Earth Day was still an infant, and the modern environmental movement was just getting its legs when the Yaudanchi Ecological Reserve was created in 1975.

     Back then, when most people probably couldn’t define the word “ecological,” the folks at the California Department of Fish and Game (now the California Department of Fish and Wildlife) noticed that a patch of unused former Tule River bottomland near the Porterville State Hospital was a popular breeding site for great blue heron, a wading bird partial to wetlands and the largest species of North American heron.

     That recognition became the starting point for a remarkable collaboration of interests that included the Tule River Indian tribe, state and local office-holders, local environmental activists, the Boy Scouts, the hospital, local farms and businesses, water districts, and many volunteers in creating a nature preserve.

     Today, the Yaudanchi Ecological Reserve continues to live up to its name on 164 acres adjacent to what is now called the Porterville Developmental Center. The account of how the site was defined and preserved comprises a series of changing players, fits and starts, and shifting motivations. The end result is a rarity in Tulare County: A sizable tract of foothills valley rangeland that is left almost entirely to the designs of nature, where indigenous animals, native plants, a pond, remnants of a riparian woodland, and migrating birds constitute the main attractions, and the public is welcome to walk among them.

     The Yaudanchi site was owned for many decades by the Porterville State Hospital, housing its sewage treatment plant and related buildings. But by the 1970s, those buildings were long gone, and the land had reverted to a wild, vacant tract. Thus, in 1975, the state of California announced its intentions to sell as surplus property the unused 88 acres next to the hospital.

     The movement to make this land a preserve was initiated by a rookery of great blue heron, the Porterville Garden Club, and the Tule River Indian tribe. The Garden Club was the first to identify the site as the home to a sizable rookery of the huge birds. The Tule River Tribal Council named the site “Yaudanchi” as homage to the original native Yaudanchi Yokuts residents of the Porterville area.

     Several local interests, including the Porterville Environmental Council, mobilized to preserve the heron rookery. Among community groups that joined were two local water districts, the Tea Pot Dome Water District and the Vandalia Water District; the local chapter of the Safari Club; the Boy Scouts; and eventually the Friant Water Users Authority and the California Department of Fish and Game.

     An important development occurred in October, 1975, when the Porterville State Hospital advisory committee supported a resolution for a wildlife reservation and heron rookery on the property. Made up of prominent citizens and health-care professionals from throughout the San Joaquin Valley and beyond, the committee included Dr. Jack Ramos of Fresno, Sue B. Ely of Tulare, Helen Hansen of Menlo Park, Margaret Foley of Visalia, and Howard Smith of Porterville. Medical Director Dr. James T. Shelton welcomed the resolution and suggested the property be sold to a non-profit for $1.00 so that it would remain preserved.

     The plan, however, needed the approval of the state Legislature. In early 1976, the Porterville Recorder reported that Assemblyman Gordon Duffy said the state would not sell the property but would retain it as a heron rookery.

     By then, a great number of groups were supporters, notably the Sierra Club; the American Association of Retired Persons; the American Association of University Women; the Audubon societies of Tulare, Kern, and Fresno counties; the Tulare County Board of Supervisors; the Porterville City Council; and the Porterville Farm Bureau.

     In mid-1976, the finishing touches were put on an agreement that would preserve the Yaudanchi property in perpetuity as a nature reserve. The agreement maintained that the preserve would continue to be owned by the state of California and managed by the Department of Fish and Game.

     For most of the next 20 years, however, there was little management, and severe drought in the 1980s devastated the grove of cottonwood and sycamore trees that was essential to the blue heron rookery. The big birds began moving away.

     Yaudanchi started on the road to its current status as a true ecological reserve with a couple of related developments in the 1990s. First, the California Sierra Chapter of Safari Club International, an organization that was among Yaudanchi’s original supporters, began some management of the site, promoting wildlife and restoring habitat.

  Then in 1997, the Department of Fish and Game received a $20,000 grant from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to make improvements in the site’s water supply, including lining some ponding basins and directing water to and from wetlands habitat. The Sierra Safari Club matched the grant with $10,000 of its own and donated more than 400 volunteer hours to developing the site.

     By that point, Fish and Game wildlife biologists noted that Yaudanchi was already a valuable habitat for wildlife, including bobcats, ducks, the San Joaquin kit fox, several species of hawks, great horned owls, and various wading and shore birds, including migrating species.

