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 8

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 8

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Then the Drought Helped, Too

Still Nature was kind to this generous, enthusiastic optimist who was not afraid to attempt great things that other people said were impossible. In the year 1864 was the worst drought since the American occupation. All over the state cattle and sheep died of starvation by the hundreds of thou- sands. Shepherds were glad to dispose of their flocks at a bit a head, and failing that they killed them mercifully and saved their pelts.

Colonel Baker, when he had built the head gate in the south fork, went down to the north end of Buena Vista lake and scraped the Baker dam, frag- ments of which are still to be found a little way north of the Cole levee. Then he took his family back to Visalia temporarily while he did further reclamation work north of Tulare lake.

Baker Gets His Patent

The Governor sent the surveyor-general and another engineer by name of Andrew Jackson to see if the lands had been reclaimed. By that time the drought had done what Baker could not do. The engineers found the land

HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY

as dry as a bone, and so reported. There was some delay in the making out of the patent, but finally it was signed by Governor Frederick F. Low on November 11, 1867. It conveyed to W. F. Montgomery, et al., their asso- ciates and assigns, a total of 89,120 acres of land in Kern and Fresno coun- ties-about half as much as the grantees originally were to receive.

The next great flood-the greatest in the history of the county, came between Christmas and New Years in the winter of 1867-8, and spread a vast lake of water over every acre of Colonel Baker's reclaimed land.

Montgomery Patent Annulled

Years later there fell upon the state a far-flung fore-shadow of the modern conservation movement, and the legislatures of 1857 and 1862 were sharply criticised for giving away so much land for so small an amount of improve- ment. The courts, as courts do now, sometimes, undertook to correct the follies of the lawmakers, and on September 17, 1878, in the case of People ex. rel. J. L. Love, attorney-general, versus John Center, et al., appellants and respondents, the district court of the twelfth judicial district-San Fran- cisco-handed down a decree declaring the Montgomery patent null and void. In the opinion accompanying the decree the court pointed out that the governor and surveyor-general did not issue a certificate to the effect that the land had been reclaimed-as the law directed-and held that this omission was not cured by the fact that the governor signed the patent, and that the document also bore the signature of the secretary of state, who happened to be the surveyor-general as well. To a layman it might seem that this objection was purely technical. The second defect noted by the court-the fact that the land was not actually reclaimed-was not to be disputed by . anyone.

But the decree mattered little to Colonel Baker. Six years before it was signed by the judge his remains had been carried to their last resting place in Union cemetery by the strong but gentle hands of other pioneers who knew and loved him. Moreover, long before his death Colonel Baker had sold his share of nearly all the immense tract the Montgomery patent conveyed. Some of it went for ten cents an acre. The highest price the smallest purchasers paid for farms was $1 and $1.50 per acre. Baker was no land monopolist.

Before the district court issued its decree the legislature got busy again, tempering justice with mercy. An act approved March 20, 1878, provided that all persons who had bought land covered by the Montgomery patent, subsequent to the issuance of such patent, should be entitled to a decree of the court directing that a patent issue to them for such lands, on their showing within sixty days after the passage of the act, that they had spent for taxes, improvements, fences and reclamation a total of not less than $1 per acre for all the lands so claimed by each.

All the purchasers were able easily to comply with these conditions, and so the story ends happily for all concerned.

Beginnings of Bakersfield

The flood of 1861-2 is a convenient mark in history from which to date the earliest beginnings of Bakersfield. As related in the preceding chap- ter, the flood moved the main channel out of the future townsite, leaving the land dryer and rather more suitable for the habitation of civilized men. It made it less desirable for the Indians. Prior to that time, as Mrs. Van Orman recalls, there was a considerable settlement of the aborigines somewhere

HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY

about Chester Lane, and huts of individual savages were scattered about the willow groves everywhere. But the flood drowned the squirrels and other small game which the Indians used to kill and eat, swept away the fish they used to catch in the river, and incidentally the long season of rains when the freshet rose and fell day after day in apparently interminable succession made the place generally disagreeable even for the stoical redskins. About that time, also, the government was moving the larger part of the tribes from Tejon to the Tule river farm. So the Indians moved out. So did two families by name of Lovelace, and others of whom the names are not remembered. The settlers who remained sought the high spots that the waters had not covered.

