USA > California > Sonoma County > History of Sonoma 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 time > Part 24
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WHEN THE HEN CACKLES A MARKET FALL.S.
While the process of hatching eggs artificially was known among the ancients it seems to have become one of the lost arts, like gun-powder, glass and certain paints, to be found and practiced again in the Christian centuries. It is a long reach of time from the ride oven of an Asian chicken-yard a thousand years B. C., to a Petaluma poultry nursery, A. D. 1911. The family
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record of the first practical incubator man is yet hidden amid the ruins of the past, but the last one is very much present. It is unnecessary to produce here an extended pen-picture of Lyman C. Byce, the foster-father of millions of orphaned chicks, and of countless millions more to come. In 1878 Mr. Byce landed in Petaluma from Toronto, Canada, and struck out to do some- thing for himself, and incidentally for his neighbors. A Canadian is a mover and a good argument for reciprocity. The sharp, cold airs of his upper lati- tudes and the clean, balsamic life of his piney forests, perhaps, early get into him and he grows up a rustler. Byce's father was a farmer and the young man had assisted in the construction of crude incubators and brooders and he knew that a triumph awaited the perfecting of these machines. Petaluma valley seemed to be a promised poultry land. In his wagon he drove among the farmers of Sonoma and Napa counties and succeeded in buying several hundred fowls for his new venture. At so low ebb was chicken-culture on this coast that he was forced to fill out his hennery with purchases of eggs and poultry from Illinois, Indiana and Massachusetts. These imports, how- ever, were of the best breeds and from the stock have grown the thoroughbreds that are producing annually $4,000,000 worth of wealth for Sonoma county alone. Across the seas go the poultry product from the Byce brooders and incubators. The Far Easterners are far-eaters of western foods, and oriental exclusiveness does not exclude the lay of the Sonoma hen. In China the fan quai-foreign devil-is socially taboo, but he is commercially tolerated if he lives in Petaluma and carries eggs to market.
The quartet of incubator factories in that city are turning out the per- fected hatching machines and trying to supply a world demand. Here is in operation the largest hatchery known, 160 feet long, with a working capacity of 50,000 eggs monthly. The accompanying brooder is 175 feet long and fills its contract of 100,000 broilers a year. These incubators are complicated affairs. It took years of study and experiment ere man was able to compete with the mother hen in her own nest. An egg with chicken possibilities is a delicate piece of organism and its three weeks of heat at 103 degrees must never vary if it becomes blood, bone and feathers. The incubator can be "set" with eggs, loaded into a cart or car and carried long distances and it will keep on "setting," hatching ninety-five per cent of the lay. The proverbial old hen who "sot" despite all attempt at dissuasion, and who "stood up and sot" in her laudable efforts to perform her maternal duties, is outdone by an artificial competitor. And she lost, for ninety-nine per cent of her young now are hatched vicariously.
And the daily bill of fare for a growing Petaluma chick; no common worm or weed-seed scratched out of the barnyard for these downy epicures. Oatmeal from Illinois and Kansas; hemp and millet seed from Germany ; pep- per and canary-bird seed from Japan; rice from China; flax-seed from Ore- gon ; corn from Nebraska and ginger from Africa. This is only the imported part of the menu. Home foods, flesh and grain, selected with care, are served to suit the pampered broilers, who in turn will be served at table. But there are millions in them, and this is the practical method in the poultry madness of Petaluma-the City of the Little Chicks.
1
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LARGEST SINGLE SHIPMENT BY ONE FIRM EVER SENT FROM PETALUMA BY BOAT 5000 Half Grown Chickens
EGGS
--
luba
EGGS
$993
.
PORTION OF SHIPMENT OF 2615 CASES OF EGGS SHIPPED TO DIFFERENT POINTS IN ALASKA One Shipment
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VALLEJO TOWNSHIP.
Vallejo township is the plain between Sonoma mountain and Petaluma creek, San Pablo bay and an east and west line dividing the tract from Santa Rosa township. In the upper part of Vallejo township, in the center of the Cotati Rancho is Penn Grove. This is also a station on the Northwestern Pacific Railroad and the shipping point of a considerable poultry district. In the lower or southeastern part of the township is Donohue, on the creek about eight miles from Petaluma and was formerly the bay terminus of the San Francisco and North Pacific Railroad. Another landing on the creek, a short distance north of Donohue is Lakeville. When Padre Altimira, eighty-seven years ago, was marching along this way headed for Sonoma he discovered "on a hillock, the Lake of Tolay, called after a former chief of the Indians in this vicinity." The hillock Lake of Tolay was afterwards drained, making a noble potato patch, but Lakeville retains a portion of its name.
