The History of the Woodlake Area from Roy Lee Davis Part Three

In Part One we learned that the first rural settlement of "Stringtown" disappeared.  In Part Two we learned about the beginning of the church and school, and whether the first school public or private?

Part Three

In the 1880s, Reverend Satterfield bought the Horse Shoe Ranch, now the north part of Sentinel Butte Ranch.  That decade Jake Bierer came to work for Mr. Waugh.  He and Waugh planted figs in what later became the Mori orchard. Later, Bierer became a well borer and water wizard.  In the 1880s, more irrigation ditches were constructed, and once again Watchumna Ditch Company controlled most of the water in Bravo Lake.  In 1888 Jude Steven Nye, who had retired from the bench in Oakland and was an ex state senator, came to Woodlake where he bought a ranch.  Nye's daughters, Myrtle and Harriet, married the two youngest Davis sons, Thomas Houston and Phillip, respectively.  Nye died on the Davis Ranch in 1906.  In 1889 he told of driving through a bed of continuous wildflowers eleven miles long from his ranch.  The following year, 1890, the Kaweah Lemon Packing Company was founded by Dan Overall, D.J. Giddings, Adolph Lewis, S.C. Brown and William Hammond.  Wesley Ragle set out the first oranges in the Naranjo district about that tie.  In 1893 Reverend Satterfield's granddaughter, Annie Mackey and her husband John Wesley Brown came to Horse Shoe Ranch.  John Brown planted oranges and lemons on Horse Shoe Ranch which he and Annie later inherited from Reverend Satterfield.  Also, in the 1890s Jake Bierer married Janie Place and the Canans arrived and bought Joshua Lindsaey's land.  Probably the most important development of the decade was the founding and naming of naranjo.

Naranjo was named by land owners Harry Brown and Senator Fred Harding (ex Illinois senator).  Harry Brown built the Naranjo store in 1918.  Harry Brown also built the Hein house which was unique in having gas lights.  By 1903 the Mt. Whitney Power Company was delivering electricity to the Woodlake Valley.  Harry Brown also had the first car in the Woodlake area, but he couldn't drive it, so had a chauffeur.  Harry Brown also planted oranges for both Senator Harding and Mr. Pattee, in the Naranjo district.  Fred Harding's great niece, Justine Robinson now lives in his home.  Her mother inherited Harding's property in 1914 at which time Justine Robinson's parents, Captain and Mrs. Forest Lancashire, came to Woodlake to manage the property.  Justine was raised there and attended the Naranjo school.  Meanwhile (3 years after the Lime Kiln Post Officed moved away to Lemon Cove), in 1902, the Naranjo Post Office was established in the store.  In the first decade of the 1900s, Woodlake saw many milestones.

In 1904 the Redbanks Orchard Company was formed with Dr. Squires and Phil aker bought the south slope of Colvin Hill and set out early peaches, Demsen Plums, and grapes.  When this fruit was ready to harvest, they built a packing house and hired William Murray to manage it.  The Visalia phone exchange had a line out there and the Davis's, Blairs, and Brothertons built exchanges on to it. By 1906, the Visalia Electric Railroad was extended to Terminus Beach, which became a popular local resort; it was located just downstream from our present Terminus Dam.  In 1907, the Elderwood Colony was founded.

Elderwood was named by its founders:  Jason Barton, J.W. Fewell, and Adolf Sweet, who had bought and subdivided land on the east side of Cottonwood Creek.  Near the Elderwood Colony, on Badger Road, J.P. Day had a small store.  In January 1908, a U.S. Post Office was established therein with J.P. Day as postmaster.  People fondly recall it as the Elderwood Post Office, but post office records show it only as Woodlake.  But the most significant event of 1907 was the arrival of Gilbert Stevenson, the "Father of Woodlake."

