Читать книгу History of Fresno County, Vol. 1 - Paul E. Vandor - Страница 5

CHAPTER I

California is a land of never ending wonders and surprises, a land that can only be described in superlatives.

Literally and figuratively, Fresno County is to the state an empire within an empire — imperium in imperio as the Latin phrase has it. This statement is not put forth as the declaration of a newly discovered fact, but to emphasize that an old one is incontrovertible as the result of a remarkable twin development of state and county.

California, thirty-first state of the union, is about 780 miles long, has a breadth varying from 148 to 235 miles, a sea-coast line 1,200 miles long through ten degrees of latitude, a total area of 158,297 square miles of which 2,645 comprise water surface, and an estimated 101,310,080 acres, in great part rough, mountainous country, or desert. The term desert is a relative one. The land now comprised within Fresno County's area was long considered desert, fit only for pasturage and worthless for agriculture. Much of it is yet regarded in that category, lacking the water to make it productive. Imperial Valley in the county of the same name, the southeasternmost in the state located between San Diego County and the Colorado river as the state boundary line is another notable desert wonder in the agricultural line. Other instances might be quoted to emphasize the declaration that California is a land of never ending wonders and surprises.

Approximately one-half of the land surface is under federal control, including the nineteen and one-half millions or more acres in the national forests. As to area, California is second among the states of the union. Texas alone exceeds it. It is larger than the nine combined states of New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Ohio. It is one of the richest among the states, with a startling record of material achievements and with potentialities so varied and great as to stagger the mind in the contemplation of them.

Fresno, forty-first of the counties in the order of creation, has a land area of 5,950 square miles, or 3,808.000 acres. When organized, it was much larger, but in March, 1893, a slice of 2,121 square miles was taken off from the northern part to form Madera County, and in 1909 were transferred to Kings County 120 square miles of the southeastern portion. Even with these 2,241 square miles lopped off from the original 8,214 before partition, Fresno ranks sixth of the fifty-eight counties in the state as to area. Only five exceed it, namely, Inyo, Kern, Riverside and Siskyou, San Bernardino leading. As to population, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Alameda and Santa Clara lead it in the order named. The 1910 census returned a county population of 75,657, and for the county seat, 24,892. An estimate of 29,809 for the city was made in July, 1914, and one of 45,000 in June, 1914. The latter is according to the 1916 report of the state controller, but manifestly too liberal for various reasons. Estimates made on the figured basis of school attendance, directory publishers and chamber of commerce advertising literature all give greater returns but must be accepted with allowances. It is not to be denied that there have been large annual accessions in the rural and urban populations, but a census enumeration and not theoretical surmises will be required to give reliable figures.

The county is fourth, with Sacramento a very close fifth, for total value of assessed property. Fresno is one of the very few counties in the state that had no public indebtedness. An estimate of the value of the county's public property is the following:

Courthouse Grounds and Jail $1,207,000

Hospital, Almhouse and Grounds 318,000

Fair Grounds and Buildings 100,000

Orphanage 30,000

County Library Equipment 10,000

Total $1,665,000

The county had no outstanding bonds and no floating indebtedness. It has $150,000 invested in state highway bonds, $300,000 in Liberty war bonds, $19,490 in county school district bonds that buying speculators would not purchase because of the smallness of the issues, and in December, 1917, had $.590,200 of accumulated funds out on two per cent call loans, a sum that fluctuates from time to time. The statistical figures of the assessor give the county an acreage of 2.251,520.

ASSESSED PROPERTY VALUATIONS

Assessed value of property for 1916-17 in the state, county and city of Fresno is exhibited in the following tabulation:

State

Real Estate $1,851,485,421

Improvements 696,960,698

Personal Property 333,403,268

Money and Credits 35,005,709

Non Operative Roll 2,916,855,096

Operative Roll 504.284,748

Railroads 157,006,590

State Grand Total: $3,578,146,434

Fresno County

Real Estate $41,644,875

Improvements 11,421 ,988

Personal Property 9,892,398

Money etc. 110,547

Total $63,069,808

Fresno City

Real Estate $11,596,555

Improvements 7,764,385

Personal Property 3,039,137

Money, etc. 179,585

Total $22,579,712

Non Operative Roll 85,649,520

Operative Roll 13,980,567

County Grand Total $99,630,087

The 1917-18 county assessment roll shows the following valuations for taxation purposes, not including the segregated school district valuations for one of the numerically largest county school departments in the state, exclusive of the larger populous centers of San Francisco, Los Angeles and Alameda counties.

