Fresno, California

As the mad auriferous rush wound down in the Sierras, and many miners continued along the craggy Rockies, there were those who sought their fortune in other forms of gold. They climbed down to the Central Valley in California, returning to the occupations of the majority of mankind over the last few millennia, agriculture. Though not at first obvious, the riches of the valley were there for the taking, given a little ingenuity and a lot of work. Fresno was a product of all this.

In 1813, Lieutenant Gabriel Moraga of the Spanish army had named the area Fresno after all the large ash trees growing along the banks of the San Joaquin and the slough where the old pueblo of Las Juntas existed. Eighteen miles south, at the head of the slough, the city of the ash trees came into being.

A handful of shacks along a railroad came to be known as Fresno Station in 1872. It served Millerton, the county seat at the time. However, Millerton, a town serving miners, fell into decline when, in 1874, the county seat was moved to Fresno, in the heart of an agricultural area. The town was incorporated in 1885.

The Yokut Indians had lived around Las Juntas at one time but were taken to the Mission San Juan Bautista at [Page 251]the turn of the 19th century. Spaniards inhabited the old pueblo Las Juntas after that, and later Mexicans after independence. It was an out-of-the-way place where criminals, such as the Murrieta and Vasquez gangs, later found refuge. By the 1880s, the land had been bought up by Henry Miller and the residents forced to leave, relocating to Firebaugh and deserting Las Juntas.

Fresno County came into being in 1856. There already were some Basque sheepherders in the county. Over the course of the next decade, Moses Church settled in the area and irrigated to grow wheat and grain. Others were attracted to the site, such as Frances Eisen. Eisen grew grapes and produced wine, but also inadvertently came across what became Fresno's famous crop, raisins, after his grapes dried on the vine. By the later 1870s, raisins became a great success, because the preservation of food was still rather primitive and the dried grapes lasted a considerable time and continued to be delicious. Martin Kearney, another famed grower, founded the California Raisin Growers' Association by 1899. The ranch and fields of Clovis Cole, “the Wheat King of the Nation,” raised crops on large acreage as well.

The agricultural success of the 1870s meant that a lot of labor was needed to maintain production. As it was, the local population, dating to the annexation of California from Mexico, was insufficient. Chinese labor was brought in, but the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 forbade further importation, and competition with the railroads for workers led to even greater demand. Fresno's ranchers found a new source of cheap labor in Japan.

Despite the devastation of the city itself by fires in 1882 and 1883, growth in the area continued in the 1890s, with the construction of a flume from the mountains into the city. Primarily conceived to carry lumber, it led to the evolution of that industry, but it also carried water for further irrigation. Across the world in Russia, at about the same time, the Volga Germans, encouraged and welcomed by Catherine the Great more than a century before, suffered the consequences of a poorly run nation and a series of revolutions. Many immigrated to the United States, and from 1890 to 1920 more than 7,000 settled in the Fresno area. About a quarter of them lived in the city proper, as the 1920 census illustrates. The majority left in the 1910s.

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