Читать книгу History of Fresno County, Vol. 1 - Paul E. Vandor - Страница 22

The eighteen years of village life history of Millerton, with the added burden of misfit county-seat honors, are singular for the lack of civic progress, remaining during that period practically at a standstill and positively retrograding. Was a structure dismantled for removal, which was not infrequent, was one destroyed by fire, or washed away by flood, there was no replacement. It was never predestined to live as a town, and the fact was emphasized at the county seat removal election in March, 1874.

The only noteworthy building spurt was at the founding in the first half of the 1850 decade. The only picture of the ragged village is from a photograph of 1870, by Frank Dusy, after the big flood. It shows a scattered collection of sixteen houses and local landmarks, including Chinatown at the upper end of the village street into which it debouched, the Indian rancheria on the bluff across the river, with the courthouse and Oak hotel looming up as the principal stone structures, and with more vacant than occupied spaces on both sides of the roadway.

There was an Indian rancheria above the fort and another below the village, hence the ferry landing name, "Rancheria Flat."

The hotel was erected by Ira McCray in 1858, at a cost of $15,000, with brick burned and stone quarried right on the ground, and for the day it was a pretentious structure and a comfortable caravansary that the flood razed to one story. McCray never recovered from this misfortune, it was the turning point in his affairs.

Never was there a town plat of Millerton. There never could have been one. It never had town incorporation or officers. The county supervisors were the town governing body, if any assumed the prerogative, and before county organization it was practically without government, because of its remoteness from Mariposa's county seat. The village site was on no man's land, on unsurveyed government land in which no one could have ownership, yet buildings were erected, leases entered into, lots sold and bought, the courthouse site included, and no one had more tangible claim than a squatter's possessory holding from which he might be turned off at any time, but was not — another evidence of the "loose, devil-me-care" spirit of the times. When the fort was abandoned at the close of 1863, the late Judge Hart bought the government buildings for a song as a home residence, and after the land survey he located a homestead on the surrounding land, including the fort site.

So it was with the village on the river bank. The homestead filed by George McClelland, whose house was central in the village, embraced the site as far as McCray's, the township line cutting across the town riverwards just beyond the opposite courthouse. This homestead right came to the late W. H. McKenzie by purchase, and so his estate (he was born at the fort as was his half-brother, Truman G. Hart) is the owner of the fort, village and courthouse sites, besides the 12,000-acre cattle range on both sides of the river, excluding only the eighty-four-acre sulfur springs property below town and in the river bed in part, which the Collins brothers never would part with.

Judge Hart owned the crowded quarter of the Chinese at the upper extremity of the village, occupied by them for years after the evacuation. He was their trusted legal adviser, and business agent, and regarded by them as a man second to none in power and influence. He was a man of ample physical girth, and this alone gave him distinction, so that on his later day business visits to Fresno his progress through Chinatown was always one long welcome ovation. This Chinatown of Millerton was typical as the most populous part of the village, in little one-story structures, principally of brick. It was as every other Chinatown distinguished for squalor, crowding of human beings into narrow confines, with all the characteristic bad smells and grime, and sublime indifference to sanitary measures that marks the oriental's quarters. The river water was used for drinking, and Hotelman Henry, as one of the committee of citizens, presented protest to Hart against his tenants dumping stable manure and house sweepings into the stream to pollute the water. In 1860, the census showed a population of 4,605, of which 4,305 were whites, 300 Chinese including five women, besides 3,294 Indians.

There never was but the one bisecting roadway or street in the village, on either side of which the scant buildings of the day were irregularly located or faced. The roadway traveled today to the fort is not the one of Millerton. From Pollasky, winding along the riverbank to 'merge into the village street, it is a later creation, primarily for the convenience of the ranch. In the olden time, Millerton was entered by two stage lines from the back hills beyond the fort, or from across the river at the ferries and fords. The riverside road was not laid out until nearly twenty years after scattered settlement towards the plains had begun. Before the advent of the railroad, with the Central Pacific Railroad opened in May, 1869. Millerton was on one of the seven eastern wagon roads — the longest one, the Tejon route, through the interior valley. It was from Stockton by way of the village and the Kings River, south through the Tehachapi and Tejon passes to Los Angeles and San Bernardino and the military road to Salt Lake City, 1,100 miles. It was a stage station on the Stockton-Visalia route with Kingston on the river as the next halting place. From the Santa Clara Valley, ran another road, entering the valley at Pacheco pass from San Benito, traversing the West Side plains, following the Elkhorn grade used to this day, and striking the main Kings River road. The name was taken from the fact that over the door of the great barn of the stage company there was fastened the head and horns of a huge elk. Elk's head is no more, but the road is there yet to the Kittleman plains in the oil field.