County Real Estate $56,792,585

(Fresno City, $15,931,470)

Improvements 20,075,245

(Fresno City, $10,933,700)

Improvements Assessed to Others than Owners 123,720

Personal Property 15,923,163

Money and Credits 427,310

Non Operative Roll 93,342,023

Operative Roll 6,044.386

Railroads 8,515,019

Total Assessed Property $107,901,428

Fresno City as the county seat is the largest incorporated municipality. The other eight incorporated towns are; Clovis, Coalinga, Firebaugh, Fowler, Kingsburg, Reedley, Sanger and Selma.

The county's apportionment by the State Board of Equalization of railroad mileage and property for state taxation is as follows:

Railroad Mileage Valuation

Southern Pacific 196.89 $5,394,978

Santa Fe 96.30 2.311.200

Central Pacific 31.46 692.208

Pullman Palace 166.61 116,633

KEYSTONE IN ARCH OF WEALTH

Geographically considered, California is far from being a unit. It presents with its immense sea-coast stretch and its great breadth, traversing interior wide valleys, desert wastes and high mountain ranges, geographical conditions in remarkable variety. When in their variety in turn, the land surface features, climates and productions, the latter ranging from those of the temperate to the subtropical and the arctic zones, are further borne in mind. California may well be classified as an empire itself.

California's great interior San Joaquin Valley, an empire in itself, is the keystone in the arch of the state's wealth. The Mother Lode poured its millions of gold into the world's lap. Its plains were the public range during the cattle raising era of the boundless pasturage ground. It was once one of the world's granaries in the days of the vast grain ranch period. It is a leader today in the products of the intensive and diversified culture of the small, irrigated orchard and vineyard farm. The oil industry confined to the Coast Range is an overshadowing one, and the San Joaquin valley has become the state's oil producing region. Irrigation has transformed Fresno from a desert to an annual producer of over thirty millions.

Its potentialities are boundless almost. It is no dream that in the cultivation of rice and cotton as the latest taken up enterprises of the soil with demonstrated successes in the experimental efforts, California and its great interior valley are preparing to furnish the world with more surprises. Such an eminent authority as George C. Roeding has declared that Fresno must wake up and teach the world that "here in the central portion of the Golden State there is an empire worthy the attention of the man with the dollar." And there is a wonderful past to substantiate him.

The history of Fresno, and for that matter of the great interior valley also, was little influenced by the Spaniards or the Mexicans in so far as leaving imperishable impress upon the region that the gold seekers brought to the world's knowledge. There was no Spanish sub-stratum with the pictured life and customs as at the coastal mission establishments, so suggestive of medievalism and even feudalism, to give the quaint and picturesque setting for the American superstructure to follow and to recall the days before the Gringo came.

Of the Spanish and Mexican rule there is no lasting memorial, save perhaps in the melodious nomenclature of landmarks, and in the foreign words grafted on the English language. The name "Fresno," from the Spanish meaning "ash tree." was applied because of the abundance of the tree in the mountains of the county. It was first given to identify the river tributary to the San Joaquin and once embraced within the county, but now in Madera. It was so applied before Fresno County was organized, and even before the territory now so named had distinctive appellation as a part of Mariposa County. It was so appropriated to name the first big trees discovered by James Burney of Mariposa and John Macauley of Defiance, Ohio, in 1849. They were in Fresno territory that is now part of Madera County. Burney was of North Carolina and the first sheriff of Mariposa, elected after organization in February, 1850. The above named and two others made the find in the latter part of October on the Fresno-San Joaquin divide while pursuing animals that the Indians had stolen. This was at a time when Mariposa embraced, as one of the original twenty-seven counties of the state, nearly the entire San Joaquin Valley, south of the Tuolumne River.