Stevenson bought both John W. Brown's Horse Shoe Ranch and the adjoining Waugh property.  He named this large ranch, Sentinel Butte.  He drilled wells and built a cement reservoir.  Later, Stevenson had the largest, individually owned, orange ranch in the world, 1,500 acres.  In 1917, 149 cars of fruit - oranges - went to market from Sentinel Butte Ranch.  But Stevenson dreamed of and platted a town.  He hired one Henry McCracken to manage his ranch while he bouth land south of Elderwood and laid out his town, which he called Woodlake.  In the fall of 1910, the year Stevenson laid out his town, D.B. Day, a contractor, and Charles Lare, a carpenter, arrived to work for Stevenson.  The Visalia Electric Line had been extended to Woodlake that April.  D. B Day built his family the first house in the (on Palm) Woodlake townsite, but his big project was building Stevenson's "Brick Block", a block sized building to house businesses.  Meanwhile John Lee Pogue directed the laying out and grading of the streets.  Thomas Crawford laid five miles of concrete/cement curbs and sidewalks.  Steve Webb, a realtor who had first come to Woodlake area to see Stevenson about 1909 was back to stay.  He bought more land for Stevenson, the land west and north of Bravo Lake for which Stevenson had truly grandiose dreams as a ...

What did Stevenson, the "Father of Woodlake" dream of doing in the Woodlake area?  Find out in Part Four.

The History of the Woodlake Area from Roy Lee Davis Part One

The history of Woodlake is rather unique.  Most cities and towns in Tulare County began with a few people settling in one place, and within a few years, a town had come into existence.  But several pioneers settled in the Woodlake area, on both the north and south sides of what is now Woodlake, yet no town was formed for about fifty years.  As a matter of fact, Woodlake area's history is nearly as old as that of our county itself.

In 1850 John Poole established a ferry on the Kings River (about two and a half miles north of present Reedley); soon thereafter he established a trading post there in partnership with William Campbell.  That same year, a group of fifteen men, led by John Wood came to the Four Creek country.  (The four creeks were:  Mill Creek, Deep Creek, Packwood Creek, and Outside Creek.)  These men built one cabin, and foundations for more, on the south bank of the Kaweah River south of Venice Hill.  Then these men were massacred by Indians, but at least one escaped.  Further west, where the St. John's River now flows, Loomis St. John cleared and planted land unseen and unmolested by the Indians.  Incidentally, the river which bears St. John's name was formed by the great 1862 flood; previously there had only been a slough. In 1862 the new St. John's River took off from the Kaweah east of Venice Hill someplace southwest of Woodlake.  The old Kaweah, at that time, ran from  McKay's Point to beyond Woodlake where the St. John's River flows today.  By the 1880s the division was at McKay's Point as it is today.  It is because of the changing river channels that no one can pinpoint the exact location of the original Kaweah Ford east of Venice Hill.  Early explorers, such as Kit Carson in 1830, Joseph R. Walker in 1834, and John C. Fremont in 1844, who forded the Kaweah, must have passed very near, if not through the Woodlake area.

In 1851 or 1852, Thomas Fowler (for whom the town was named), Jim Fisher and Thomas H. Davis (a South Carolinian) traveled through the San Joaquin Valley en route to Carson City and the Nevada silver mines.  Upon passing the entrance to Antelope Valley (which they named) they observed several antelope grazing there and decided it would be an excellent place in which to raise cattle.  In 1852 Tulare County was created by an act of the legislature, the first election was held, and the Vise party arrived and built a stockade at what is now Visalia.  Among this group were Tipton Lindsay (who was prominent in Visalia affairs) and his brother Joshua, who later settled and raised cattle on two sections of land southwest of Woodlake.  The following year, 1853, the county seat was moved to Visalia in a heated election.  the first post office was established at Woodville - and the Woodlake area received its first settler.

That year, 1853, Thomas Henry Davis returned to the Antelope Valley.  Having been successful in the mines, they (Davis and his partners) ha bought cattle in Mexico which Tom Davis had driven to Antelope Valley where he settled near the spring.  In 1861 Thomas H. Davis married Leah Jackson Miller in Visalia.  The following year, their first son, Jefferson Jackson Davis, was born on the Davis Acres, making him the first white child born in the Woodlake area.  Thomas Houston Davis, his brother, born in 1865 arrived in the doctor's house in Visalia.  Meanwhile, a young man from Tennessee, Emanuel T. Ragle, helped drive cattle to northern California in 1865 where he first settled and later met the Blair and Moffett families.