With all the cobbles and gravel in the river bed, the one village street, ending practically in cul de sacs at both ends, never was paved or macadamized. In dry seasons it was a dusty path; in wet, a thick mud pudding. There was no alignment of the houses, more vacant spots in horse and cow corrals, littered up house yards and stable grounds than occupied ground, low one-story adobe, or up and down boarded wooden structures with a few notable exceptions, and cow and footpaths connecting with the main street as side-paths. That main street never had official name. It was variously referred to as Main, Center or Water, the rear of the houses on the river bank crowding upon the latter, even hanging over the water, or being built up on stone bulkheads to bring them on a level with the street in front.

What really possessed the early villagers to locate where they did, and why was so much built on the riverbank, when as much and more could have been located back of the courthouse, on higher and better drained ground, removed from all flood danger? In the flood of Christmas eve 1867, the water rose in the river thirty feet higher than ever before known, covering townsite to the very courthouse steps. From that flood visitation, the village never recovered. It was then in the stage of decadence; the flood accelerated the finale. The question regarding the site location cannot be satisfactorily explained. The fort was undoubtedly placed at the highest and most practical military point on the river, one mile above the village. As to the latter, it was probably governed by the fords and ferries for the stages, and the accessibility to the river water for domestic purposes.

There have never been authentic figures estimating the yield of the gold placers at, near and above Millerton. In 1856, the county had a revenue of $1,000 to $1,200 from the four-dollar foreign miner's tax representing from 250 to 300 delving miners. Their average individual daily earnings were ten dollars— collectively $2,500 or $3,000 a day, $75,000 or $90,000 a month, and continuing with fluctuations for some years. There is a well authenticated tradition given corroboration by Jesse D. Musick, as an accepted authority on early historical subjects, that by 1852 one million dollars in gold dust had been extracted from twenty acres of the parcel of eighty-four, three-eighths of a mile below the town, where the mineral water gushes out of a cleft granite boulder at the Collins' sulfur spring in the bed of the river, and in which parcel Mr. Musick had an interest. This is said to have been one of the richest placers, and according to the quoted tradition the village site was located where it was because midway between that busy placer and the next richest across the range above the fort, in propinquity to the others on the riv.er, and all within convenient reach of military succor when needed. Is it to be wondered that there were "loose, devil-me-care" times with that much dust in circulation, and the tables at McCray's loaded down with gold in the games of chance that ran uninterruptedly the night through and until early cock-crow?

John C. Hoxie, Fresno pioneer and miner, and a man with such a marvelous and accurate memory that he was often called upon as a court witness to give litigants the benefit of his recollection of early day events and localities, bore personal witness to the richness of the placers of the Southern Mines. He recalled publication years ago of a series of articles in a San Francisco mining journal by B. D. James, popularly called "Brigham," giving estimates from reliable sources such as express companies and the like of the yields of the mining districts. For the period approximately from 1850-55 the estimate for the Southern Mines was given as thirteen millions and several hundred thousands.

But whether considered as a roaring mining camp, or a county seat, twice visited by river floods and slowly dying from dry rot after the passing away of the mining period, Millerton never was more than a straggling mountain village, and from the very force of circumstances and conditions surrounding it could never have been more than that. There was an idealistic ruralness as witness the following published news brevity anent the courthouse:

ABOUT A BIRD— In the courthouse at this place, a little bird has builded its nest in the chandelier in the courtroom, and frequently when the court is in session, or when a religious meeting is being held there, the little fellow will flit backwards and forwards from its nest to the open air, passing out of the window, or sit in the nest and chirp and twitter right prettily. We think our judicial officers should be well pleased with their little feathered compeer.

