USA > California > Merced County > History of Merced County, California with biographical sketches of prominent citizens > Part 43
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A MONTH OF SUNSHINE AND SHOWERS.
April, as in the East, is often all smiles and tears, sunshine alternating with showers. Nature pushes her work in April, and vegetation grows astonishingly. The turning-point of the crop comes in the long, warm days of this month, the rainy season is about over; and from that time till it matures the crop is sustained by the moisture already in the soil. In June grain matures, and by the middle of July it is ready for harvest. In April a last shower occurs, and then begins the dry sea- son. From that time until November there is no rain; every- thing is dry and parched; the grass cures and becomes hay as it stands in the fields, and the dumb brutes fatten and! grow sleek on it. Persons camping out require no tents.
The amount of rain-fall differs in almost every locality. The rain-fall of Merced will be found on another page. No rain-
fall tables have been kept for a succession of years in any valley, except at Sacramento, where records bave been kept for thirty years, as well as the number of rainy days.
The following diagram shows at a glance the amount of rain- fall for any one year as compared with another :-
DIAGRAM AND RAINFALL TABLE.
Arranged for ELLIOTT & MOORE's COUNTY HISTORY, showing the amount of rain in inches for each rainy season during thirty years, from records kept by the late Dr. T. M. Logan, and Dr. F. M. Hatch, of Sacramento. These tables are generally taken as representative of the whole State.
[SCALE ONE-NINTH OF AN INCH TO AN INCH OF RAIN.] Rainfall-Inches. 36.00.
Rainy Days.
1849-50.
53
1850-51.
4.71.
46.
1851-52.
17.98.
48.
1852-53.
36.15.
70.
1853-54.
20.06.
76
1854-55.
18.62.
71.
1855-56.
13.77.
54.
1856-57.
10.44,
51.
1857-58.
18.99.
58.
1858-59.
16.04.
73.
1859-60.
22.62.
70.
1860-61.
35.54.
83.
1861-62.
52
1862-63.
37.
IS63-64.
59.
1864-65.
69.
1865-6G.
71.
18GG-G7.
88
1867-68.
58.
1868-69.
47.
1869-70.
37.
IS70-71.
69.
1871-72.
39.
1872-73.
80.
1873-74.
76.
1874-75.
68.
1875-76.
45.
1876-77.
G6.
21.24.
1877-78.
16.77.
1878-79.
26.65.
1879-80.
11.57.
8.86.
22.51.
17.92.
25.30.
32.76.
16.64.
13.57.
S.47.
24.05.
14.20.
22.89.
23.04.
25.67.
9.32.
64. .
75
56.
15.54.
Year.
204
HISTORY OF MERCED COUNTY.
SOUTHEAST RAIN WINDS.
The southeast wind comes from the Gulf of California warm, and laden with moisture, and passes over the Colorado and Mojave deserts. These deserts, as shown by the ineteorolog- ical records of the Smithsonian Institute, have a mean winter temperature of from forty-eight to fifty-six degrees. This is not sufficiently low to precipitate its moisture, and it passes on until it meets the Sierra Nevada and Coast Range. In ascend- ing tbese it rises into cooler regions, finds a mean winter tem- pepature of forty degrees, and gives up some of its moisture. When it flows down into the southern end of the great valley of the San Joaquin, it meets a inean winter temperature of forty-eight degrees, which is higher than that of the mountains it has just passed. It therefore retains its moisture and passes on until it meets a cold polar wind, and has another portion of its moisture condensed in a rain-storm, or, failing to meet this, passes still further north until its moisture is condensed by the prevailing low temperature of higher latitude. It is of frequent occurrence in winter that a gentle southeast wind will blow for days, giving no rain south of the latitude of San Francisco, but cloudy weather at the northern end of the Sac- ramento Valley, and light showers and rains from Red Bluff to Oregon.
CAUSE OF THE WEST SIDE BEING DRY.
It is a law of climate that " When a mountain chain opposes a horizontal wind. the air is forced up along the slopes; its vapors are condensed and water the side exposed to the wind, while, on the opposite slope, the same wind descends into the valley, dry and cloudless." Thus the coast rains are driven up tbe western slope of the Mount Diablo range and part with the most of their moisture, leaving the eastern slope of the same range with little rain or moisture.
The lower portion of the great valley receives a much less fall of rain at the extreme southern end ; the average precip- itation is only about 6 to 6.5 inches, and this includes years of flood. At Stockton, the upper extremity of the valley, twenty-eight years of observation have shown an average of about 16.8 inches, and intermediate points of observation have furnished partial data, which justify the statement that the average rain-fall on the east side of the valley is about 10.5 to 11 inches. As in the case with the Sacramento, the precipita- tion is known to be less on the west side (indeed this is more marked in the San Joaquin), so that 10.5 inches of rain annu- ally certainly represents a full average for the entire valley.