In 1857, the Rev. Jonathan Blair organized and led a wagon train from Missouri to California.  This was known as the Blair-Moffett party.  Members included  Rev. Blair, a Presbyterian minister, his second wife, Nancy Moffett Blair; her daughter Lucinda Moffett; his eldest daughter, Sarah Blair Pogue, and her husband John Pogue and their two babies, (a third, Mary Nevada, was born en route); John Pogue's sister, Polly; their half-brother, JWC Pogue, age 18, whom John and Polly had raised; six other Blair children, including Nancy Melvina, then age fourteen, and several Moffetts among others.   Upon reaching northern California they first settled in the Santa Rosa area where they met Emanuel Ragle who married Eliza Moffett there in 1858.  Later, they settled at Little Lake, near present day Willets, where Polly Pogue married John Coble and JWC Pogue married Nancy Melvina Blair.  After a bad winter there, Rev. Blair came to Tulare County and settled in the Hamilton district east of Venice Hill.  He was followed by the Pogues and Moffetts.  These families bought and settled on land on the north bank of the Kaweah River in what is now the south end of Woodlake. By 1863 six families were living in what came to be called "Stringtown."

"Stringtown" was not a town; it was a string of families along the Kaweah, each of whom lived within shouting distance of the nearest neighbor.  Furthest east were the E.T. Rangles; next Rev. Blair's family; then JWC Pogues, followed by John and Polly Coble, and lastly, the John Pogues.  Farther west, beyond "Stringtown" were the Henry Moffetts.  At least two children were born in that area:  John Lee Pogue to John and Sarah (probably in "Stringtown"), and Jonathan Early Pogue born to JWC and Nancy in 1867 (definitely in "Stringtown").  "Stringtown's existence terminated abruptly.

Stay tuned for Part Two to find out what happened to "Stringtown."

Central Valley History: Ranching in Woodlake

My friend Sally Pace commissioned me to write about the history of Woodlake for the Kiwanis Magazine, maybe 300 words or less.  Woodlake, a sleepy town born in 1910 in the foothills of the big trees, became famous for cattle ranching, and oranges.   Its history is a collection of tales about hard-working farmers, farm workers and, of course, cowboys.  Most of the life in Woodlake takes place in the hills beyond the town, but there is a town that is home to about 7,000 people.

Writing history is so much more difficult than I had ever imagined that it would be.  I've never been great at making snap decisions, and that is the one thing that writers do constantly, word to word, story after story.  One story sounds good, but must not be told to save room for the story that the writer thinks is great.  The good story that was left out may have changed history, but history is forgotten, except what is written, so that piece of history remains a mystery. 

The other issue about history is that as soon as you write it you worry about offending someone.  I am so frozen in fear that I might tell the wrong story, the wrong way, that it's hard to tell any story at all.  I never understood this dilemma of writers, which is why history books are so bland, until I started writing this.  The real story, someone else's story, has tons of nerve endings attached to it that I may or may not touch.  People reading history also have opinions.  Even I have opinions, and they seep out ever so quietly into my words.

In this case, the story revolves around a town built around ranching.  Ranching means eventually killing cattle to eat.  Former neighbors of mine are vegan, meaning they eat no meat products, even milk or eggs.  Animal rights activists might object to marking cattle, and other groups might have other grounds for opposition, but cattle ranchers are proud of their work, and their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.  If I were writing a documentary, I would tell all sides of the story, but in this post, I've got only the rancher's side.

Straddling a calf getting stuck with a hot branding iron is not my idea of a safe job!

Another problem with writing history is that the beginning story is told and retold, but the middle of the story, the later years don't seem like real history.  I started my project a couple of months ago I started interviewing a friend whose great-great-grandfather pioneered in this area.  What I really wanted to find out what life was like in the 1940s to the 1970s.  He let me borrow his photo album from the 1970s, and he had great shots of cowboys, many of whom are still not retired from ranching even though they are approaching  or into their 80s.  Ranching seems to be a healthy lifestyle, if you don't get killed doing it!

Imagine, you, a bull-calf, a sharp knife, and the knowledge that if he flinched, the knife might miss its mark...  Notice also that you don't see obese ranchers here!  These guys can move quickly when necessary!

Gary spent about two hours with me helping me realize how difficult and dangerous it is to work with cattle.  That hasn't really changed any over the years.

You can see on my March, 2013 that branding and marking ears is still practiced on cattle today, so that the rancher can identify his cows easily.  I was trying to count flies!

Gary and I examined the 1895 atlas I have of Tulare County as he described where his ancestors settled, and where he took a group of people back-backing into the mountainous country.  Gary said if I wanted to hear the history of Woodlake, I should talk to his cousin, Roy Lee Davis, a cousin of his nearing 80.

Roy Lee Davis, retired farmer, back-pack guide from age 13.

