Sunday morning there was no need for further explanation. In the night Vasquez and his men appeared masked and held a parley in front of the store with some of Hirshfeld's neighbors. It developed later that the neighbors convinced the outlaws that Hirshfeld had gone to town and taken all his money with him. Thereupon the gang threw off the masks, entered the store, called for drinks and paid for them; called for another round and did not pay; called for a third round and paid, and disappeared on their horses in the darkness. Any discerning person will understand that Vasquez, with the courtesy for which he was noted, did the proper honors of the time and the occasion just as though the proprietor had been present, and the proprietor, when he returned, fully appreciated it.

Meantime a posse that left Bakersfield on Friday (taking every gun in the city, it is said) was scouring the hills from Caliente to Tejon canon in search of the men who were dancing and feasting at Panama. It was the last visit of Vasquez to Kern county. From Panama he went to the San Fernando valley where he was captured, through the agency of a woman who played him false.

The Barnes Settlement

The Barnes settlement was named for Thomas Barnes, who was in the county in 1859, and who settled some six or eight miles west of Panama in

Ellen M Tracy

HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY

the early '60s. Barnes lived on section 26, 30-26, near a big natural grove of cottonwoods that lay a half mile wide and about three miles long in the bed of an old slough. Jeff, Jim, Ed., Noland and Tony Harris, all brothers of Mrs. Barnes, had ranches there, but they were away teaming in the moun- tains a larger part of the time than they spent farming. By 1868, when P. J. Waldon took up a claim in the Barnes settlement, Bill Daugherty had lived there and gone, and some of the other earlier settlers were fading memories. Mr. Waldon does not recall the name of an Arkansas woman who planted an acre of peach trees on the place where Barnes lived in 1868, but the fruit was celebrated throughout the whole delta, where any kind of peaches probably tasted good in 1868. Barnes had about forty head of cattle, and ran hogs in the tules, and nearly all the other early settlers in the vicinity did the same. Waldon says the wild hogs were not very good eating, but tame hogs sold readily in Bakersfield at four and five cents per pound, and the hog-raisers made money. In the later '70s Waldon, Van Stoner, W. W. Frazier, Vining Barker and Jock Ellis ran their hogs in one herd for economy of management, and the raising of pork was a con- siderable industry about Old River, the Barnes settlement and Canfield (so called in honor of Wellington Canfield.)

Wellington Canfield and F. A. Tracy were first in the cattle business on Jerry slough, named for Jerry Bush, a cattleman who ran his herds there in 1866, but later they bought land near the Barnes settlement, and a little town was laid out and christened Canfield.

There is a tradition that the first alfalfa in the county was grown by Tom Barnes from seed sent him from South America by a traveler who had visited the delta and believed the clover would do well there. It did do well, and the fame of the Barnes alfalfa patch was spread all over the county in 1867 or '68.

The Buena Vista Canal Company was organized in 1870 by Barnes, Har- ris, Gillum, John Oleton, P. J. Waldon, Peter O'Hare, John Gordon, James Cole and others, and later, as in the case of nearly all the canal companies, the controlling interest was acquired by Haggin & Carr.

Throughout the whole of the great Kern delta in the early days every- body within a radius of twenty miles was everybody else's neighbor, ready to help dispose of a feast or nurse a stricken fellow settler through a fever with impartial alacrity. When Sis Daugherty was married to Corbin Wicker, old man Daugherty launched his tule boat on the South Fork and hitching his riata to the prow swam his horse across to fetch all the neighbors to the wedding supper. On Christmas day just before the great flood of 1861-62 that made history and geography both in Kern county, the Skileses, who lived somewhere south of Reeder lake, made a dinner for the whole neighborhood, and the Gilberts, returning just as the first swelling of Panama channel began to make the banks boggy, mired down in the foamy, brown water, and friendly Indians waded in and carried Mrs. Gilbert and her infant ashore.

But before I go on with the tale of the flood I must go back a little way and relate how all this peaceful Arcadia, where there was neither law nor present need of law was the subject of special acts of the state legislature and of plans and dreams of men so far-sighted that they lifted their feet to step over the threshold into a future, which to us, nearly a whole lifetime later, seems far away on the horizon.

HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY

CHAPTER V Floods and Swamp Reclamation

Residents of the San Joaquin valley in the year 1913 look forward, in hours of faith and prophecy, to a time when the population of the valley shall be so large and the freight traffic so great throughout the length of it that it will be practicable and profitable to build and operate a transportation canal from Bakersfield to the bay. We know that it would be neither practicable nor profitable at the present time. But it is of the essence of the pioneer to see the ultimate destiny, to leap over, in fancy and undertaking, the inter- vening years or centuries-it makes little difference to the true pioneer- to set cheerfully at work to accomplish the impossible, and to make some shift or other in the face of the inevitable defeat.

It is necessary to keep all this in mind and to remember, also, that everybody in the state of California was a pioneer in 1857 when we read in the statutes that in that year was passed and approved an act giving W. F. Montgomery, Joseph Montgomery, A. J. Downes, F. W. Sampson and their associates and assigns the right to reclaim all the swamp land belonging to the state "lying between the San Joaquin river at a point known as Kings river slough, and Tulare lake, and also the swamp and overflowed lands bordering on Tulare, Buena Vista and Kern lakes, and between said lakes, and up to the line dividing the said swamp and overflowed lands from the lands belonging to the United States."

The First San Joaquin Valley Canal Project

Also they were given the right and privilege to construct and put in operation a canal, capable of carrying boats of 80-tons burden, all the way from Kings river slough on the San Joaquin river to Kern lake, or, if they chose, they could switch the course of the canal to intercept the main channel of Kern river instead of passing through Buena Vista and Kern lakes.