The people who stayed and helped to form the new settlement were the Shirleys, the Gilberts, Harvey S. Skiles, the grandfather of Herman Dumble, the present city trustee of Bakersfield, and Lewis Reeder, who bought Gilbert's second place on Reeder hill and gave his name to that ancient landmark. The next year came Colonel Baker and his family, Edward Tibbet, who settled on the present Tibbet homestead just south of the city limits, and Allan Rose, who succeeded to the house on Reeder hill after Reeder and many of his family had died. Reeder, himself, died in the moun- tains whither he had gone for lung trouble, but others of his family who sick- ened and died there and later residents who turned their faces to the wall in the ill-fated house made a total of seven deaths on Reeder hill in the first few years of the settlement. Two others, accidentally shot, raised the total to nine, wherefrom grew the tale that the Reeder hill house was haunted.

Colonel Baker, of course, at once directed his energies toward the recla- mation of the swamp lands covered by the Montgomery franchise. The others farmed the fertile townsite, raised cattle and hogs or hunted both in the swamps and out on the dry ranges. The soldiers at Fort Tejon paid $50 per ton for hay delivered, and both at the fort and in the mining camps were the best of markets for meat, potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, and all other vegetables that the early settlers raised. In a letter written by Solomon Jewett in 1871 reference is made to the fact that Harvey S. Skiles raised a small patch of cotton in 1862.

The first genuine cotton culture, however, was in 1865, when the Jewett Brothers, who had interests in Bakersfield then in addition to their extensive sheep business at the Rio Bravo ranch, raised 130 acres of cotton which was harvested and sent to Oakland to be ginned and manufactured. Some of the cloth was shipped back to Bakersfield and sold in the first store built in the settlement. Mr. Jewett imported two tons of seed, one from Tennessee, and the other from Sonora, Mexico. He got the crop in rather late, but he declared that the experiment was a success, or would have been had it not been for the prohibitive cost of hauling the cotton to Oakland by team- probably ox-team.

Colonel Baker, Mr. Winfey and A. R. Jackson were appointed school trustees in 1866, but they never organized. A man by name of Brooks taught a private school that year, and in 1863, for a short time, Mrs. Baker taught a few of the neighbor children at her home. They had no books, but Mrs. Baker cut letters out of paper, and resorted to other laborious shifts to help the youngsters up the hill of knowledge. The first active school board consisted of Messrs. Tibbet, Troy and Reeder, who were chosen in 1867. In that year Mrs. Ranney taught a three-months' term. In 1868 Miss L. A. Jackson taught a six-months' term. The first school house, which an old

HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY

newspaper account says was a brick building 40x60 feet in size, was built in 1869 and in June of that year A. R. Jackson opened school in it. The next year there were two teachers, A. R. Jackson and Miss Callie Gilbert, and thirty-five pupils, whose surnames were Adams, Baker, Crawford, Lundy, Patria, Pettus, Ranney, Shelley, Shirley, Tibbet, Ward, Arujo, Collins, Con- treras, Gilbert, Mckenzie, Reeder, Troy and Verdugo.

For six years after Colonel Baker came to the Kern delta there was no postoffice here. Until the breaking out of the war, the removal of the gar- rison from Fort Tejon and the discontinuance of the Butterfield stage line from San Francisco to Los Angeles, the settlers here used to have their mail left at the fort. Later on it was addressed to Visalia, and the thoughtful postmaster at that place would forward mail for the whole settlement by any- one whom he knew was coming this way. Freight was hauled mostly from Los Angeles, and the charge was three cents per pound. Flour sometimes got as high as $10 per sack in the earliest days of Bakersfield, and when the freshets cut off travel to Visalia and snows blocked Tejon pass, corn and wheat ground in a hand mill and other home products had to eke out the larder. Mrs. Tracy (then Mrs. Baker) says she used to leech salt out of the earth to cure pork, and in other times of necessity made a pretty good article of soap with grease and alkali. Ordinarily they made their own candles, used honey in lieu of sugar, and baked sweet potatoes as a sub- stitute for coffee. Meal ground in the old hand mill was not of the finest, but the pioneers sifted out the coarsest part and used it for hominy. Dave Willis of Visalia tried making salt from an old salt lick about sixteen miles south of Bakersfield, with indifferent success. In 1868 a saw mill was started in Tecuya valley near Fort Tejon, but the lumber, which was sawed from bull pine, was, so prone to warp that it needed a ton of boulders on each end of a plank to hold it down, and then it would twist in the middle.