I made an appointment and spent several afternoons with Roy Lee and his wife, Donna.  Roy lived in Woodlake all his life, and Donna moved to Woodlake from Porterville, 20 miles away, when they got married in the 1950s.  Our first afternoon getting acquainted we talked about the town of Woodlake itself.  After 15 minutes or so of introduction, our recorded conversation reached into the depths of Roy and Donna's memories.  Transcribing the exact conversation is the first step to creating an oral history.  These are the first words recorded on my transcription.

D:  Grandfather started the Presbyterian church. (pause) Well she was a Davis.  (I'm not sure who "she" is at this point in the conversation.  I'm just listening.)

R:  No, she was a Pogue.

D:  She got married to a Pogue.  I’m filling you in on his background, and they started the Presbyterian church in

R:  160 years ago

D:  And his name was Jonathan Blair, and he raised Roy’s Grandmother, so  they’ve been, and then through his mother the Mussens came out and started a little store in Woodlake

R:  In 1913 because Mom and her family came out, but their grandpa was already out here.  That’s why they came out to help him in the store.

When you take an oral history, you try not to interject too much.  That was hard for me for several reasons.  First of all I didn't always understand where the conversation was going, and as you can tell conversations jump mid-sentence sometimes.  Secondly because I AM a conversationalist, not a historian, I wanted to interject.  What they said reminded me of something in my life, and I'd wax autobiographical, which is not a great thing when you are taking an oral history.  Third, sometimes there would be a long lull in the conversation, so I would ask a question or make a comment.  As a result, the topics that emerge in the recording may be incidental to the story that the historian will eventually write.  Or it may be that the historian's story changes.

More important than ranching to Roy and Donna, was what was important to Roy's mom, that her grandfather started the Presbyterian Church in Woodlake.  One year after Tulare County was established, a little Presbyterian Church was erected in the non-existent town of Woodlake, by Roy Lee and Gary's ancestors.  My story shifted into another direction, from ranching to religion.  In the lives of Roy and Donna the two facets of life were inextricably intertwined.  In writing them down, the subject went outside-in, and from a male driven narrative started by Gary to a female one ended with the writing of a teacher, Grace Pogue.  It meandered in and out of years from 1860 to 1995 when I quit teaching in Woodlake.

Woodlake Presbyterian Church

Finally, a historian has to validate oral histories.  In this case I had a primary source document.  Roy Lee's relative, Grace Pogue, authored Within the Magic Circle telling about the beginning years of Woodlake. She wrote, "On April 18, 1866 Rev. Jonathan Blair and Rev. S. T. Gilliam organized the Kaweah Cumberland Presbyterian Church at the Hamilton School house about three miles south of Wodlake" p. 91.  These 19 charter members met in the school-house until "1881, (when) Jon H. Blair gave a tract of land for the school, the church, and the cemetery.  The school was moved from Section 24 to the newly acquired site west of the Presbyterian Church on Narranjo Blvd" p. 66.  Interestingly, Jonathan Blair must have been well off because according to Pogue, he served without out "financial remuneration" on a regular basis until his death in 1886.  The school and the church were part of each other, moving together into new buildings, sharing property when they no longer shared buildings. Pogue described the church inside and out, listed favorite hymns, descriptions of the horse-drawn buggies that transported them to church, then later by Visalia Electric Railroad by 1913, and humorous anecdotes.

The front of the brick building

Anyone interested in church history would be interested that in 1906 the small independent Kaweah Cumberland Presbyterian Church united with the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. and changed its name to First Presbyterian Church. p. 97.

Many denominations were pulling together nationally for the first time at this time.  The East and West coast churches in the early 1900s were less rigid, and according to the Nazarene Church history I learned in college, they compromised many liberal beliefs in order to attract the more conservative southern church goers, and consolidate into national denominations.  So Kaweah Cumberland Presbyterian Church joined the movement of nationalizing the denominations.  In writing this brief post I also used some knowledge that I learned when attending Nazarene Bible College, and if I was truly a historian, I would document my source of knowledge here.  Before the Civil War the country was "these United States", and after it became "the United States.  I found it interesting that forty years after the Civil War, there was a vast movement within the churches all over the country that helped the nation become "One Nation Under God."

600 W Naranjo Blvd, Woodlake, CA 93286  Naranjo means orange.

The First Presbyterian Church remained very influential in the Woodlake community and political structure until probably the mid-1990s when it split.  Some of the members broke away from the more liberal Presbyterian church and founded a non-denominational church called Foothill Bible Church.