     The reported size of the Yaudanchi Ecological Reserve has fluctuated over the years, because an exact survey was never made and some land was added to the original site. Several sources identified it as 88 acres in 1975. The city of Porterville’s current general plan site map defines it as 164 acres, slightly more than a quarter section.

     The reserve also has continued to receive assistance. The Safari Club has worked to create habitat for many local birds and animals (more than 75 species) as well as migrators. Community groups and schools are invited to help by planting trees and other vegetation. The Tule River Parkway Association donated hundreds of oaks. Volunteers from organizations such as WildPlaces have periodically removed non-native invasive species. Managed uses include cattle grazing and groundwater recharge.

     Today, Yaudanchi Ecological Reserve enables us to amble through a landscape that after many years and many changes once again resembles this countryside as it appeared over a hundred years ago, now managed to abet the land’s service to nature. Visitors are invited for nature walks, bird-watching, field studies, photography, volunteering, and exploring the habitat of one of the San Joaquin Valley’s natural treasures.

                                                                                                                                                                           June, 2013

2017 Update: Yaudanchi Ecological Reserve is currently closed to the public. Its status as an Ecological Reserve and as a TCT Treasure is to be determined. As the TCT Project team learns more, we will post further updates.

     To walk the streets of Wilsonia is to walk through a living past. Perhaps nowhere is there a better example of the ever-changing American dream.

     The mid to late 1800s was a time of dreams, especially in the far western United States. Freedom, equal opportunity, and settlement of vast, unoccupied government lands were seen as the unquestioned rights of every citizen. In sprawling, newly formed Tulare County, the forests were there for the taking, to explore, settle, and cut without restrictions, to divide into sections of ownership, to use and abuse at will. There was certainly more than enough for everyone.

     In 1857, Joseph Hardin Thomas set up a lumber mill in the county’s high timberlands near today’s town of Pinehurst. That opened settlement and logging in a prime area of Giant Sequoia trees until the 1870s, when a growing conservation-conscious public began an effort to save the grove.

     Daniel M. Perry held a homestead claim for 160 acres that lay just outside the grove. He watched as the conservation efforts grew through the years, and finally sold the parcel to lumberman Smith Comstock—just one year before the formation of General Grant National Park, in 1890. Times turned hard in the 1890s, the land changed hands several times, and no extensive logging on it ever took place.

     The turn of the 20th century heralded astounding changes for Tulare County. With the mass production of automobiles, recreational roads began to wind into the mountains, and interest in preservation of the forests gave way to new leisure-time pursuits.

     California Fish and Game Commissioner Andrew Ferguson could see the potentials. He gained private title to the Perry tract in 1918 and turned a portion of it into a summer home subdivision. A staunch Democrat and ardent admirer of then President Woodrow Wilson, Ferguson placed a large sign with a portrait of the President at the entrance to the subdivision, proclaiming it “Wilsonia.” He also placed some restrictions. No meadows could be sold and no trees over six inches in diameter could be cut without consent of Wilsonia’s governing body.

     In 1919 Ferguson sold 20 of the 160 acres to a group known as The Masonic Family Club, and the self-governing group built 24 cabins as a separate part of the Wilsonia community. The rest of the land continued to be subdivided until, by the late 1920s, the tract had 180 landowners and 150 homes.

     Wilsonia was the perfect example of a recreational mountain community of its times. It was a family retreat, with the women and their children making the rustic cabins their full-time summer homes. Dances, social gatherings, neighborhood barbecues, cooperative campfire programs with the Park, hikes, horseback riding, and functions to raise money for a community clubhouse filled the summer days.

     But it didn’t last. In 1931, Andrew Ferguson died, and his son Thomas sold 20 acres of the Wilsonia tract to the federal government for a new approach to General Grant Park’s headquarters. Next, Thomas sold a 40-acre strip along the eastern boundary to a private individual. Finally, he sold the remaining unimproved land to the Park Service. This gave the federal government a large stake in the community and was to portend even more unsettling changes.

     The biggest change came in 1940, when General Grant National Park became part of the new, greatly expanded Kings Canyon National Park. Overnight, Wilsonia was transformed from a private National Forest residential enclave into a National Park inholding.