As late as the 70's, the supervisors allowed a claim for four dollars for a pole with which to demolish the nests that the swallows built under the courthouse eaves. The San Joaquin was a stream of pure icy water, and clear as a crystal where not muddied by mining. Salmon ascended to the spawning grounds by the myriads, and, when the run was on, the fish were hunted with spear, pitchfork, shovel, even with shotgun and revolver. Salmon appeared in such shoals that as late as July, 1870, it was recorded that restful sleep was disturbed because "myriads of them can be heard nightly splashing over the sand bars in the river opposite town as they make their way up." Hogs roamed at large unhindered as the self-constituted village scavengers.

Fresno was a paradise for the Nimrod. They tell of great herds of antelope scouring over the desert plains where Fresno City is located. Today an antelope is as rare as the ichthyornis. Along in December, 1870, mention was made on the authority of a Crane Valley man that an Indian named Tom, shot, killed and dressed twenty-one deer in three days within a circle of one mile from a given spot. Even this was regarded as extraordinary enough to warrant publication at a time when the plains, mountains, foothills and rivers teemed with game and fish.

With such delightfully primitive conditions, the flutter may be faintly appreciated, when at the close of March, 1871, announcement was made of a change in April in the stage schedule, for all of which Contractor Bennett was publicly thanked for his "enterprising and accommodating spirit." Northbound stages were to connect with Fisher's stages at Snelling (county seat of Merced and a village that went through the same lingering dying experience as Millerton, instead of Hornitas in Mariposa. The Snelling stages arrived at Millerton at the ungodly hour of five a. m., and passengers were piloted to hotels by the pale glimmer of whale oil lanterns. They departed at eight in the evening, arriving at Snelling at eleven on the following morning. The Visalia stage left immediately on arrival of the northern stage, and returning also made close connections. By this new arrangement Millertonians could go through to San Francisco in twenty-four hours, a gain of nearly one-half in time, and no unnecessary laying over en route. And this was hailed as rapid transit!

All of which recalls the "unbearable outrage" of July, 1870, when Millerton. Big Dry Creek and Kings Riven were relegated from a four to a single weekly mail by reason of the abandonment of the mail route. Otto Froelich was then Millerton's postmaster. The Expositor, which had never a good word for the national Republican administration said "There is nothing too corrupt or contemptible for the Radical officers to do." In August, Sillman's opposition stage to Stockton began running, leaving Millerton every Thursday morning with through fare of eight dollars. About the middle of December, Contractor P. Bennett bought off Sillman & Co., who had the mail contract and he served again the tri-weekly mail.

Talking about stages, here is another piece of evidence to accentuate the isolation of the village. In July of this year broke out the Franco-German war. The Expositor gave on July 20, 1870, the news of the outbreak based on a dispatch from Visalia brought by Russell Fleming the Saturday before to the effect that France had determined upon a declaration against Prussia. And as for war news thereafter, it was so scarce that a club was formed at Millerton to buy war dispatches at Visalia to be brought by Fleming as "the genial Jehu" of Bennett's stages. Fleming is a familiar Fresno character, reputed to have been the first appointed postmaster of Fresno City, of which he is one of the earliest settlers. He was the first livery man in the town and his stables and corral at H and Mariposa were long a landmark.

The gathering of news for a weekly issue for Millerton, with a population of 200 to 300 at the most, was no easy task, when so much was suppressed, and so much space wasted in fulminations against the "radicals." The "unbearable outrage" in the reduced mail delivery made the task the more difficult, with "not a single exchange under ten days old," and "no communication with any portion of the county either." But all things come to those who wait. Things hummed again in the first week in September, according to the Millerton pace. An editorial squib read:

"MILLERTON has been quite lively thus far this week. The county court has been and is still in session and a very large number of jurors and witnesses are in attendance. Whiskey has flowed pretty freely and some considerable skirmishing has taken place."

There may have been no connection whatever between the two, but in the next column was this pithy, two-line penitential announcement:

"EXCUSE the lack of editorial matter in this issue as we have been sick."