USA > California > Tulare County > History of Tulare County, California with biographical sketches > Part 31
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" Part of the time we flew before the wind, at the rate of eight or ten miles an hour, then the wind would lull and our speed would slacken a little. Part of the time the Water Witch kept ahead of the heaviest wind. Then came a lull, but soon the wind would catch us again, and away we went, dancing merrily over the troubled waters. It was splendid, exhilarating. Once in a while a larger wave than usual would dash over our sides, and many a time the boom of the main- sail dipped to leeward in the waves, but the little schooner rode like a duck, rolling but little, and before 2 A. M. was safely anchored in three feet of water near Gordon's Point There we had almost a calm, but to northward beyond the narrow neck of land protecting us, we could distinctly hear the roaring winds and waves.
" But few noises have ever I heard that sounded more dis- mal, than in our night sailing on Tulare Lake, when in the midst of our silence we heard the gloomy howls of the coyotes as they prowled along the lake-shores searching for their prey. We heard them every night when we were near shore."
In water from three to six feet deep along the shore and all around the lake, are found large quantities of the chief one of the only water weeds growing anywhere in the lake. Some few are found in the edge of the shallow water in the mouth of King's River, but nowhere else now are there any tules dead or living within less than 200 yards of the water's edge. Nothing like a water-lily is found anywhere upon Tulare Lake. Its chief water weed grows in thick masses, with stems four to six feet long, its upper branches, leaves, and seed pods float-
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EXPLORATIONS ON TULARE LAKE.
ing on the surface. Fishermen find that where it grows is usually very soft and boggy, and though fish and terrapin fre- quent these dense masses of vegetation-like groves under the water-they are generally dangerous spots to attempt to drug the seine. On a small scale, they are very similar to the numerous masses of sea weed in mid-ocean which Maury and others describe as "Sargossa Seas." These masses on the lake are sometimes torn from their roots by storms and carried into deep water. On careful examination the low stems are round, sinooth, pink, one-cighth of an inch through, and jointed, the joints from one to twelve inches long. These main stems branch chiefly toward the upper end, and at the joints. The leaves are green, succulent, and strap-shaped, two to three inches long, one-fourth inch wide, embracing the joints like sheaths, and tapering to a point. Each stem has several sınall seed pods ncar its ends. These look like small ears of corn or the seed of the "Wake-robin," and are pinkish green in color. The only other water weed on the whole trip is a small feathery green moss, with stems two or three inches long, growing on the lake bottom in water from four to twelve inches deep. It belongs to the "Algæ" and is most probably what botanists call a "Conferva," species uncertain.
TERRAPINS FROM TULARE LAKE.
From Tulare Lake come the turtles that make the rich turtle soups and stews of San Francisco hotels and restaurants. It is the western pond turtle conmon in the fresh water ponds. The Italians call it El-la-chick. These turtles are sent in sacks to San Francisco. During the season more than 180 dozen found a ready sale at the bay. Terrapins are taken with a seine. The seine used for this purpose is a common fishing seine, 100 feet long. To each end of the seine on the upper side a brail, or half-inch rope, sixty feet long, is attached. Two men stretch the seine in the water from two to four feet deep, by holding up the ends of these brails. They wade parallel about 200 feet apart, and drag the seine from 100 to 200 yards toward the shore or parallel to it, according to the indications where the terrapins are. The main signs of the presence of the terra- pin are their heads held above water to get fresh air for a short time, at intervals. The two men then draw the ends together and lap then, making a circle. They then commence at one end and draw up the entire seine, taking out the terra- pin and sacking them as they are found. In this way, they sometimes catch eighty or ninety at a haul, under favorable circumstances. The largest are eight inches long and eight inches broad. They rarely drag the seine for these terrapin without catching more or less fish; sometimes only the worth- less suckers or "greasers," which are very bony; occasionally some lake trout, a species of salmon trout and an excellent fish.
WILD ANIMALS.
The coyotes hold almost undisputed sway of a large scope of
country west and south of Tulare Lake, and woe to the cattle or hogs, or antelope that mire down anywhere within their reach. Captain Conley and Lewis Atwood found on a boggy part of the lake on the north edge of Atwell's Island, thirty or forty carcasses of cattle that had mired down and been devoured by coyotes. At one point they found three or four still living but so torn and mutilated by the ferocious wolves that they had to kill them to end their sufferings. Finding these cattle mired near the shore, the light-footed coyotes leap upon them while they are still living. They found one poor brute still alive though the coyotes had actually gnawed into it and drawn out part of its entrails. Coyotes hold high carnival there.