DRY YEAR OF 1864.
Merced County since its settlement has had several dry " years. The following extracts from the Merced Banner will give somne idea of the state of affairs. February 9, 1864, it says:
The long drought that has prevailed in this valley is having the effect to discourage farmers and miners. The cattle are dying by hundreds of starvation, and unless there is a heavy rain witbin the next ten days no crops will be raised. On the plains south of the Merced River there is no grass for stock, and they are dying off rapidly.
March 6th. The weather continues dry; cattle are dying by thousands. There is no grass for cattle to eat and they are wild and unmanageable.
March 19th. A light rain fell; stock are dying by the tbou- sand.
April 12th. We have just been favored by a good rain which lessens the chances of famine, and we hope to hear no more of stock dying.
May 15th. We were favored by a good rain, and vegetation looks like early spring.
May 30th. During the past week we have had extremely hot weather. Saturday the mercury rose to 104° in the shade. Our paper was delayed by the melting of the rollers.
June 18th. Not more than one-fourth crops bave been made. The people had no money before harvesting and little or notb- ing to sell. Money is a commodity not to be found among our farmers.
COLD WEATHER IN 1864.
The Banner for December 23, 1865, says :-
The weather for the past ten days or two weeks has been unreasonably cold, the coldest we have ever felt in this valley in any former winter.
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday last would have done credit to the more nortbern regions of New York and Canada, on Tuesday, especially, it was very cold, the mercury in tbe thermometer running down below the freezing mark. Pumps were frozen so they could not be worked, while water standing in the ponds in the streets was covered with ice three-quarters of an inch thick. The river was almost entirely frozen over.
SNOW IN 1864.
The inhabitants of this burg and surrounding country were surprised on Monday last, December 26, on arising from their slumbers, to see everything outside covered with snow, which had fallen during the night to a depth of about three inches. This is more snow than bas ever been known to fall at one time in this valley since its settlement by the Americans.
HOT WEATHER IN 1865.
From the Banner of June 24, 1865, we learn that Sunday was warm, at 8 o'clock, A. M., the thermometer was 92º, at 12 M., 100°, and at 3 P. M., 106°. The day was clear but very little breeze stirring, what there was came very gently from the south. Monday, the 19th, opened up sultry, with light hazy clouds, wind from the south and bardly enough of it to stir a
205
VALUE OF RAIN-FALL TABLES.
leaf. It came in little fitful puffs, of only a moment's duration and seemed as if it was too lazy to blow. At 8 A. M. the thermometer indicated 94°, at 12 M., 104°, and at 3 P. M .. 108º. The nights of Sunday and Monday were quite warm and sultry, a thing not very common in Soelling.
We append a statement for each day during the week :-
Sunday, 18tb
.108°
Monday, 19th.
101°
=
Tuesday, 20th
96°
=
Wednesday, 21st.
98°
Thursday, 22d
102°
Friday, 23d
FLOOD OF 1861-62.
California was visited in the autumn and winter of 1861-62 by a most disastrous flood. The rain commenced falling on the eightb of November, and continued almost without interrup- tion to January 24, 1862, when the floods attained their great- est height. The north fork of the American River rose fifty-five feet. On the second day, November 9th, the flood reached the low-lands of the Sacramento Valley, and Sacramento City was the greatest sufferer .* The streams, swollen by protracted rains throughout California, as well as Oregon and Nevada, flooded the valleys, inundated towns, swept away animals, and destroyed property to the amount of $10,000,000. The Stan- islaus, Tuolumne and Merced Rivers were all overflowed, and houses and villages swept away. The amount of rain, how- ever, that falls in a year in the central and southern valleys of the State, is considerably less than in the Eastern States. At San Francisco, for instance, the average rain-fall is twenty-two inches, while in New York it is forty-three, in St Louis forty- one, and in New Orleans fifty.
RAIN-FALL FOR THE YEAR 1880-81 AT MERCED, SHOWING THE DAYS WHEN IT RAINED.
Inches.
Inches.
Days.
0.82
Days.
0.66
January 29
November 23
0.15
January 30
December 2
0.83
February 3
December 3
0.81
February 4.
0.18
December 4
0.43
February 5.