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CHAPTER XXXVIII.
WHERE THE ANALY APPLE GROWS.
West of Santa Rosa township and east of Bodega township lies Analy- the vine and orchard township of the county. Its northern side touches Red- wood and Russian river townships, while its southern line is a boundary line of Petaluma township and Marin county. The southern portion contains the ranchos Canada de Pogolome and Blucher; this with the adjoining Bodega township on the west is the famous dairy and potato country, in the midst of which is the town of Bloomfield. The central part of Analy contains portions of the ranchos Llano de Santa Rosa and Canada de Jonive, while the northern portion contains a part of the El Molino grant. If Sonoma township leads in the production of wine, Cloverdale in citrus fruits, Analy leads in much of everything else that grows and ripens on tree and vine. It is said that when Jasper O'Farrell, the noted surveyor, mapped off the counties, townships and ranchos of this section of the state, the only time that he turned to the family for a name is when he wrote "Analy," for his sister Anna. It is a pretty name, well fitting the tract that it designates. With the exception of the district bordering Marin county and the sea, the entire township is a park and the portion around Sebastopol, Graton in Green valley, and Forestville, is a veri- table "fruitland." The Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railway enters Analy at its southeastern corner, near Stony Point, and extends to Forestville. This prac- tically gives to the entire length of the township hourly electric trains. Where in all the state has there been a more complete fitting of the natural and the artificial than here. Its warm, sandy loam has no peer in productiveness and its harvest-possibility is anywhere within the vegetable kingdom. The inaugura- tion of the suburban roads among the full-fruited orchards, vineyards and hopyards, completed and perfected the settlement of this locality begun by Joaquin Carrillo at Sebastopol in 1846. The wooded hills of the coast range on the western border shield the eastern slope of the township from the sea gales howling down the Mendocino coast. The redwood belt along the Sonoma ocean shore for ages has been nature's wind-break, tempering the airs blowing across the Analy valleys. In 1849-50, the period William Hood settled in the Los Guilicos, William Elliott on Mark West creek and Martin Hudson in Santa Rosa plain, the settlers began to come into what is now Green valley. J. M. Hudspeth, Patrick McChristian and James McChristian, Josiah Moran, Otis Allen, Joseph Morgan Miller, Olander Sowers and John Walker. The chief pioneer of Blucher valley was W. D. Canfield. Farther to the southwest, in Big valley, came William Abels, Elliot Coffer, Henry Hall, Robert Bailey, Horace Lamb, George Woodson, E. C. and W. P. Henshaw, Jacob McReynolds, Patrick Carroll and William Jones. Joaquin Carrillo after receiving his portion of the Llano de Santa Rosa rancho, built his adobe home on the laguna just east from Sebastopol, where the ruins of the ancient hacienda may be seen.
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John Walker and Joseph MI. Miller conducted a store and trading post in the vicinity. Miller was the postmaster and the place which was the crossing of several roads was the mail-distributing point for the coast country. It was known as the "Bodega Postoffice," a title hardly suitable. In 1855 J. H. P. Morris located a 120-acre elaim and on this was Sebastopol's site and settler. The pioneer of the new town called it Pine Grove-a fitting name from the forest of those trees which covered the hills in the locality. The fertile, yellow- tinted soil afterwards brought the fruitful slopes the general title of Gold! Ridge. The name, Sebastopol, associated with horrid war, would be sadly un- suited to the peaceful and sylvan scenes of this beautiful vale, but for the fitting local incident from which the title grew. The great Crimean conflict was raging between Russia and Turkey, France, England. Two doughty war- riors of Pine Grove --- Jeff Stevens and Pete Hibbs-engaged in a ferocious argument over the outcome of the contest. They concluded to settle it,-the argument, not the war,-in a fist-fight. Peter presently was in full retreat, taking refuge in John Dougherty's store. The proprietor kept Stevens out of the building, protecting the ex-fighter who evidently knew when he "had enough." The crowd enjoying the entertainment, was reminded of Russia then besieged by the allies within her Sebastopol, and dubbed Dougherty's place "Hibbs' Sebastopol." The pine grove in the town disappearing and the humor of Pete's inglorious flight growing in popularity, there was a gradual change in name. So, out from the red flames of the Crimea, out from the bloody rifle-pits of the Redan, out from the fadeless glory of the Light Brigade, and out from the historical serimmage at Dougherty's came our Sebastopol. Jefferson and Peter are aslumber on Gold Ridge, mingling their dust with the rich yellow soil, with orchards on the right of them, vine-rows on the left of them, blooming and fruiting.