They were given a right of way 200 feet wide on each side of the pro- posed canal, and were to have the right to operate the waterway and to collect such tolls as the legislature might authorize for a period of twenty years, after which the ownership of the canal should revert to the state. Incidentally the grantees were to have all the odd sections in the tracts reclaimed, and for every odd section therein of which the state might thereto- fore have disposed, the grantees were to select in lieu four even sections.

Note particularly that work on the canal must begin within one year and the whole must be completed within three years from the passage of the act in order to comply with the provisions of the grant.

The First State Highway

In the spring of 1862 the act was amended, a provision being inserted to the effect that out of the 200 feet of right of way allowed on each side of the canal the public should be permitted the use of a highway. It also was pro- vided that when the work was done the governor and the surveyor-general must certify to the reclamation of the land. The new act also extended the time limits to one year and three years, respectively, after the passage of the amended act. This date was April 10, 1862.

Meantime W. F. Montgomery, who was the principal in the scheme, had not succeeded in interesting capital in the canal project, and for a con- sideration of $10.000 he deeded to Thomas Baker and Harvey S. Brown (each

HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY

an undivided one-half share) all his right, title and interest in the lands in question. For smaller sums Baker and Brown bought ont the other owners.

Baker, who seems to have been the active member of the new partnership, set about finding capital to carry out the enterprise, but he was no more successful than Montgomery had been. But the legislature came to his aid most generously and again amended the act providing for the reclamation of the lands in question, releasing W. F. Montgomery, et al., their asso- ciates and assigns from all obligation to construct and put in operation for the purpose of navigation, the several canals referred to in the previous act, and providing that in consideration of the reclamation of the lands mentioned in the act they should be entitled to the same quantity of land and all other rights and privileges as if they had not been released from the obligation to construct the canal.

With somewhat greater verbosity than the foregoing, the legislature of 1863 dashed, for something more than half a century, at least, the hope of Bakersfield's standing at the head of navigation in the San Joaquin valley.

But while the open-hearted members of the legislature had generously relieved Colonel Baker of more than half his monumental undertaking he was still, so far as any human being had the slightest reason to suppose, in the position of a man, who, having discovered that he could not grasp the moon, would find himself elevated, suddenly, on legs ten thousand feet in height. The assistance would not be effective enough to be even genuinely tantalizing. As for the reasonableness of the action of the legislature, con- sidering that body as the custodian of the public interest, let it be remembered that the flood of 1861-62 broke levees right and left in the Sacramento valley, doing damage upward of $3,000,000. The experience taught a new lesson to the state concerning the difficulty of handling floods and swamps. And the legislature had no means of knowing, it is to be supposed, what a merry prank Kern river had just played with Old Tom Barnes' irrigating ditch. Like as not many of the legislators honestly thought that a man who would reclaim a swamp ought to have the whole of it for his labor, not half.

As for Colonel Baker, he came to Kern county, hired thirty Indians from the Tejon reservation and set to work to reclaim a swamp of upward of 400,000 acres that wound for 150 miles through a raw, unsettled country and was replenished by the waters of two of the great rivers of the state and six or seven smaller streams. Try to compass the sublime audacity of it, and then see how Nature can bend her forces to help a sublimely audacious man-the kind of man, apparently, that Nature loves.

Look back a little now and see what old Kern river was doing while the legislature was revising its laws, and first Montgomery and then Colonel Baker were trying to interest capital-in Civil war times-in their mad and visionary undertaking.

How a River in Flood Reclaimed a Swamp

When the Gilberts went home from their Christmas dinner at the Skiles place as related in the previous chapter, they had to cross the first turbid forerunners of the flood, because they lived out at the old race track, and the river then was all this side. Their house of poles and tules stood in a thicket of willows, but a little way to the north was the open, sage brush country, through which Tom Barnes and the Harris brothers had begun to build an irrigation ditch to lead the water down to lands they had started to cultivate. For that day the ditch was an ambitious undertaking, both in

HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY

width and in depth, and its construction had progressed for a mile and more.

The Gilberts had seen high water before, and they went to bed with little concern after they had been rescued from the river by the Indians. Along in the night, however, there arose a great squealing from the pen where some forty porkers fattened, and when Gilbert rolled out of bed to see what was the matter, he splashed to his knees in icy water.

By the time Gilbert and a couple of men who were stopping at the place could carry the children and the provisions to a little knoll of high ground farther north, the melted snow water was lapping around their waists. The hog pen and the corn crib floated down stream, and the tule house followed them next day as the water continued to rise. A little exploration to the north showed that the swollen current had found Tom Barnes' ditch and was scooping it deeper and wider at a faster rate than Barnes could have done had he been loaned all the horses and plows in the state of California. The virgin earth, unprotected by roots or vegetation, melted before the torrent like mounds of sand before the incoming tide. Not many days passed before the larger of the two streams was to the north of the Gilberts instead of to the south of them, and at frequent intervals a dozen tons or more of earth would cave from the bank of the new channel and fall into the brown and boiling flood with a roar that did not sound good to the damp and shivering refugees perched on their island knoll only a few rods away.

Fortunately, only a few days before the flood, Gilbert had returned with a four-horse load of provisions from Visalia, and a little while before that they had bought 700 pounds of flour from a man who had to take flour for a debt a Parajo valley rancher owed him and who was peddling it out through the length of the valley after the manner of the day. So the family made out through what seemed, not only to them but to many other flood- bound pioneers in the state, an interminable season of rain and freshet, and then they moved to Reeder hill, the highest and dryest spot within the pres- ent townsite.

And so, when Colonel Baker came with his thirty Indians he put a head gate in what remained of the old south fork, and built the beginning of the Town ditch, and was able to report to the governor and surveyor-general in all truthfulness that a very considerable portion of the 400,000 acres had been reclaimed.

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.

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 7

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