0.38
December 15
0.10
February 16
0.10
December 19
0.10
February 17 February 26
0.08
December 20
0,52
0.60
December 21
0.44
0.26
December 23
0.30
0.21
December 24
0.21
0.17
December 25
0.09
0.06
December 27
1.46
January 15
0.14
11.76
January 16
0.70
January 28
RAIN-FALL AT MERCED.
The following is the rain-fall at Merced for a series of years :-
3.20
Year.
9.50
1876-77
11.81
1871-72
1877-78.
5.12
1872-73
10.60
1878-79
1873-74
10.40
1879-80.
11.76
1874-75
12.68
9.59
1875-76
* The flood of February 3, 1881, was the highest ever known in Sacramento, being twenty- six feet eight Inches above low water mark.
HOW STATISTICS ARE OBTAINED.
The temperature of the air, course of the wind, rain and snow-fall, are taken daily at 7 A. M., 2 P. M. and 9 P. M., at eigbty-three stations of the Central Pacific and Southern Pacific Railroads and their branches. These have been kept for the use of the companies and for the benefit of the people residing in the vicinity of the various stations. The record of these three daily observations for even fifty stations for ten years, makes an army of figures that it is almost appalling to attack; yet, when reduced, and the mean obtained, the results are of great importance, not only to the farmer, but to every citizen.
A signal station was established on the summit of Mt. Diablo, 3,856 feet above the sea level, in 1876, and again in 1880-81. A record of the temperature and rain-fall and direction of the wind was registered several times a day.
Private records are also kept by some person in almost every county, so that for late years a very good and reliable data is obtained.
VALUE OF THIS INFORMATION.
If the farmers who have made settlements on the west side of the San Joaquin River, and have tried unsuccessfully for years to raise crops upon them without artificial irrigation, could have seen the results in the hard unyielding facts these figures disclose, they would know that they hope in vain for rain, and also hope in defiance of the laws that control climate.
The great fault with California farmers, and indeed with every other class of husiness men in California, is, they want to get rich all at once, they don't look ahead; they seem to think that a failure at one time is a failure for all time. Now instead of giving way to this disposition and allowiug their fortunes to rest, so to speak, upon chance circumstances, if they would " take time hy the forelock " and prepare beforehand for emergencies, dry seasons and otber calamities incident to our climate would be met and overcome with but small loss to business interests.
Here is an illustration of the financial importance of these records: In 1869 some gentlemen made an investment of nearly $50,000, near Summit Statiou, in the construction of sheds over some lakes, under which to cut ice for the San Francisco market; they found it impossible to erect any wooden struct- ure sufficiently wide for their purpose, that would bear the weight of snow that annually falls at that point. Their structures are in ruins, and every dollar put into the enterprise (other than it gave a small army of men employment in the erection of their buildings), is lost. Could the gentlemen have consulted these records, they would have seen that the annual average rain-fall at this point is more than five feet. Nearly all of this falls in the form of snow, and is equal -- if the snow tbat falls did not become compact or melt-to a bank of snow on their lakes and the roofs of their buildings each wiuter of sixty feet in depth.
Inches.
Year.
0.10
February 13
0.18
December 17
0.24
0.30
0.53
December 14
0.33
February 8
March 9
March 16
April 6
April 9
April 17
Total
Inches
10.90
12.31
1880-81
Average raiu-fall for ten years ..
0.16
106° Fahrenbeit.
206
HISTORY OF MERCED COUNTY.
CLIMATE OF INTERIOR BASINS.
The climate of the San Joaquin Basin differs from that of San Francisco in baving no fogs, faint sea-breezes, winters four degrees colder, and summers from sixteen to twenty degrees warmer. The greater beat of summer is owing to the want of ocean winds and fogs; the greater cold of winter is caused by the distance from the Pacific, and the proximity of the suow-covered Sierra Nevada. While at San Francisco, the thermometer usually stands at seventy degrees at midday, it is at eighty-six degrees in Sacramento City at the same moment; and thesc sixteen degrees inake a vast difference, for they change comfort into oppression.
The small amount of rain during the winter, the entire want of it during the summer, the warmth of the sun, and the great uumber of cloudless days, render the climate a very dry one. As one consequence or accompaniment of our dry climate and clear sky, it may be worth while to observe that near the ocean the clouds are rarely picturesque or sublimely beautiful. The magnificent sunsets, where the god of light goes down amid curtains of gold and crimson-those high- piled banks of clouds which adorn the heavens before and after thunder-showers in the Mississippi Valley-are rarely seen.
Dew is rare or slight over a great part of the State. Dur- ing the summer and autumu, many of the rivers sink iu the sand soon after leaving the mountains in which they rise; the earth is dry, and baked hard to a depth of many inches or even feet; the grass aud herbage, except near springs or on . swampy land, are dried up, and as brown as the soil on which they grew.