APPLES AND WOMEN HAVE MADE HISTORY.
The apple has ever been an object of keen interest to man. In history it is as old as he, in fact it is the fruit named as one of his earliest contemporaries. It was one of the properties provided when the stage was set for the first human drama-the play in which he was the star, and where the villain of the piece used the apple to the star's final undoing. It may not be gallant to make any reference, except with the utmost delicacy, to the star actress in that early play so tragic to the human race. Possibly there are later Eves in the Analy Edens where the juicy Gravensteins grow, who might not be pleased at an allusion, though veiled, to their great ancestress. However, a gallant Gold Ridge orchardist, and one who evidently knows, says if there is a combination calculated to tempt a modern Adam, it is a girl and a Gravenstein. That young man truly was speaking along the lines of history, for the combination has worked fatally in several instances of the past. It was to loot the famous golden apple orchard of the Hesperides run by three beautiful sisters and guarded by dragons, that led Hercules into numerous difficulties. A woman and an apple brought about the fall of Troy when Venus in exchange for the fruit awarded Helen to the Trojan prince, Paris. This was a neat thought on the part of the love-goddess, but Helen happened to be the wife of another man -- and a fighting man at that-and the tragedy wrought by that apple has been told in Homeric verse that will live through all the ages. Another fair
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Grecian, Atalanta, to rid herself of many suitors, agreed to marry the one who beat her in a foot race, but the losers should die. As she was the speediest of mortals, and was heartily weary of the whole bunch of lovers, she thought and hoped she had them going-gone. However, the young fellows, to their eter- nal credit, were not discouraged by the awful alternative, and entered for the contest. Atalanta picked up her dainty feet and led from the start, but she finally was beaten by a trick. One of the racers carried a bag of apples which fruit he scattered one by one ahead of the girl along the track. They must have been prize-winners-they were as they won a wife-for she halted to secure them as they rolled past her,and lost that Marathon and her chance of remaining all her life an Arcadian bachelor-maid.
Not only in mythology but in history, sacred and profane, in art, on mar- ble and canvas has this graceful, glowing globe, the most nutritious and life- sustaining of all fruits, taken a leading place. It has gone into proverb, for the Wisest of Men has said, "a word fitly spoken is like apples of gold." To Jehovah, the monarch-minstrel of Israel swept his harpstrings and chanted, "keep me as the apple of the eye." The apple is a native of southwestern Asia -- not far from the supposed cradle of the human-race, and the scene of the Eden incident ; and in the plant genera is third cousin to the rose, proving its aristocratic, even royal lineage. It is a sturdy, healthy subject of the vegetable kingdom, and while it demands a thermal soil for its roots, it just as strongly demands a temperate, shading to cold, atmosphere for its fruit. A résumé of Analy township is a résumé of the Analy apple-the noble fruit of an old-time day coming to its own again. The citus and the grape are here taking advan- tage of the subtropical nooks and corners of the temperate zone. Even the potato is a native of South America, though Burbank made that tuber a far more edible food than it was when Pizarro landed in Peru to harvest the Inca. The apple tree is long-lived. Place that bit of vegetation in the hands of a horticulturist and it will be flourishing when he is among its roots. The first orchard in Sonoma county is at Fort Ross, set out by the Russians shortly after their arrival there in 1812, and these trees have borne fruit through all the ruinous changes at that historical place. The pioneer orchards of Analy planted in 1850-I, are yet bearing. Among the oldest Gold Ridge growers are Alex. Caldwell, Isaiah Thomas, John Churchman, Major Sullivan, N. E. Gillman, Henry Marshall and James Gregson. The successors of these early groves are the twelve or fifteen hundred orchards of this locality. There are probably twelve or fourteen thousand acres of orchards in the county, running from sixty to seventy-five trees to the acre. Young trees, seedlings, cost about $15 each, land for planting $200 to $250 an acre. In seven to nine years the orchard begins to pay, and is worth from $700 to $1,500 an acre. Many orch- ardists economize in space and increase their harvest income by planting berry vines between the tree-rows. Apple prices range from $30 to $40 a ton deliv- ered at the packing and drying houses in Sebastopol. It is estimated that fully one-half million boxes are packed yearly in Analy township, at a cost of twenty- five cents a box. The apple industry of this section is yet in the nursery stage, and no one can tell what it will be when all the rich sandy loam of these slopes and valleys is in orchard and the orchard is in fruitage.