Prior to the days of the Tacuya mill adobes and poles or brush, tules and mud formed the building materials, as previously described. Colonel Baker's first house, the one the family was living in at the time of the great flood of 1867-8, was of adobe with a brush, tule and dirt roof. The first years of Colonel Baker's residence here were unusually dry, especially the great drought year of 1864, and a dirt roof was a very great protection from the sun in summer, and also was unobjectionable in winter, so long as the light rains were insufficient to wet it through and the intervening days of sun- shine quite sufficient to dry it out again.

The Flood of 1867-68

The winter of 1867-68 was different. The heavens wept as though their sorrow never would be washed away, and after a while the rain drops began to filter through the bed of rich, alluvial soil on the roof until the shower inside was almost or quite as heavy as that outside. The chief difference was that the shower inside came a few minutes after the shower outside, and the tiny streams that trickled from the pendant tule ends were black as ink with the humus they extracted from the dirt on the roof. They hung umbrellas over the tables to protect the food, and sheltered the beds as best they might.

It rained, and rained, and then, very strange, as it seemed to the settlers along its banks, the river, for two days, went almost wholly dry. They knew nothing about it in the little village of Bakersfield, but up in the mountains where the lakes of upper Kern river now are, there had been a succession

HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY

of avalanches that filled the bed of the river with rocks and earth and a whole forest of great pine trees.

A closer inquiry seems to develop the fact that popular tradition respect- ing the slip of earth that held back the waters of Kern river in the flood of 1867-8, instead of exaggerating it, as tradition is wont to do, falls far short of comprehending its tremendous magnitude. The lakes themselves, beau- tiful sheets of water far up toward the head of the river, are remnants of the great reservoirs that the avalanches made. Many years ago the old Jordan trail from Visalia to Inyo county used to pass through where the lakes now are. To this day, looking down through the clear waters, in the lake bottom may be seen trees that grew there before the flood overwhelmed them.

It must be that the thorough soaking of the mountain sides after a long period of drought caused whole sections of wooded slopes to plunge down into the river canon. When the impounded waters finally broke away they came down the rocky gorges in a churning, thundering torrent, adding to the roar of the water itself the crash and shriek of thousands on thousands of trees. sixty and a hundred feet in length, and up to three or four feet in diameter, tumbled end over end in the narrower parts of the canon and rolling and swirling with the current in the wider reaches of the stream. Kernville resi- dents say that for three days the river flowed past that place a mile in width, and from the bank it looked as though a man could walk on logs dryshod from one side to the other.

Those who have seen the steep, narrow rock-walled gorge through which Kern river emerges from the mountains sixteen miles above Bakersfield can form some guess of their own concerning the steady, increasing. rolling thun- der with which the coming flood heralded its approach to the sleeping citizens of infant Bakersfield.

Flood Reaches Bakersfield.

It was the flatness of Bakersfield and the great expanse of level country that opens, fanwise, west and south from the townsite that saved it from annihilation. Since the first flood people had sought out the knolls for their dwelling places, and there was a little time after the drift logs began to bob and crunch among the willows of the sloughs before the water was lapping at the threshholds.

Richard Hudnut, afterward the editor of the Kern County Courier, was living in an adobe house somewhere near G and Twenty-fourth street. The. noise of the water wakened him, and he went out a little way from his house to see what was coming. He crossed a little swale dry-shod, and looked back a moment later to find it full of water, running like a mill race. He shouted a warning to his bride and the latter's sister, who remained in the house, and in a few seconds he was obliged to climb a tree to keep out of reach of the rising flood. The house was on a little higher ground, but presently the chilly stream-it was between Christmas and New Years- began to flow over the floor. Mrs. Hudnut and her sister perched themselves on their beds. But the water steadily rose, and what was equally appalling, the roof above their heads was slowly but steadily sinking down. Pretty soon they realized that the adobes at the bottom of the wall were melting in the flood. By the time the ridge pole had settled down on top of Mr. Hudnut's tall book case at the end of the room, the ladies mustered up their courage to wade outside. The roof by then was so low that they were able to scramble upon it, and there they sat shivering and shouting counsel back

HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY

and forth with Mr. Hudnut, perched in his tree, until men with a boat came to their rescue.

