Redbanks with Ernie Garcia

The cloudless sky, leaves turning bright yellow and red, clean cool air that didn't blow your hair off; it couldn't have been a better day for photography.  I wanted a better picture for my book of FJ White Learning Center.

Ernie Garcia worked with me at Francis J. White Learning Center.  He volunteered to come with me on my photography spree and pose for a fake picture for my book.

 

We took some great pictures there then he said, "Now where are we going to go?"

 

 

 

 

 

History is all about geography, and geography changes over time.  So when someone says to me, "I worked at Redbanks," I think Dead Rat Saloon, and trees on the hill.  I love it when people want to drive around town with me and point out where things used to be.

 

 

Ernie suggested, "Let's drive to Redbanks.  I haven't been there in quite a while."  So we drove to the real Redbanks where Ernie worked in the 1940s before Uncle Sam pointed his finger Ernie's direction.

Looking left from the bridge I saw the old hotel that Chuck Hackett told me resembled a Union Station. Over the years Redbanks (and probably others) had used Cottonwood Creek as an equipment gravesite, which lay exposed in the dry creek bed.

Ernie came to Redbanks in 1933, and attended Paloma School.  When we drove in, the manager pulled his pickup next to my Prius.  I started to introduce myself  and explain why we were trespassing, but he interrupted me.  "I know this guy!"  You would have thought Ernie was a rock star!  We were in.

He and Ernie chatted while I snuck off and took pictures of the old hotel.

Janet Livingston gave me a little history about Redbanks.  Mary Anne Terstegge Tulare County Historical Librarian wrote in the March 1991 Valley Voice p. 27,

On the north bank of Cottonwood Creek was the ranch headquarters. Immediately west of the road is the two-story manager’s house. Bill Murray lived there from 1921 until 1929. Then the Bill Mayfields moved into it. Wilbur Mayfield was a pipe man from Goshen who served as superintendent until 1934.

Beyond the manager’s house was ... the main building which is of Spanish style resembling a Southern Pacific depot. Constructed in 1914. This building had a large restaurant for the workers at its west end.

Immediately behind the dining area was a large kitchen and food storage area with ice lockers in the center directly below the upstairs. The kitchen was presided over by Wylie, a one-eyed Chinese man who was an excellent cook. In the center of the north side of this headquarters building, a hall and stairway gave access to the upper floor.

 In the late 1920s, the east end was remodeled to create offices. West of the headquarters building and near the creek was the shower/lavatory building.

At first there were only rooms for workers up there. Then in 1932, the upstairs has converted into a five-room apartment known as “the penthouse”. The east half of this building contained rooms for bachelor workers. Hence it was referred to as “the hotel.”

Ernie guided me back into the Redbanks complex past the ranch garage for motorized equipment.  Earlier it had been a blacksmith shop area.  Ernie called this next house the "Hindu Building."  Originally it had been the Hindu irrigator's bunk house.

Ernie's brother had his wedding reception in this, once beautiful building.  Looking across the fence to the north we saw Colvin's Mountain.

The first settler in that area west of Woodlake was Elijah T. Colvin, a stockman who in the early 1860s bought three sections of land on the southern slopes of the hill, which bears his name. At that time Cottonwood Creek still ran due south into the St. Johns River. By 1892, Elijah Colvin was dead and some of his property was sold.

Ernie told me that when he worked here, they could see the vegetable gardens planted by the Japanese that once lived on Colvin Mountain.  The government evacuated them sent them to live in internment camps during World War II.  They did not return, and now orange groves cover the lower part of the mountain.

As we left, I pulled the car over, left it running, but did remember to put it in park this time, and ran back across the bridge to take one last shot of Cottonwood Creek and the Sierra Nevadas.  Ernie taught me more in an hour than I could have mastered reading 10 hours of articles about Redbanks.  Thanks Ernie!

 

 

Hog Wallows that Are Not HOG Wallows

I find hog wallows fascinating and irresistible because they are unusual, and their cause is debated. They have been preserved for us by the Buckman family of Exeter marked by a Tulare County Historical Society marker in 1979.  

Historic Spots in California:  5^th Edition briefly describes the phenomenon of hog wallows and records a history of their origin and the demise.  “The Yokuts Indians believed they were leftover earth dumped from work baskets after the building of the great Sierra Nevada. (p. 540).”  Another early theory was that they were formed by pressure from escaping water and gas. Still another idea attributed the hill building to local gophers. (Ibid. p. 540). 