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THIE TEMPTING GRAVENSTEINS.
The fruit development of Gold Ridge began about 1880, when a few farm- ers of a horticultural turn of mind were trying out with tree and vine the productive qualities of the soil between the Laguna on the east and the crest of the western hills beyond Green valley. George D. Sanborn of Sebastopol, whose "recollections" go back to the early '6os, when the George Sanborns- father and son-came to the pretty little village of four or five houses in the pine grove, says: "These rolling hills which were covered with brush, were entirely ignored by the settlers who came into this section in the latter '40S and early '50s, so far as clearing any of the land was concerned, or trying to raise anything on it. They did not realize the great productiveness and possi- bilities of these higher lands when cleared of timber, and so chose their homes along the lower lands of Green valley." The result of an after test was highly satisfactory and the next decade found the sandy loam responding generously to the planter. Land values passed from $15 to $25 up to $75 and $100 an acre, and the orchards and vineyards were rapidly spreading over levels and hills. Twenty years more have demonstrated the superior productiveness of the section and Sebastopol is the center of the fruit zone of Sonoma county. Year by year the output has been greater than the last annual crop, in class and price. The apple yield in 1910 was 25,000,000 pounds, valued at $320,000, sold to packers and dryers. The Gold Ridge apple won thirty-two medals and four cups at the last great Apple Annual exhibit in Watsonville. The first Gravenstein Fair, which was held in Sebastopol that year, was a marvel in the way of a fruit exhibition and demonstration to visitors from near and afar, of the horticultural possibilities of this naturally-favored locality. Says Luther Burbank, the highest authority on fruit culture, "the Gravenstein apple . has, above all others, proven to be the money-winner in Sonoma county. It always bears a good crop. It cannot be raised successfully in the hot valleys of southern California. Sonoma county seems to be its home. It is of the best quality of all known apples. If the Gravenstein could be had through the year, no other apple need be grown." The Sebastopol Gravenstein apple is on the market a month earlier than those grown in other sections of the Pacific Coast. The section now produces about 600 carloads annually. The unim- proved apple lands here are valued at from $125 to $250 per acre, and the im- proved from $1,000 to $2,000 per acre. From $250 to $800 per acre are now the season's earnings of these orchards. The Sebastopol Apple Association is incorporated with a capital stock of $50,000. Near Sebastopol is located the experimental farm of Luther Burbank and from this station many of his splen- did creations in fruits and flowers have gone out to enrich the vegetation of the world.
The berry crop also looms up into the higher figures, being estimated at seventy per cent of the output of the state, with shipments running close to 500,000 boxes a week during the berry season. The wineries at Forestville and Graton, also in Sebastopol, crushed a heavy tonnage of grapes, with prices paid the vineyardists $22 and $23 per ton. The cherry yield for the section was upwards of 700,000 pounds.
Though the hen is not a horticultural or viticultural factor she has not been idle among these trees and vines, and like the planter, has scratched the
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favored soil for profit. She finds the warm, sandy slopes much to her liking and during 1910, she of the Gold Ridge yards, laid almost $200,000 worth of eggs. Even the other division of the industry, the incubator, of which she is the parent stock and provider of the raw material, is in action, and during the vear $50,000 worth of poultry passed through the Sebastopol market. This is the story of "Pine Grove" from the time Joaquin Carrillo reared his adobe dwelling on the shore of the Laguna, including the day Peter Hibbs was besieged in Dougherty's store and gave the town its Crimean war-title, up to its present place on the map. It has 1,500 people, two railroad systems, two banks, a big cannery employing 400 hands, six fruit packing houses, a large winery owned by the famous Italian-Swiss Colony of Asti, a $20,000 grammar school, two newspapers,-the Analy Standard and the Sebastopol Times-a pair of lively weeklies, that work for Analy,-city-owned water system, steam fire engine and other features that go to make a modern city.
BODEGA TOWNSHIP.
