Appendix IV - Books of Local Interest

A month after the Society was organized in 1944, Mrs. Walter Cairns suggested a marker to commemorate a piece of land containing hogwallows (curious mounds of soil that once covered great portions of the Valley before the land was settled and tilled). She was unable to convince landowners to allow such a marker to be placed. 35 years elapsed before such a section of land was set aside for preservation and appropriately marked by the Society. But Mrs. Cairns efforts serve to illustrate one major goal of the Society – the “Registration of points of historical interest”, i.e. the placement of durable markers recognizing a noteworthy site, structure, person, or event.

Between 1948 and 1992, the Tulare County Historical Society placed 25 markers, half of them as projects with other groups.

The Ancient and Honorable Order of E. Clampus Vitus (AKA the Clampers) began during the California Gold Rush as a spoof among miners on the more formal fraternal groups of the time, such as the Masons and Oddfellows. But the group, with its blatant disregard for manners or decorum, took on a life of its own and Clamper chapters spread throughout the Western states. California pioneer Joseph Zumwalt is credited with founding the first California ECV Lodge in 1851, at Mokelumne Hill in Calaveras County.

Commemorates the site of Father Daniel F Dade’s 1861 Academy of the Nativity housed in the first Catholic Church in the lower San Joaquin Valley.

This giant sequoia tree measures 254 feet tall, 25 feet in diameter. Dedicated to Allen Russell, park ranger who worked to improve the Balch Park campgrounds while stationed here 1961 - 1990.

Commemorates 100^th anniversary of the District which was formed from the holdings of the 76 Land and Water Co. Alta district was laid out to draw water from the Kings River. As a result, that dry section of the county became irrigated, and the towns of Traver and Dinuba were established.

First successful artesian well in area bored in 1877 alongside tracks near Tipton, causing a great deal of excitement for the farmers on the County’s arid west side. Eventually, 250 wells tapped along 15 mile by 25 mile “Artesian Belt” from Tipton to Waukena to Lemoore. By 1910, the wells simply stopped flowing.

Remembers the so-called Tule River Indian “War” of 1856, which erupted when unfounded rumors spread about cattle-rustling Indians in Yokohl Valley. Settlers organized groups of mounted riflemen that attacked unarmed parties of Indians, including women and children. The incident prompted the government to force the Tule River tribes onto the Tule River Indian Reservation.

Ben Harris was mountain packer and guide in the Mineral KIng Valley in the early 1900s. His fierce storytelling ability gained him the nickname “Biggest Liar in the Sierra”.

This is the former site of the Overland Hotel, which housed the station of the Butterfield Overland Mail. Just before midnight on October 8, 1858 almost all of Visalia’s 500 citizens crowded onto Main Street (then called Mill St.) to greet the first Butterfield stage to reach the city.

While trekking through California on his 1844 expedition, John C. Fremont travelled along the trails established very long ago by Indians. The journey included a stretch of trail between the Tule River and the Kaweah Delta. By the 1850’s, this trail became the Los Angeles-Stockton Road, part of the Butterfield Stage Route. Highway 65 through Lindsay follows this exact route.

In 1885, four German settlers dug a single communal well at the point where their four properties met, about one half-mile south of the present town of Ducor. This property arrangement gave the area the name Dutch Corners. Later, a railroad employee came across a weathered sign painted with the name “Dutch Corners”, but the paint had faded so badly only the letters DU____ COR___ were readable. The name stuck.

This oak (sometimes called the “Charter Oak”) has been long-regarded as the polling place set up for Tulare County’s first election, held July 10, 1852. Later research, however, indicates the tree where the voting took place was located about a half-mile to the south, near the Venice School. This, the true Election Tree, was dubbed the “Witness Tree” to avoid any confusion.

Elisha Packwood made considerable wealth in the gold fields in 1848. In 1850 he brought relatives and his 100-head dairy herd to California, registering the second cattle brand in the county. His 3000 acre ranch covered most of what is now central Porterville. He also operated a stopping place, or station, where the Emigrant Road crossed the Tule River.

This community is the third oldest in Tulare County, dating to 1866, the year Jasper and Crowley built a store here. In 1868 the store was sold to Thomas Brundage. He was granted the federal contract to open a Post Office and chose the name Farmersville.

This simple plaque atop a granite post marks the approximate site of the oak stockade built by settlers in 1852 as a defense against the elements (and the Indians). This fort marked the beginning of Visalia.

Dedicated on Centennial of the Butterfield Stage,. This crossroads saw traffic early as 1850, being the junction of the Emigrant Trail with the road going to the Kern River gold country. The first public road in Tulare County, it followed a much older Indian Trail. The route was followed by early explorers including Gabriel Moraga in 1806, and later Fremont, Ewing, and Jedediah Smith. It was also a leg of the Butterfield Stage route, and later named Old Stage Road. When the Old Stage Road marker was placed in 1976, the Fountain Springs Marker was re-located so both would be adjacent.

While trekking through California on his 1844 expedition, John C. Fremont travelled along the trails established very long ago by Indians. The journey included a stretch of trail between the Tule River and the aweah Delta. By the 1850’s, this trail became the Los Angeles-Stockton Road, part of the Butterfield Stage Route. Highway 65 through Lindsay follows this exact route.

Color Sergeant Gabriel Moraga commanded a force of 25 Spanish soldiers sent out by California Governor Arrillaga to hunt for possible sites for a chain of inland missions. He reached what is now the site of Porterville and the Tule River April 26, 1806.

Dedicated to the man many regard as the inventor of the first combine harvester. Berry was a pioneer cirtrus rancher in the 1800s. He also served in the California Assembly and State Senate, and was a long-time member of the Lindsay schoolboard.