Similar experiences happened in many places, but no lives were lost, and the pioneers, used to pranks of Nature and Fortune, took the experience philosophically, and with mutual helpfulness and optimism soon made new shifts and forgot their losses. The day after the flood came there was to have been a neighborhood feast at the Tibbet's home, and although the waters undermined a cupboard where the roast pig was stored and spilled it in the flood, it was rescued and re-garnished and a little later than the hour set the guests assembled and shared the slightly moistened viands and related their several experiences. The Hudnut story and the Tibbet feast are incidents of the flood most generally remembered, probably because of the humor they contain-and that fact furnishes the key to the temperament and disposition of the Kern county pioneer.

The Baker adobe was not overflowed. It was only wet and drizzling from the long continued rains, and there a dozen homeless neighbors gath- ered and were made as welcome as flowers in February.

The trees (live trees, not dead driftwood) which were washed down by the flood strewed a strip of country a mile wide through Kernville, and from the point of Panorama heights past Bakersfield they spread over the ground all the way to Bellevue and the old Barnes settlement, a distance of ten miles or more. Colonel Baker built a saw mill to cut the logs on the townsite into lumber, and Myron Harmon tried the same plan up in Kern- ville, but the logs there were so thickly imbedded with sand and broken chunks of rock (some of them as big as a man's fist) that sawing them was impracticable.

Meantime Colonel Baker had completed his reclamation of the swamp lands covered by the Montgomery franchise, had gotten his patent to 89,120 acres of land, and plans were forming in the minds of ambitious, enterprising men to make a great empire out of the rich lands through which the river plowed its devious and shifting channels, and incidentally to make some personal profit thereby.

CHAPTER VI

Organization of the County

The county of Kern was created by an act of the legislature approved April 2, 1866, out of territory formerly included in the counties of Tulare and Los Angeles, chiefly the former. The act fixed the county seat at Havilah ; provided for a county judge to be appointed by the governor, ordered an election to be held on the second Thursday in July, 1866, to select a clerk who should be also a recorder, a sheriff who should be tax collector as well, a district attorney, an assessor and collector of poll taxes, treasurer, surveyor, coroner and public administrator, superintendent of schools and three super- visors. Michael H. Erskine, Eli Smith, Dan W. Walser, Thomas Baker and John Brite were named as a board of commissioners to appoint election officers and canvass the returns. The county was assigned to the fourth senatorial district of that day, and was attached to Tulare county for representative purposes. The supervisors were directed to name two commissioners to meet with other commissioners from Tulare and Los Angeles counties to settle upon Kern county's share of the bonded indebtedness of the other counties of which its territory had been a part.

HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY

First County Officials

Without special incident this program was carried out, the following officials being declared elected as the result of the first ballots cast in the new county : district attorney, E. E. Calhoun; sheriff, W. B. Ross; clerk, recorder and auditor, H. D. Bequette; treasurer, D. A. Sinclair; assessor, R. B. Sagely ; coroner and public administrator, Joseph Lively ; superintendent of schools, J. R. Riley ; surveyor, Thomas Baker; supervisors, Henry Ham- mell, S. A. Bishop and J. J. Rhymes.

The governor appointed Theron Reed as county judge. J. W. Freeman was already state senator, having been elected while Kern county was a part of Tulare, and I. C. Brown was similarly in possession of the office of assemblyman.

At their first two meetings, held August 1st and 2nd, the supervisors established three judicial townships in the county, fixed the tax rate at a total of $2.61 for state and county, and called for bids for building a jail. At the next meeting the bid of T. B. Stuart for the construction of the jail for $1600 was accepted, and for $800 a site was bought for a courthouse. The latter building served until the county seat was moved to Bakersfield, when it was taken down and the lumber sold to P. T. Colby, who put it together again in the form of a residence just south of the Kern Valley bank on Chester avenue in Bakersfield. The first courthouse was built by T. H. Binnex for the modest sum of $2200.

Each judicial (or magistrate's) township was made a school district as follows: township No. 1, Havilah district ; township No. 2, Linn's valley dis- trict ; township No. 3, Kelso district ; township No. 4, Tejon district.

It is worthy of note that Bakersfield and the Kern delta do not appear in the list, but in February, 1867, Lower Kern River district was formed from the Linn's Valley district. Also, each magistrate's township was made a road district.