It has been said that very hot days are less oppressive in California than equal heat in the Eastern States, because the cool nigbts serve to invigorate the system, aud the extreme dryness of the climate favors the evaporation of sweat, and thus keeps the body cooler than in districts where the earth is always moist. Evaporation is so rapid that a beefsteak hung up in the air will dry before it can commence to putrefy. A dead animal will "dry up," and its stiff hide and meat will lie during a whole summer in a mummy-like condition. In many places, steel may be exposed to the night air for weeks without getting a touch of rnst.
It is common to ascribe the effects of the dryness of the atmosphere to the "purity " of the air; but it is rather the absence of moisture. In May and June all California " dries up" -- the rivers, the brooks, the springs, the ditebes, the vege- tation-anıl with thein mnauy of the resources of the country.
CLEAR DAYS.
Ou an average, there are 220 perfectly clear days in a year, without a cloud, in the San Joaquin Basin; eighty-five days
wherein clouds are seen, though in many of them the sun is visible; and sixty, rainy. Italy cannot surpass that. New York has scarcely half so many perfectly clear days. From the first of April till the first of November there are, in ordinary seasons, fifteen cloudy days; and from the first of November till the first of April, half the days are clear. It often happens that weeks upon weeks in winter, and montbs upon months in summer, pass without a cloud. Near the ocean shore, coast-clouds or fogs are frequently blown up from the sea, but they disappear after ten o'clock in the morning.
SIROCCOS OR BURNING WINDS.
Several cases are on record of hot burning winds visiting the valleys. These are sometimes very destructive, if coming carly in the season. One of these hot winds, that visited Stanislaus and Merced Counties, was thus described by a cor- respondent of the Stockton Argus :-
" The thermometer was 113º in the shade. The wind was avoided, as it was heated so that it felt as if actually burning the flesh-as if rushing from a hot oven. In one team of ten borses, three fell in the road, from heat; two died but the other recovered by pouring sweet oil in its throat. The animal's throat was closed, so that he could not drink, but the oil was used to soften the throat, and open it, so that it could swallow water, when it recovered. The two that died, expired before such aid could be used with them. At Burton's public house, at Loving's Ferry, birds flew into the bar-room, to the pitcher, to get water, so tame were they made by the thirst caused by extreme heat. . Birds were seen to fall dead off the linibs of trees, in the middle of the day, from the heat, as if they were shot. The wind was of that burning heat never before witnessed by the settlers there since their arrival in the State."
THUNDER-STORMS.
Thunder-storms are very rare in California. Lightning is not seen more than three or four times a year at San Fran- cisco, and then it is never near. Thunder is still more rare. Indeed, many persons have been here for years, without observ- iug either. "I have never seen a brilliant flash of lightning, and have heard but onc loud clap of thunder in the State. Thunder-storms are sometimes witnessed high up in the mount- ains, and in the Great Basin; very rarely in any of the low laud of the State. In May, 1860, a house in Sonora was struck by lightning; and in February, 1861, three vessels in Humboldt Bay were struck iu the same manner; and though there were persons in the house and on the vessels, no serions injury was done to either person or property in any case. On May 25, 1860, a Chinaman was killed by lightning near the Lexington House, on the Coloma Road, in Sacramento County ; and this is, I think, the only death by electricity in California on record."-Resources.
207
WHAT MADE THE RICH SOIL.
GEOLOGY OF MERCED COUNTY.
Various Formations, Glaciers and their Effects, Volcanic Action, Depth of Strata, etc.
THIS county has never had a scientific geological survey, and our information is rather restricted, except for the mount- ain ranges and mining regions. The general topography and geological features iudicate that this great valley has been the bed of a vast inland sea, whose tranquil waters for ages have received the wash and wear of the surrounding mountains, until at the lowest depression deposits of diluvium thousands of feet deep have been made, which bave been superimposed by the present soil during the subsidence of the waters. The foot-hills also bear traces of having been water-woru by some mighty stream, aud are covered by gravel, decomposed lava, and the humus of ages. From their bases the land gently descends, and does not lose its volcanic soil until reaching the general level of the plain. No great convulsion of nature has ever upheaved the valley from the peaceful condition the gradual subsidence of waters left it in, but it lies placid and serene as a sleeping child awaiting some event to waken it into life and action.
WHAT MADE THE RICH SOIL,
To the action of glaciers we owe the richness of the soils of the valley. The soil is made up of the rocks pulverized and carried down by the glaciers, and mingled with the lavas ground from the Sierras by other glaciers.