Courtesy of Tulare County Library

The earliest scientific article I found about Hog Wallows was written in the 1877 article, The “Hog Wallows” of California by Alfred R. Wallace quoting an 1874 article by Prof. Joseph Le Conte in the American Journal of Science p. 366.  They both credited “surface erosion” as the culprit for creating the mysterious mounds, but Wallace observed that the areas covered by hog wallows have the unique attributes of being treeless and having  “a moveable” surface soil covering a “less moveable one” below.  Wallace stated that the surface is eroded down to the pebble layer in places leaving elliptical shaped mounds that vary in size, but average 5 feet high by forty feet in diameter.

Hog wallows were removed with the help of the Fresno Scraper, first patented in 1882, to make the fields ready for agricultural purposes.  When tractors were added in 1910-1920, the scraper become even more efficient, and “laser beam controlled scrapers have also reduced surveying and operator skill requirements for land leveling for agricultural and construction. 

Decorating with Relics from Woodlake's Past

In the rustic western town, Woodlake, California, and surrounding countryside, people often decorate with relics.  It takes artistic flair to arrange relics to look more than junky.I'm still at the junky level.  My friend Sally Pace has moved beyond that.  She and her husband host weddings and many free events at their rustic ranch.Mike pampers his favorite relic.  Not only is it in the barn, but it's covered.The following 1940s picture is a relic even though Sally's road looks almost the same.Sally's house and all its decorative relics weren't there yet.Woodlake Hardware boasts of nearly 100 years of service, making it somewhat of a relic, yet the building today hasn't changed much since the 1940s when Morris Bennett started working there.Morris decorated the walls with relics from the past.Of course, the pair of skates is my favorite relic. At 90+ Morris still works most days.He's my hero, but he's NOT a relic!  :)

1990s Fourth Grade Bicycle Trips to View Wuchumna Yokuts Indian Settlement Area

Twenty-three years ago I began teaching fourth grade in Woodlake, CA with Suzanne Bidwell, Donna Frasier, Karen Redfield, and Edna Ikerd.  This trip was one of the traditions they established, and I lucked into.  I've seen Wuchumna spelled both Wu and Wa, so if someone knows the real correct way to spell it, they can write in and inform me!

The pictures won’t win any awards, but when I post them on FB, people recognize their tia or tio (aunt or uncle), and other family members, and it’s a lot of fun.   Aren’t they adorable?

The pictures show the last bike trip we took before the helmet law for bicyclists went into effect around 1993 or 1994.

The goal was to get to location that hadn’t been disturbed by settlement, where a tribe of the Wuchumna Indians, a sub-tribe of  Yokuts Indians, lived in this area.  The Yokuts, yes the ‘s’ is part of the name, was one of the largest tribes in North America.  Food was plentiful, nutritious and easy to gather or hunt.  However, not even missionaries or Spanish soldiers ventured this far east more than once or twice.  Thomas Davis from South Carolina and his friends, Thomas Fowler and Jim Fisher discovered this area in 1853.

Kids enjoyed walking through a sort-of-cave and looking at the paintings left by the Wuchumna.

The owner of this property, who is in his 80s, remembers seeing them down by Cottonwood Creek.  It’s dry most of the year.  It probably was then, too.

Gary Davis can probably tell you about another time when his five-year-old daughter and I got stranded up on this rock, and he had to climb up and rescue us.  These kids didn't have as much problem getting down, but they didn't have to be lifted from ledge to ledge to get there.

Wuchumna women harvested the many oak trees in the area. Women of all ages sat around the large grinding rock and ground acorns.  You can tell who sat where by the size of the holes in the rocks.  Grandmas had very deep holes.  You can clearly see the deep hole on the back right.

Too soon it was time to bike back to school.

Drivers followed in trucks or vans to pick up stray bikes and bikers that broke down along the way.

I biked behind them taking pictures and hoping that no one would have problems.  And no one did.  :)

BOOK REVIEW: CO-OPERATIVE DREAMS A HISTORY OF THE KAWEAH COLONY BY JAY O’CONNELL

If you’ve never seen a tree so wide you can drive your truck through it, then you need to come to the Sequoia National Park. The Kaweah River surges down from the Sierra Nevada, through the Big Trees, forming the Delta where big agriculture lives in Tulare County.

The huge forests that attract thousands of tourists world-wide today, might have been wiped from the map before their secret was discovered were it not for the drama that unfolded in the mountains in the 1880s.  

I met author, Jay O’Connell, in the Pizza Factory in Three Rivers on the day Sally Pace and I made ad sales calls for the Kiwanis Magazine, “What’s Happening in the Foothills.”  I went home, and sure enough, I had his book, Cooperative Dreams A History of the Kaweah Colony, in my library, but to my loss, had never taken the time to read it.