First Election Precincts

The first election districts were established by the supervisors May 25, 1867, as follows :

Havilah-vote at court house. Claraville-vote at Bodfish's old store. South Fork-vote at John Nicoll's blacksmith shop. Kernville-vote at old Cove house. Keysville-vote at Marsh & Kennedy's old store. Alpine-vote at Eugene Caillard's store. Summit Mill-vote at Knox house, summit. Linn's Valley-vote at Myers' store. Long Tom-vote at Yoakum's store. Kern Island-vote at Chester's store, Bakersfield. Reservation-vote at Tejon reservation buildings. Tehachapi-vote at school house. Walker's Basin- vote at Dr. Adams' store. Augua Caliente-vote at Wolfskill house. Cross's Mill-vote at Cross' mill. Delonega-vote at Williams & Martin's camp.

First Election in the County

Before the election was held on September 4th, Sageland voting district was established and Sanderson & Asher's store on Kelso creek was named as the polling place.

In the list above the word "old" wherever used, is quoted from the super- visors' record. After forty-four years its use gives some idea of relative antiquity. As an index to the relative population of the districts and also to show the political complexion of the new county the vote for governor in the

HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY

several precincts in the first election after the county was established is given herewith :

Havilah-Haight, 147; Gorham, 60.

Kernville-Haight, 38; Gorham, 43.

South Fork-Haight, 10; Gorham, nothing.

Walker's Basin-Haight, 32; Gorham, 13.

Alpine-Haight, 11; Gorham, 3.

Summit Hill-Haight, 18; Gorham, 5.

Linn's Valley-Haight, 22; Gorham, 6.

Long Tom-Haight, 20; Gorham, nothing.

Kern River Island-Haight, 21; Gorham, 11.

Reservation-Haight, 4; Gorham, 2.

Tehachapi-Haight, 25; Gorham, 3. Sageland-Haight, 21; Gorham, 11.

Augua Caliente-Haight, 3; Gorham, nothing.

Claraville-Haight, 13; Gorham, 7.

Totals-Haight, 385; Gorham, 164.

Haight's majority, 221.

The election throughout the state gave the following totals for governor : Henry H. Haight, Democrat, 49,905 ; George C. Gorham, Union, 40,359; Caleb T. Fay, Union-Republican, 2,088.

At the same election the following county officers were chosen: Sheriff, R. B. Sagely ; clerk, H. D. Bequette ; district attorney, Thomas Laspeyre ; treasurer, D. A. Sinclair; assessor, James R. Watson ; surveyor, Thomas Baker ; coroner, A. D. Jones ; superintendent of schools, E. W. Doss; super- visors, first district, D. W. Walser; second district, J. J. Rhymes; third dis- trict, John M. Brite ; constables, township No. 1, John B. Tungate and W. S. Gibson ; township No. 2, J. Pascoe ; township No. 3, Thomas F. Owens and Thomas McFarlane; township No. 4, Isaac Hart and James E. Williams ; township No. 5, J. J. Yoakum and W. W. Shirley.

Roadmasters for the five townships were William F. Klaiber, C. T. White, J. M. Garrett, M. A. Tyler, and William Higgins, respectively.

At the judicial election held October 16th, P. T. Colby was elected county judge, and justices of the peace were chosen as follows : township 1, G. Martel and J. W. Venable; township 2, Thomas Despain; township 3, William S. Adams and Daniel Memckton ; township 4, William P. Higgins and Grant P. Cuddeback ; township 5, P. A. Stine.

First Swamp Land District Organized

Other matters which demanded a large share of the attention of the first boards of supervisors other than the political organization of the county and the calling of elections were the granting of permits for toll roads and ferries, the organization of reclamation districts and the adjustment of assess- ments. The first reclamation districts were formed on August 7, 1866, seven days after the first board organized. Under an act of the legislature ap- proved April 2, 1866, the supervisors, whom the law made ex-officio swamp land commissioners for the territory included in the county, divided the swamp and overflowed land in Kern county into two districts. District No. 1 included all the swamp land in the county east of the range between ranges 26 and 27 east. District No. 2 included all the swamp land in the county west of this line, and all the even sections in both districts were set aside to defray the expense of carrying out a system of reclamation and irrigation

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History of Kern County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Part 8

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