Coyotes were thick here in 1849 and while they never attacked a man, they would come into camp and carry off any- thing that was lying around loose. They have been known to steal meat from under a man's he id while he was asleep. The coyote is a species of wolf, but is by no means so large or ferocious as those of the Eastern States. Of course they became a mark for every sportsman, and their number diminished very rapidly. There was a time when it appeared that they were about to become extinct, but for the last few years they seem to have become more numerous, and are giving the wool-grow- ers of the foot-hills a good deal of trouble. They are on the plains and west of Tulare Lake or along the river. They are more shy now than they use to be and are much harder to kill.
The coyote or fox is well known to the Californian-a kind of link between the cat and dog, and is sometimes called prairie dog, but is very different from the animal of that name found on the western plains. They often followed the emigrant train to pick up the bones and crumbs that fell by the way. They would steal eggs and chickens from the roost, but were great cowards, and a small dog would drive them off.
BIRDS OF THE LAKE.
Few birds were seen far out on the lake, and these were chiefly grebes (podiceps occidentalis). These are the long necked birds that are so noted as divers. They often keep only their heads above water. and down they go at the flash of a gun. It is very difficult to kill one of them. They frequently call to their mates at all hours of the night.
Pelicans and cormorants are found in considerable numbers, also large numbers of "leather-winged" bats, that were skim- ming the surface in chase of Tulare Lake gallinippers, which sing more or less every evening on the lake.
Professional hunters kill and ship every week from Hanford large numbers of swans, wild geese, and ducks. Private parties frequently go to Tulare Lake, spend a day or two there and return with plenty of these fine game birds for home use. A party lately returned from the lake, where they spent two nights and a day, brought home two swans, a white pelican, a dozen geese, and nineteen ducks. The abundant waters of the valley
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attract nearly all the species of the above game birds common to California.
FISH OF RIVERS AND LAKES.
The best fish taken there, or by the Italian fishermen in the lower part of King's River, and sold in large numbers in May and June, in Hanford, Lemoore, and Grangeville, is what is commonly called the perch. They are undoubtedly black bass.
Few portions of California, if any, are better supplied with water as resorts for water-fowl and fish than is the country around Lemoore, Grangeville, and Hanford, from the abundant flow of King's River in winter and spring, and its partial flow in the summer and fall months. About four years ago the Fish Commissioners of California put fish of the black bass and white fish species in Tulare Lake. Their descendants have come up King's River during high stages, and thence followed Mussal Slough ditch, when running full of water, into little ponds, where they are now found in considerable quantities. Here, then, we have evidence of three new species of fish added to the waters of Tulare Lake and King's River, including the catfish.
Timber Supply and Mills of Tulare.
THE county is supplied with an abundance of timber The finest oak grove in the State occupies the delta of the Kaweah, and covers not less than a hundred square miles of territory. This timber makes excellent rails and is employed in furnish- ing fuel to settlements in other counties. For five miles north- ward and twenty miles south ward from Visalia, and extending across a belt of more than twenty miles in width, these large oaks are thickly distributed, in some places making ahnost a dense forest, while in other places they are less numerous. All the lands upon which these trees grow are of the very best quality, and, where cultivated, alfalfa and grain grow beneath their shade in luxuriance.
THE BIG TREE GROVES.
Groves of big trees, sequoia gigantic are along the western slope of the mountains, for a distance of seventy miles, in this county. More than half of all the known specimens of this species over sixteen feet in diameter are found in these groves, and here, so far as known, are the only forests where young trees of the species appear. Unfortunately, sheep men, in burning off the mountains to enable their sheep to penetrate the undergrowth, have destroyed hundreds of thousands of young trees of this species, and it may be safely assumed that more than ninety per cent. of all the young sequoia germi- nated from seed in the forests of this county within the last twenty years have thus been destroyed by fires.
On the Sierras is the most magnificent forest in the world. This forest is beginning to attract more than local notice.