     Since the 1930s, the National Park Service had made it clear that one of its goals was to eliminate private inholdings in parklands. But it wasn’t until the 1960s, after the Great Depression, World War II, and recovery from them finally ended, that a new wave of conservation and preservation efforts could be addressed.

     Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks then included Wilsonia on a list of their historic cultural resources; but they also began working toward a now-mandated Park Service policy to eliminate private inholdings. With passage of the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund in 1965, the parks set up a “willing seller-willing buyer” program to acquire as many inholdings as possible. Kings Canyon National Park used the funds to buy as many cabins and commercial properties in Wilsonia as possible..

     One commercial owner and 12 cabin owners took long-term leases and continued occupancy until their leases expired. Eleven of those cabins remain as historic structures. The Park burned or razed others to return the sites to their natural state, but left intact some that might possibly be used for park administration, only to let the structures deteriorate. It denied uses such as horse corrals on some of the open lands, leaving them untended and uncared for, while it actively pursued more landowners who might be willing to sell. And the historic community began to disintegrate.

     The Park Service continued its land acquisitions until only 100 private acres remained. It also changed its management guidelines with a requirement that private property holders get approval from the Park Service before making any changes that might be deemed incompatible with the surrounding park.

     In 1978, a group of Wilsonia residents took a complaint to the United States House of Representatives, protesting the new Park policies that had not had adequate public hearings. Their action helped establish new legal guidelines for public input on government policies. Still, the policies didn’t change, and the community continued to decline.

     Finally, in the summer of 1991, another community group met to determine what could be done to save Wilsonia. Political action had achieved few results; perhaps national and state preservation guidelines would. If they could get Wilsonia listed on the National Register of Historic Places, further destruction of the community’s historic buildings might be stopped.

     The project took years of effort. The community raised funds to employ a professional historian who documented the private holdings and history of the community. Then it hired a Los Angeles firm to guide it through a long process of California State Office of Historic Preservation determination of eligibility. After that, the Department of Interior reviewed the findings. Finally, on March 14, 1996, the Wilsonia Historic District was officially listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

     In the following years, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks have worked together with the community to maintain and improve the district’s lands and structures. Once again, changing times have helped the process. For the Parks, not only the listing’s required need for historic preservation, but a growing American emphasis on public/private partnerships, has opened opportunities for new programs and cooperation.

     For Wilsonia, its recognition as an important historical resource has been the fulfillment of an American dream. That dream may continue to change, but the community and its vital history will live on for us to share.

April, 2016

     It all started with the vision for a river refuge — a place for the people of Porterville to access the natural world without leaving town. The Tule River Parkway Association (TRPA) was originated by Don Zuckswert, a professor at Porterville College, sometime prior to 1990 to advocate for and assist the City of Porterville in creating a pathway along the river.

     Today local residents can retreat to the 2.2–mile Tule River Parkway for a stroll, jog, bicycle or horseback ride under leafy shade trees. The more adventurous may explore a network of informal sandy trails winding along the river’s floodplain and to the river’s edge from Jaye Street to Westwood.

     This story is about how the action of local residents transformed the river and simultaneously inspired a change of heart about the value of the Tule River.

     The Tule had been neglected and mistreated. The river was looked upon as simply a conduit for water conveyance rather than a dynamic ecosystem. Old tires, discarded appliances, furniture, and refuse littered its path. Bulldozers scoured the riverbed to open up the channel for flood control and attempted to decrease an infestation of the noxious Arundo weed ( Arundo donax). Unfortunately, the unwanted plant thrived after bulldozing by sending up thousands of new shoots while native plants including Elderberry bushes were plowed over.

     TRPA members Don Zuckswert, Don Stover, Art Cowley, Teresa Stump, and later Cathy Capone dedicated themselves to the cause of cleaning up the river and making it accessible to the public. They rallied the support of residents by holding meetings, and writing letters to city officials and editorials to the Porterville Recorder. They documented the trash-strewn riverbed, infestation of invasive plants, and bulldozing of the riverbed in a photographic slide show titled “River of Shame” – and presented it to local service clubs such as the Morning Rotary and the Garden Club in order to raise awareness and support for the parkway.