Early tent colony where first Kaweah Colony residents settled.

“Three key issues of the nineteenth-century California history are illustrated by events at Kaweah.” The issues prominent in the 1880s, when the Kaweah Colony formed were: “land and its acquisition; labor and the organization of it; and conservation.  … They are personified by three major characters in the drama of the Kaweah.” Charles Keller found the land, and knew it would be perfect to start the perfect cooperative colony.  Burnette Haskell, son of none other than Eddie Haskell (not from Leave It To Beaver, but very much like him in personality) gave voice to the organized labor movement so prominent in those years.  Finally, Visalia’s own “Father of the Sequoia National Park,” George W. Stewart championed conservation so effectively that the results surprised even him.

More permanent dwellings afforded little protection from the winter weather.

What I didn’t know was that there was such a mysterious aura around the often-told story.  For fifty years even historians did not know how the park came to be included in a bill that originally reserved only a small portion of the trees for posterity.  Even more amazing was the reason for including the magnificent trees in the preservation act.

O’Connell gently unfurls the story, introducing each character, using primary sources including letters, newspaper articles, and interviews of survivors of the colonies conducted in the 1940s by Tulare County historical expert, Joe Doctor, to authenticate his narrative.

As a student of local history, I found this fascinating, but California’s history, its dream belongs to the world as did the settlers that came in the 1800s.

Valleycation: Sacramento Railroad Museum

 Think you might like to be a docent?  We had a one hour tour at the Railroad Museum in Sacramento.  The training to learn all the ins and outs of being a museum guide lasts 55 hours.  Our tour guide, Bob, is a docent trainer.

I was surprised to see an entire display about the train control station at Allensworth in the Railroad Museum.   The Santa Fe line, built after the transcontinental railroad was completed, runs north and south through the San Joaquin Valley.  It was a line built without customers.  The railroad established towns as they went.  Except for Visalia and Porterville, which were on the Butterfield Stage Coach route, the towns in Tulare County are railroad towns.   Allensworth is one of the few towns in CA that has been preserved as a model of what life was like in the early 1900s in a rural railroad town.  Allensworth, pictured below, is a rural town with an interesting twist.  Colonel Allen Allensworth, a freed slave and retired military officer, wanted a town in which African-Americans could prove to the world that they could be productive on their own in spite of prejudice, and limited opportunities.  He purchased 800 acres and founded the only African-American freedom colony in California, Allensworth.  The impact of this town was farther reaching than most non-African-American people realize.

Allensworth is located in what used to be the bottom of Tulare Lake, the largest (but shallow) freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River.  After it was drained for agricultural purposes, alfalfa and other crops thrived in the fertile river bed.   The town of Allensworth prospered when the Santa Fe made daily visits carrying their farm goods mostly to LA.  However, the town was more than just a stop.  Allensworth was a train control station for the Santa Fe line which meant that it was manned 24 hours a day with men trained to keep trains from running into each other .  

In the display below you can see the boxcars which were make-shift homes for some of the railroad workers.   The boxcars had a breezeway to try to keep them cool during 115 degree summer days in an era before air conditioners.

The Santa Fe Railroad went through Allensworth, and stopped here to get water for their steam engines.  Trains pumped and used 50,000 gallons of water a day.   You can see the size of the water tower in comparison to the size of the buildings.  Allensworth had a great aquifer, but after a few years of constant use, the water table dropped, and with it, the easy access to water.  In 1914 the Santa Fe Railroad moved its control station from Allensworth to nearby Alpaugh, and much of the industry began to die out in Allensworth.

Bob didn't take his group upstairs, but I enjoyed wandering around up there as well.  Fortunately some people could sleep, and you could move around in the cars. More than likely these two items were separated by more than a foot or two on board a train.  

The dining set in the picture below looks like it was from the 1950s.  This set would have looked perfect in my parent's 1957 ranch home with a copper-colored refrigerator, sink, and stove top and a turquoise and copper-colored couch with turquoise swivel chairs.

There are some trains with elegant dining cars downstairs in the museum.   The chandeliers in this dining car didn't rival the ornate Venetian hand-blown glass  chandeliers, but considering the setting, they were beautiful.

At the top of the stairs as you climbed to the third floor, this gigantic little boy looked like he was waving to you.  NO, he was the epitome a boy enamored with trains. 

From the invention of trains to present day, kids of all ages have loved playing with trains.  These kids are starting young.  When did you first start to play with trains?

I've been to many museums, but this is one of the more fun, interactive museums you can visit, and it's conveniently located in Sacramento.