Bodega township lies on the western side of Sonoma county, bordering the Pacific ocean, and extending from the Marin line north to Ocean and Red- wood townships. Like all lands on the seashore, Bodega is hilly with small valleys among the elevations. The soil is a sandy loam suitable for the great fields of potatoes that grow there and the green pasturage that cover its slopes for the dairies that thrive there. Grain, except during unusually dry years, does not produce well, as the fogs and the moist winds from the sea that freshen the green plants in field and pasture, retard the ripening of cereal. Of late years much of the potato lands have been turned into dairy pastures, the gradual failing of the crops proving that the constantly harassed soil was losing its vitality. The coast redwood belt, in fact the entire timber district, abruptly stops about the center of the township, making the lower portion of Bodega treeless, while the upper portion was formerly densely forested. The pioneer steam saw mill of the state began operations in this township in 1843, though Captain Stephen Smith, the Russians and other early settlers had their rip-saw mills at work soon after their arrival. It was cheaper and less laborious to saw out a redwood plank and nail it into a housewall than to hoist the entire log into place. Such was hard work, moreover, a waste of log. The Spanish grants within the township were the Rancho de Bodega and Rancho Estero de Americano.
After the Russians in 1840 had sold all their holding to Captain Sutter the new possessor left John Bidwell in charge at Bodega. The bay, then a deep and almost land-locked body of water, was a commodious harbor for small sailing vessels freighting produce. Northeast of Bodega Corners and on the North Pacific railroad is Freestone, so named from a quarry of soft sandstone near the town. Here the pioneer surveyor Jasper O'Farrell, located and the great rancho in the vicinity, occupied by members of his family, bears his name. F. G. Blume who married the widow Dawson, formerly the widow Cazeras, the owner of the Rancho Pogolome, was one of the early settlers of this place. Bodega was even a port of entry and had a government inspector from 1852 to 1854. His name was Michael Doherty and this industrious official held down his job and a good salary during that time. As it is not known that any for- eign vessel ever entered the port, Doherty's services to the United States only
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existed in his imagination. Among contemporaneous pioneers with Captain Smith, were Stephen and James Fowler, who afterwards located at Valley Ford, a small village between Bodega and Bloomfield. At one time Bodega "struck gold," traces of the mineral were found among the quartz ledges and considerable prospecting was done, however the excitement died out and the miners went back to the richer "pay dirt" in their potato fields. Occidental is also situated on the railroad north of Freestone and deeper in the redwood belt. The town has had several names, the first being Summit, from the fact that it is on the crest of the divide between Russian river and the country to the south. Much of the building being done on the land of M. C. Meeker, a prom- inent sawmill man, the place assumed the title of Meeker's, but when the rail- road company established a station they called it Howard's, in honor of an old settler. Finally the name grew into Occidental, from its western position on the county map. The first settler was Michael Kolmer, from whom the valley was named, but as early names are frequently elusive in Sonoma county, it became shifted to Coleman valley. One of his daughters became the wife of William Howard and another married William Benitz, one of the original owners of the Muniz rancho, upon which Fort Ross is located. Situated within the timber territory, Occidental is an important shipping point for lumber, wood, tanbark and charcoal.
OCEAN AND SALT POINT TOWNSHIPS.
Ocean is a small township bordering the Pacific and extending north from Bodega to Salt Point, the largest township in the county. The latter district also borders the sea and reaches to the northern county line. These townships are mountainous, the high lands being interspersed with small valleys, exceedingly fertile. The only streams here are the Russian and Valhalla rivers and Austin creek, a tributary of the former. It is a wooded country and the sawmills hum among the pine and redwood trees. Along the coast there are a number of landing places, coves, where timber is shipped, chuted from the bluffs into vessels below. Of these are Timber Cove, Stillwater Cove, Salt Point, Fisk's Mill, Fisherman's bay and Black Point. Fort Ross is a thriving village, though little indications of its old Sclavonian occupancy can be seen about the place. The site of the old fortification is a state reserva- tion, as is the mission at Sonoma. During the last session of the legislature, Assemblyman Herbert W. Slater of Santa Rosa, introduced a bill for the preservation of these historical landmarks. The relief measure failed in the matter of Fort Ross, because of the dilapidated condition of the place-there being little left to preserve. The legislature appropriated five thousand dollars for the repair of the Sonoma inission church. The principal place in the two townships is Duncans Mills, a creation of the railroad. Samuel and Alexander Duncan were operating a sawmill on Russian river near the mouth. The sur- veyors of the new road decided to cross the river several miles farther up the stream and there was a move for the locality; the Duncans transferred their machinery and the place became Duncans Mills. It is a pretty riparian resort in the heart of the redwoods and soon a fine town was in existence. A num- ber of small places, mill stations, as Moscow, Tyrone, Russian River Station and Markham's, are scattered here and there through these forest groves. The North Pacific Coast road continues up Austin creek valley to its present terminis · at Cazadero.
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