     The vision for a river pathway earned the attention of Porterville’s civic leaders early on. In 1992, the City of Porterville’s Tule River Parkway Master Plan proposed a pathway stretching from the Friant-Kern Canal eastward to Bartlett Park near Lake Success– a distance of more than 12 miles. The City began the slow and tedious work of purchasing the land, acquiring permits, and obtaining funding. A break-through happened when Edward B. “Ted” Cornell and his wife, Elizabeth, of Cotton Center, donated a key 17-acre parcel. That donation fulfilled the matching funds needed to procure a $400,000 grant from CalTrans, and the trail building began.

     The TRPA built momentum by activating the populace — getting hundreds of people to come down to the Tule and work together to begin transforming the river of shame into a healthy waterway ecosystem. “People did not realize that there was this potentially incredible resource right in the center of town,” stated Capone. “We had to engage them.”

     Naturalist-guided walks engaged residents in learning the importance of fostering native plants and trees along the riverbanks to provide wildlife habitat. The walks educated residents (and the powers that be) about more environmentally friendly management practices for taking care of rivers.

     River cleanups involved volunteers from Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, Wal-Mart Distribution Center, Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Porterville, to hundreds of others working together to remove the heaps of trash, discarded tires, and appliances from the riverbed.

     According to Cathy Capone, the slow growth of oak trees seemed, at times, to parallel the pace of progress with the river parkway. When asked about the ultimate lesson learned from her over twenty years of involvement in the project, Capone summed it up, “If we work together we can get a whole lot more done than if we work individually. Look to your city council, look to your board of supervisors, look to other organizations. Don’t give up your goal. Find partners.”

     Porterville broke ground on the first section of the parkway in December, 1998. In April of 1999, the first half mile had been completed, from near the Highway 65/Highway 190 junction north and eastward to Indiana Street. In February, 2003, the next segment, from Indiana to Jaye Street (.9 mile), was dedicated. Next came the .7 mile stretch from Jaye Street to Main Street, dedicated in January, 2005.

     TRPA has gotten grants and donations and involved many dozens of volunteers in beautifying the parkway by helping to plant and maintain hundreds of trees along the paved trail. Improvement and expansion of the parkway continues with a new neighborhood park adjacent to the river at Plano and community interest in formal parkway paths between Westwood and Highway 65, and from Main Street east to Plano.

     At the heart of Porterville’s General Plan 2030 are guiding policies that include protecting the Tule River Corridor as an open space resource to meet multiple needs, including bike and trail linkages, storm water drainage and treatment, wildlife habitat, and active and passive recreation.

     Truly, a change of heart has occurred, and the value of a river has enriched the lives of Porterville residents. And the Tule River Parkway continues to grow. “We’d love to connect the parkway to Bartlett Park at Lake Success, and connect it going farther west also. Some of our more adventuresome members would love to see it go to the Great Divide,” says Cathy.

                                                                                                                                                                                       February, 2014

UPDATE, 09/27/24:  In 2014, the City of Porterville was planning to extend the Parkway eastward from Main Street to Plano Street and westward from Highway 65 to Westwood, for a total length of 3.5 miles.  Construction has now begun on the eastward extension, to take the paved pathway from  S. Main Street to Fallen Heroes Park near S. Plano Street.  Two bridges will connect the pathway with the large island that can be seen from the Plano Street bridge and the park.  The new section will include solar lighting, retaining walls, and trail signage, and should be completed within a year.  TRPA and the City of Porterville will also use U.S. Fish and Wildlife grant funding to enhance habitat for native birds and wildlife in the project area, removing invasive non-native plants and planting and tending four distinct habitat communities.  (Volunteers have already created 31 wildlife-friendly gardens in the Native Plant Demonstration Project that runs east along the existing Parkway from the trailhead at the intersection of Parkway Drive and Oak View Street.)

     In June, 1980, a group of citizens concerned about the loss of historical buildings and artifacts from the City of Tulare’s past formed the Tulare City Historical Society. Their first project was a big one: to raise $375,000 to build a museum on the site of the town’s first public school. With the help of their chief fundraiser, C.R. “Budge” Sturgeon, within two years they raised enough to begin construction.

     The first phase, a 7400 square foot structure, opened on November 16, 1985. Phase two was completed seven years later. It added office and storage space, the Tom Hennion Archives Center, and the Heritage Art Gallery, which serves as both an art gallery and event/reception space used by the community.

     In addition to military memorabilia, the museum’s exhibits concentrate on the city’s founding, life at the beginning of the 20th century, and the achievements of the town’s heroes. A self-guided audio tour of the museum is available at the entrance desk.