John Muir says of the Sierras: "They are everywhere marked and adorned with characteristic sculptures of the aucient glaciers that swept over this entire region like one vast ice-wind, and the polished surfaces produced by the ponderous flood are still so perfectly preserved that in many places the sunlight reflected from them is about as trying to the eyes as sheets of snow.
"God's glacial-mills grind slowly, but they have been kept in motion long enough to grind sufficient soil for any Alpine crop, though most of the grist has been carried to the low- lands, leaving the higb regions lean and bare; while the post- glacial agents of erosion have not yet furnished sufficient avail- able food for more than a few tufts of the hardiest plants, chiefly carices and criogonæ.
GLACIERS OF THE SIERRAS.
" At a distance of less than three thousand feet below the summit of Mount Ritter you may find tributaries of the San Joaquin and Owens Rivers bursting forth from the eternal ice
and snow of the glaciers that load its Hanks; while a little to the north of here are found the highest affluents of the Tuol- umne and Merced. Thus, the fountains of four of the priu- cipal rivers of California are within a radius of four or five miles
"Could we have been here to observe during the glacial period, we should have overlooked a wrinkled ocean of ice continuous as that now covering the landscapes of North Greenland, filling every valley and cañon, flowing deep above every ridge, with only the tops of the fountain peaks rising darkly above the rock-encumbered waves like islets in a stormy sea-these clustered islets the only hints of the glorious landscapes now smiling in the sun. Now, in the deep, brood- ing silence all seems motionless, as if the work of creation were done.
"But in the midst of this outer steadfastness we know there is incessant motion. Ever and anou, avalanches are falling from yonder peaks. These cliff-bound glaciers, seemingly wedged and immovable, are flowing like water and grinding the rocks beneath them. The lakes are lapping their granite shores and wearing them away, and every one of these rills and young rivers is fretting the air into music, and carrying the mountains to the plains. Here are the roots of all the life of the valleys, and here more simply than elsewhere is the eternal flux of nature manifested. Ice changing to water, lakes to meadows, and mountains to plains. And while we thus contemplate nature's methods of landscape creation, and reading the records she has carved on the rocks, reconstruct, however imperfectly, the landscapes of the past, we also learn that as these we now behold have succeeded those of the pre- glacial age, so they in turn are withering and vanishing to be succeeded by others yet unborn.
" Early one bright morning in the middle of Indian suminer, while the glacier meadows were still crisp with frost crystals, I set out from the foot of Mount Tyndall, on my way down to Yo Semite Valley. I had spent the past summer, and many preceding ones, exploring the glaciers that lie on the head-waters of the San Joaquin, Tuolumne, Merced and Owens Rivers; measuring and studying their movements, trends, crevasses, moraines, etc., and the part they had played during the period of their greater extension in the creation and development of the landscapes of this Alpine wonder- land."
GLACIER PAVEMENTS.
"By far the mnost striking and attractive of the glacial phenomena presented to the non-scientific observer in the Sierra, are the polished glacial pavements, because they are so beautiful, and their beauty is of so rare a kind, so unlike any portion of the loose, carthy low-lands where people make homes and earn their bread. They are simply flat or gently undulating areas of solid granite, which present the unchanged
208
HISTORY OF MERCED COUNTY.
surface upon which the ancient glaciers flowed, and are found in the most perfect condition in the sub-alpine region, at an elevation of from 8,000 to 0,000 feet. Some are miles in extent, only slightly interrupted by spots that have given way to the weather, while the best preserved portions are bright and stainless as the sky, reflecting the sunbeams like glass, and shining as if polished afresh every day, notwith- standing they bave been exposed to corroding rains, dew, frost, and snow, for thousands of years.
" When the mountaineer comes to these bare pavements be stops and rubs his hands admiringly on their shining surface, aud tries hard to account for their mysterious smoothness and brilbancy. He may have seen the winter avalanches of snow descending in awful majesty through the woods, sweeping away the trees tbat stood in their way like slender weeds, but concludes. that this cannot be the work of avalanches, because tbe scratches and fine polished striæ show that the agent, whatever it was, moved along and up over the rocks as well as downward. Neither can he sce bow water may possibly have been the agent, for he finds the same strange polish upon lofty, isolated tables, bcyoud. the reach of any conceivable flood. Only the winds seem capable of moving across the face of the country in the direction indicated by the scratches and grooves. Even dogs and horses, when first led up the mountains, study geology to this extent, that they gaze won- deringly at the strange brightness of the ground, and smell it, and place their feet cautiously upon it, as if afraid of falling or sinking."
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