First established 1871, new building was built 1918. Harmony became part of Sunnyside School District in 1941, and later the building was a community center. The schoolhouse burned down in 1983, leaving only the archway of the main entrance standing.

Theories abound as to the origin of these small mounds of soil that once covered large portions of the valley floor. With the arrival of the white man, and the need for level farm land, they all but disappeared by the 1930’s. Dr. Phillip Buckman and his daughter Carol Buckman donated ten acres, the last remaining large parcel of hogwallow land, to TCHS as a nature preserve.

Ina Stiner was a teacher at Porterville High School and Porterville’s foremost historian.

Honor John Jordan, captain of wagon team that arrived in California from Texas in 1850, among the earliest settlers of Yokohl Valley. Builder of infamous toll-road across the Sierras.

John Jordan led wagon team from Texas in 1850. With the 1857 discovery of gold in Owens Valley, he petitioned to build a sixteen-foot wide toll road across Sierras, which was nearing completion when Jordan drowned in Kern River 1862.

First post office for Kaweah Co-Operative Colony was at “Advance”, built several miles above the present one in 1880. Name changed to Kaweah in 1890. Location of the post office changed twice before coming to its present spot about 1928. The only tangible reminder of the thriving Kaweah Colony, it is one of the smallest functioning post offices in the US.

This tiny flag stop on the Southern Pacific half-mile northeast of Ivanhoe School was named Klink after railroad auditor George Klink. Klink post office was opened in 1910 in the Klink store. In 1911 the Venice Hill Land Co laid out a town site on opposite side of tracks, calling the new town Venice Hill. Very confusing for residents who lived in Venice Hill, got their mail at Klink, and sent their children to Ivanhoe School. In 1924 residents voted to change name of town and post office to Ivanhoe.

Commemorates 125^th anniversary of school’s founding. Liberty is the oldest school in Tulare County still at its original site.

“Probably” the oldest cemetery in the southern San Joaquin Valley according to the marker. The first burials here may have been the Woods party massacred by Indians nearby in 1850. In 1957, the TC Historical Society formed a committee in an unsuccessful attempt to get the neglected graveyard placed into a cemetery district.

A memorial to those who helped preserve a portion of the Valley oak forest that once covered the Four Creeks area.

Road saw traffic early as 1850, being the junction of Emigrant Trail with road going to the Kern River gold country. First public road in Tulare County, it followed a much older Indian Trail later followed by early explorers including Moraga in 1806, Fremont, Ewing, and Jedediah Smith. It was also a leg of the Butterfield Stage route.

Town had beginnings around 1859 with name Vandalia. But 1862 flood wiped out nearly all the homes and shops, and remaining population moved to high ground a half-mile south. Soonafter, settlers following Butterfield stage route settled here, named the place after their hometown of Plano, Texas. See also Vandalia marker.

This home and hotel was built 1879 by JWC Pogue, who had planted the first citrus groves in the district. The Pogues donated the house to the Lemoncove Womens Club in 1936.

Commemorates a series of grist mills that operated at this site from 1868 to 1912. Mill was powered by water which came in through a five mile extension of a ditch from the Monache Reservation, dug by Indaian labor in 1862.

John and Peter Roth came to the area in 1878 and eventually owned 3000 acres of wheat and barley. In 1888 the Southern Pacific Railroad allowed them to build a grain-loading platform along a siding that they called Roth’s Spur. A group of Scottish investors laid out a ranch and townsite around 1900, and named it after their Scottish county of Strathmore.

Putnam was associated with the Butterfield Stage when he arrived in 1860. He laid out townsite 1870, after which Putnam induced the postmaster at Tule River to move the post office there. He changed the Post Office to Porterville, a name that did not become official until 1915. He built this home 1866 at 165 N. Main St, moved it to present location in 1888.

He practiced medicine in Visalia about 1855. He then went on to discover gold and silver deposits in the Coso Valley. He had interests in the magnesite mines and mill near Porterville starting in 1876.

This mining camp sprang up in 1856 at the beginning of the Kern River Gold Rush.The name was changed to White River in 1870. Mining has been carried on there intermittently ever since, but the most productive period was the 1880s and 1890s. The town all but died away by 1915, and the only tangible traces left are the several small cemeteries on the hills above it.

Established in 1884, soon after the Seventy-Six Land and Water Co brought irrigation water from the Kings River. It was the largest grain shipping point in the United States. As land values dropped Traver almost disappeared, but today is home to several thousand.

Peter Goodhue operated an Emigrant Trail stopping place on the Tule River in 1854. It later became a Butterfield Overland Mail Station run by Royal Porter Putnam, founder of Porterville.

In the wake of the Tule River Indian War of 1856, the government sought to isolate local Indian tribes and purchased 1280 acres for a reservation two miles east of present-day Porterville, in the area of Alta Vista School.

Between 1859 and 1862 Vandalia was the third largest community in Tulare County, and the largest in the Tule River area. Flooding in 1862 wiped out most of its houses, and the settlers that remained gradually moved a half-mile south. The new settlement came to be called Plano. See also Plano Marker.

The Visalia Electric was built by John Hays Hammond, President of Mt Whitney Power Company. The terminal was in Exeter. It began service in 1905, and led the county in departures until 1924 when its passenger service was discontinued.

Recognizes the Visalia Times-Delta, the oldest newspaper in the San Joaquin Valley, first published June 25, 1859. Newspaper offices, Floral and Oak Sts.

In 1856 the Wilcox family arrived from New York State, becoming the first family to settle on the Tule River. Several family members homesteaded in Success Valley, and continued until the dam was built, covering their farmland beneath the waters of Lake Success.

Commemorates centennial of School District, established 1881.