Strangers are incredulous, and refuse to believe the truth in regard to the number and size of the maminoth trees. They have remained almost unknown to science.
The number of these great trees is unknown, we might say countless. The forest is but partly explored, but this much we know, there is nothing like it; it is unrivalled, and grand beyond all imagination. The uninitiated would be astonished to count the consecutive rings of some of these giants that have been burned to the heart. They are older than Rome; old as the pyramids, and still green as if there had been an eternity of time in the past.
VAST FORESTS NOT AVAILABLE.
It is doubtful if the vast forests on the upper Kern and its tributaries can ever be made available for lumbering purposes. Evidently this can be done only by very long flumes descend- ing the Kern for thirty, forty, or fifty miles, from points where mills can be built before attempting to cross either of the great divides to east or west. It is very questionable whether any of these divides can be successfully crossed in any part of Tulare County. The only forests of the Sierra available for lumber are those on the western slopes of the most westerly or the Mineral King divide. It is here alone that the redwood groves exist.
Consequently, the proposed Too-man i-goo-yah Park, as a Government Reservation, like the Yellowstone Park, would inclose none of the sequoia groves, and would not interfere with the important lumber interests.
WASTE OF TIMBER.
It will be many years before the western slope of the Sierra is stripped of its trees; because these resources are so vast and the cost of getting the timber to market is too great at present. The few saw-mills do not make much impression, as yet, upon the forests. Probably the sheep-herders destroy more timber every year than the saw-mills. After the pastures dry up in the lower foot-hills, the sheep are driven into the mountains, where there is fresh herbage all summer. Besides the natural grass in many small meadows, the sheep browse upon the young leaves of many shrubs, and so are kept in excellent con- dition.
The forest is of no consequence to the sheep herder, except as it affords sustenance for his flocks. At night he has no corral. Wolves, panthers, and bears abound, every one of them ready to pounce upon a stray sheep or lamb. In the place of the corral, a number of fires are set, in fallen timber or living trees, at points which will hem in his flocks for the night to such an extent that wild beasts are kept off. These fires are left burning after the sheep-herder departs. They burn for days, sometimes covering large areas. One can hear the great pines fall in the night, which may have been burning at the base for days.
The timber waste is immense. All along the western slope
ELLIOTT LITH. 421MONT.ST.
RANCH & RESIDENCE OF J.C. HAYS. JR. ELK BAYO. TULARE CO. CAL.
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of the Sierra for seventy-five miles into the mountains, the marks of former fires can be noted at the base of the great sugar and yellow pines. There are but few of the large trees that do not show marks of fire, which at some time has been raging there, although the guardianship is now more careful, and there is no present danger that these famous groups will again be overtaken by fire. The waste of water and the waste of timber go on, and as yet no Legislation has furnished any adequate remedy.
This timber belt is from twenty to forty miles in width, and many of the pine trees would be considered of enormous size were it not that the "Big Trees," so-called, are so much larger. Pine trees from six to ten feet in diameter, and from two to three hundred feet in height, are not uncommon.
The climate of these mountain regions is in the summer season most delightful, and particularly favorable to persons subject to pulmonary complaints.
FIRST SAW-MILL.
The first attempt at making pine luniber was commenced about 1856 by two men, named Smith and Hatch, who after much difficulty found a trail by which it was possible to get to the pines with wagons. The road was a very primitive one winding around rocks and brush, up and down hills that now look almost too steep to lead a pack mule over, at length reaching the lowest pine at what is now called the Whitaker Ranch, on Old Mill Creek (by him called Fern Glen). They built a small sash saw-mill in the creek, run by a flutter wheel. As the supply of timber here was limited and very poor, they soon moved up to a place that is now called the "Old Mill" Crossing of Old Mill Creek.
About 1857 appeared on the scene a man for many years after closely connected with the lumber business of Tulare County, J. H. Thomas, still a resident of Visalia. He bought the mill, refitted it, put in a steam engine, and began the manufacture of lumber on a more extensive scale.