By the end of my conversation with Roy Lee and Donna I had copious amounts of recorded information to sift through and still no linear picture of life in the 1950s to 1970s, but I had made two new friends.  It seems nearly impossible to separate the distant past from the recent past because it changed so gently.  This differs greatly from the 1850s to 70s when white Americans, seeking their fortune in gold fields and later hay and cotton fields, came in droves to Central California, where only Native Americans living for centuries. It was a time of drastic and exciting change for those pioneers and their descendants.  What followed is an established pattern, yet still different from life today.

I made more appointments, scanned more pictures, and borrowed another book or two of Grace Pogue to learn about the early history of Woodlake.

Almost sunset

Later one evening, I drove into town to take pictures of the historic Presbyterian Church.  As you can see it is a quaint, very simple, yet picturesque church that still stands on Jonathan Blair's donated property over a century later.

First published on my personal site http://tchistorygal.com/.

Central Valley History: A Glimpse of Woodlake High School in the 1960s

A beautiful place to live, the western one third of Tulare County consists of farming towns and communities, and the eastern section is National Forests.  From north to south the communities are:  Woodlake, Lemon Cove, Three Rivers, Exeter, Lindsay, Porterville (about 45,000 pop.), and Springville.  

A foothill community in Tulare County, California, Woodlake was and still is a small ranching and orange farming community.   Construction started on the high school building pictured below in 1964.  What was a typical day in Woodlake High School in the 1960s?   

Woodlake High School 2013

Sally and another retired Woodlake teacher, Frank Ainley, discussed the "good old days" of teaching high school in Woodlake.  They both taught from the 1960s until a few years ago.  "Remember intercoms interrupting every class?"  Frank Ainley remembered one specific intercom request during class.  "I need to see you," Loverin bellowed over the loudspeaker.

"I can't come right NOW!  I'm right in the middle of class," Frank answered the intercom voice as the entire high school listened.

"That's ok. If you're a good teacher, your kids will keep doing what they are supposed to do while you're gone," the principal responded again disrupting every class in the school.  When Ainley returned to the classroom about 25 minutes later, students had completed their assignments and were quiet.  No one was missing.

Both Frank and Sally talked about the kids doing projects, and keeping the teachers organized so that the projects ran smoothly.  Students could drive in those days during the school day to run errands, if they had a license.  So if the students needed something for the project, the teacher would just ask one of them to go get it at the store, and come back to class with it.  Frank stated, "If they had to travel for sports or field trips, the kids drove, if they had parents written permission, of course." 

Principal Loverin expected teachers and students worked together to complete service assignments.  When he hired Sally a few days before the school year started, Loverin told her off-handedly, "We have an opening inservice for all the teachers the first day back to school. There will be about 60 people for breakfast and lunch."  The implication was clear.

According to Sally and Frank, administrators made the assignments, then trusted the teachers to somehow accomplish them.  Both former teachers remembered going into the Loverin's office upset about some issue, and coming out apologizing for taking up his time, and thanking him for the new assignment he just gave them.  Yet both claimed teacher morale was at a high.

One day early in his career Frank asked Loverin, "When are you coming in to do an evaluation of me?"

The principal answered, "If I didn't think you couldn't do the job, I wouldn't have hired you."  He didn't have an evaluation that year.  He didn't have very many evaluations.  

Frank talked about discipline in the school.  The vice principal,  a BIG guy, Herman Ziegler, disciplined with a big stick.  Sally and Frank commented that both the principal and the VP were BIG.  Apparently that characteristic  got the job done in Woodlake.  Frank and Sally both said the kids loved the principal and the vice-principal, Herman Ziegler, and most got good jobs after they graduated.  

Judging from a different era, Loverin and Ziegler broke current laws, and would be removed from their schools.  Frank and Sally saw them differently.  Sally repeated an oft-said comment teachers said about Loverin, "He could have sold icicles  to Eskimos and made a profit.  The teachers loved him.  He took care of them."  Both teachers remember the 1960s with fondness and pride.

Sally became a counselor in the high school and brought national recognition to Woodlake High School a few years ago because she raised so much money for scholarships, and enabled students to attend college.   Both Frank and Sally have been retired for about five years.  Frank quit teaching in his mid-seventies.  Today he ranches and is still active in the community.   Sally retired in her early 60s and volunteers in the school and community.