By the spring of 1862, the demand for lumber had grown so great that Mr. Thomas at great expense repaired the road and built a fine new double-circular saw-mill, with forty horse- power steam engine, one mile further up. However he was never to reap the reward due him for his labor and expense, for, during the memorable flood of that winter, a land-slide from the mountain just above the mill dammed the creek to a great height with earth, rock, and timber, making an immense reservoir. When it gave way, it took Thomas' Mill, and with one wild crash scattered it in worthless masses of rubbish for miles along the creek. He had sold his oll mill to a man by the name of Fezzan, the price to be paid in Jumber when the mill sawed it. The mill had been moved about six miles to the south, and, before it accomplished anything, was ruined by the same flood that swept the new mill away.
OTHER MILLS ERECTED.
About the same time that Thomas began his new mill, some people under the lead of two men by the names of Bost- wick and Ritchie, by private subscription and credit, procured a mill of the same capacity of Thomas' which they set up at Shingle Flat, some three miles farther east. They called it "The People's Mill." This now was the only saw-mill in the county, and, as is common with such property, owned by no one and bossed by every one, it soon fell into litigation and passed into the hands of I. H. Thomas & Bro., in 1864.
The spring of 1865 brought a new company in the field. An enterprising stockman named Jasper (Barley) Harrell, in company with S. B. Corderoy and the late R. A. West, began the construction of a water mill near the old Fezzan mill, to be run by a twenty-six feet overshot wheel. The mill was completed and fitted with a single sixty-two inch circular saw that fall. Two of the original owners having drawn out, the mill was now under the ownership and management of Harrell & Rodgers. They gave it the name of " Forest Mill."
In the spring of 1866 there were two mills in running order. The People's Mill was owned by the Thomas Bros. and W. T. Osborn, late County Supervisor. They employed about twelve men and sawed over 1,000,000 feet of lumber that summer, for which they found ready sale at fifteen dollars per thousand feet. The Forest Mill sawed three or four hundred thousand feet. The two mills were not able to supply the demand that year.
HOW LUMBER WAS MARKETED.
The roads were still in a very primitive condition, no more work having been done on them than was absolutely necessary to make them passable. A team generally consisted of seven yoke of oxen and two wagons. At first the wagons were with- ont frames or breaks. They depended altogether on lock-chains, with sometimes a log or tree draging behind to hold the wagons back, going down the steep hills. The oxen in the team were called bulls, the drivers were called bull-whackers. They drove with a club about two feet long, to the end of which was attached a huge lash some twenty feet long.
In the spring of 1868, timber becoming scarce, the Thomas Bros. removed their mill about a mile and a half northwest to a new pinery and changed its name to "Sugar Pine Mill." They did not get started till August, and sawed some 500,000 feet that year. The Forest Mill had been torn down by a land- slide on Christmas night 1867. It had rained all day as it had done for a week. The clouds were low; the day was dreary and lonesome; the night was one of those intensely dark, stormy nights that occasionally come in the pine forest, that one has to see in order to realize. Some time in the fore part of the night, quite a tract of land with heavy timber, on the side of Redwood Mountain, slid into the creek, forming a dam which collected a large head of water, then giving way
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started down the creek crashing the timber before it. It carried away several log houses and swept away the Forest Mill.
After this calamity, the owners of the Forest Mill found it necessary to rebuild. They decided to move it out of reach of high water and enlarge it to a double circular saw-mill, to be driven by a fifteen-inch double-turbine water-wheel, under 140 feet fall, the water to be conveyed on an incline down the side of the mountain in a wrought iron flume. The mill was accordingly constructed on this plan; but when it was realy to start, they found they had something of the nature of an untamed elephant on their hands. Although they had an abundance of power, they found it very difficult to control water under such an immense pressure. The first time the water was turned on, a joint of the flume parted, deluging the mill and the operatives with water; next it burst the cast iron case around the wheel and continued to behave unruly. James Barton (now ex-Supervisor) bought the mill for 600,000 feet of lumber in the mill yard, to be delivered in two years from that fall.
In the spring of 1868, P. Wagy (ex-County Treasurer), in company with H. Moore and D. Demasters, took their mill to the mountains, and set it up about four miles below Thomas' Mill at a place called Loggers Camp, Here during the sum- mer they sawed about 700,000 feet of lumber.
But this firm had personal difficulties, and G. W. Smith, now ex-County Surveyor, bought the interest of Demasters & Moore, in the Wagy Mill. The new firm decided to move it up to a place on Dry Creek, a mile and a half north of the Forest Mill.
ROAD CONSTRUCTED TO THE MILLS.
The winter of 1868 and '69, Smith and Wagy and James Barton built a fine new road from Frame Flat, on Ashspring Hill, to the pinery, some six miles, at an expense of some $5,000. This road they afterwards donated to the county, when it saw fit to survey and accept it. Thomas also spent a good deal of time and money in building roads.
In 1874 the Supervisors ordered the Roadmaster, G. M. L. Dean, to put the road in order. This he proceeded to do in the most approved style, building culverts and digging new grades where they were necessary. When the bill-some $3,000-was presented to the Board of Supervisors, they pro- fessed absolute horror at its magnitude; but as they had ordered the road put in repair, without limit as to expense, they finally issued the script to pay it. The road is substan- tial, will endure as long as time, and will always be a necessity. This made twenty-five miles of the best mountain road in the State, in proportion to what it cost the county. It is the only road from Visalia to the Big Tree Grove.
Thomas' Mill, valued at $10,000, caught fire in the night and burned to the ground. Everything was a complete loss except the boilers. Several thousand feet of lumber was also
burned; and thus was destroyed the best mill in the county up to that time.
In the spring of 1871, Mr. Barton, becoming discouraged by the previous hard year and his bad luck, and deceived in the capacity of the mill, turned back the Forest Mill to Mr. Har- rell, who immediately re-sold it to R. A. West and W. T. Osborn for $3,000.
Mr. Wagy, having bought out his partner, Smith, now moved his mill to the site of the old Fezzan Mill, now called Mill Flat. This was in such close proximity to the Forest Mill that some hard feelings were caused between the two companies. This was heightened when Wagy began to sluice his sawdust into the creek, closing up the turbine wheel of the Forest Mill. The latter was closed down, and for a while liti- gation seemed imminent. It was, however, finally settled by Wagy wheeling out his sawdust and burning it, instead of sluicing it into the creek.
The spring of 1873 promised another good season for lum- bermen. The Forest Mill, now almost universally called the "Turbine Mill," made a very early start under the management of J. H. Campbell and R. A. West, and after a little litigation with Thomas, settled down to steady work, and did very well, sawing some 400,000 feet of lumber that year.
Wagy & Co. started early that spring, and everything ran smoothly.
A FINE MILL ERECTED.
J. H. Thomas began the erection of a mill that was to excel everything in the county up to that time. He selected a site on the north side of Redwood Mountain, about one and one- half miles beyond Wagy & Co.'s, where he had taken the boilers of his mill that burned down, and the boiler of the one that the flood destroyed.
Early in the spring of 1874, Wagy & Co. were on the ground, rapidly pushing their large new mill to completion in the Stephens Pinery. Wagy bought out one of his partners, Mc- Lean, and then became a two-thirds owner, Smith retaining his one-third interest. They tore down their old mill, took such of the machinery as could be used in the new one, and dis- posed of the rest.
Mr. A. Tyner bought the engine and took it to Mussel Slough, to run a flouring-mill. It is the little Hoadley engine that now drives the Grangeville flouring-mill, and it has given power to saw more lumber than any other engine in the county.
Wagy & Smith bought a new sixty-horse engine to run their mill. The capacity of the mill was less. but the variety of work turned out was greater than that done at Thomas' Mill. It contained the following machinery: Two sixty-inch circular saws, one gang-edger of five twenty-inch saws, one thirty-inch cutoff-saw, one band-saw, one small bench-saw to trim paling, one paling-header, and a large planer.
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In July, 1873, H. D. Barton began the erection of a small water-mill, with muley saw and edger, in the lower edge of the pines, one mile above "Whipstalk Camp." This he named the "Cedar Spring Mill."
THE CEDAR SPRING MILL.
The Cedar Spring Mill struggled with poverty, and was treated with contempt, on account of its lilliputian capacity, which rendered it the butt of many a good jest by those that little thought that it would stem the tide and pay its way through, and come down to the present time when its colossal contemporaries, after bankrupting every firm that had taken hold of them, had long since made their last struggle. Its pro- prietor, a mechanic of very moderate ability, had been almost a constant employee at some of the mills since 1865; and with little money and no credit, and almost with his own hands alone, built this small mill.
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