     On July 25, 1872, Southern Pacific Railroad engineer Andrew Neff drove the first locomotive to the end of the line at what would become the town of Tulare. Southern Pacific was pushing its rail line south through the San Joaquin Valley then and expected the existing communities to offer it land grants and up to $300,000 in cash.

     When the twenty year old town of Visalia refused, the railroad decided to establish a new town ten miles to the south. Farmers in that area gladly granted land to the railroad, and Tulare was born. Named for the tall “tule” reeds growing around the edge of nearby Tulare Lake, the town was intended to be the major railroad terminal for the southern Valley.

     Southern Pacific soon built a machine shop and roundhouse south of the current Inyo Avenue, and a passenger and freight depot on the southwest corner of the future Tulare and J Streets. With the monthly $40,000 railroad payroll, the town grew steadily from a population of 25 in 1873 until the early 1890s, when its population was 2.697.

     Then a double disaster struck. In 1891, Southern Pacific decided to move its repair center to Bakersfield, since it was extending its tracks south through the Tehachapi Mountains. The loss of the railroad jobs to the Tulare economy was compounded by the national financial panic of 1893 and the depression that followed. Though the local economy floundered and a number of businessmen left town, the community survived by emphasizing its strong agricultural base.

     Exhibits in the C.R. Sturgeon Hall recreate a historic barber shop and blacksmith shop, plus what one would have seen a hundred years ago in the kitchen, parlor, and bedroom of a typical Tulare home. Other displays remind visitors of important 19th century events in Tulare’s history. One exhibit shows the devastation wrought by three fires that destroyed the wooden buildings of downtown. No record shows exactly how many were destroyed in the fire of 1875, but 25 buildings were burned in 1883, leaving only one standing, and then the 1886 fire leveled 77 more.

     Among the unique exhibits at the museum are those about Tulare’s heroes. These include Bob Mathias, Sim Iness, Richard Torrez Jr., Bryan Allen, Admiral Elmo R. “Bud” Zumwalt, and Manuel Toledo.

     Mathias and Iness were local boys who became Olympic champions. Mathias was a football and track star at Tulare Union High School. After graduation, he concentrated on the decathlon, and in the following summer of 1948 won the decathlon Olympic gold medal in London. He then attended Stanford University and in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics repeated his gold medal triumph.

     Both of Mathias’s Olympic medals are on display in the museum. During his career, he competed in 13 decathlons, winning all of them. After appearing in four Hollywood films and a short-lived TV series, he was elected to the United States Congress in 1966 and served for eight years representing the Central Valley.

     Garland Simeon (Sim) Iness was a football and track standout at Tulare Union High School, alongside fellow teammate and classmate Bob Mathias. Specializing in the discus, Sim narrowly missed making the 1948 Olympic team. Continuing to set records at Compton Junior College and USC, Sim won the discus Olympic gold medal at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, Finland, where each of his throws set a new Olympic record.

     Sim would go on to set the discus World Record in 1953. He, too, returned to the Valley, and served as a teacher, counselor, and coach at Porterville High School and Porterville Junior College for 39 years. Memorabilia of both Iness and Mathias from high school through their Olympic competitions are displayed at the museum, as are remembrances from Mathias’s political career.

     Richard Torrez Jr. became the third Tularean to bring home an Olympic medal, winning the silver in men’s super heavyweight boxing in the summer 2020 Games (held in 2021 in Tokyo). Born, raised, and trained (by his father) in Tulare, Torrez shone athletically from age 5. Before winning the U.S.A.’s first Olympic heavyweight boxing medal in 33 years, Torrez achieved ten national championships (his first at age 10), a Golden Gloves national title in 2017, and a bronze at the Pan-American Games in 2019.

     He signed up in late 2021 for a pro boxing career that will enable him to continue to train with his dad in the family gym and to give back to the community that raised him. Many of his medals, uniforms, and other memorabilia are on display in the museum.

     Another Tulare High School graduate, Bryan Allen, a hang glider pilot and a very strong cyclist, became the first to fly a human-powered aircraft that met the difficult criteria for the historic Kremer Prize when he pedaled and piloted the Gossamer Condor around a 2 kilometer figure-eight course in Shafter in 1977. The plane had a wingspan of nearly 100 feet, but weighed only 70 pounds. Three years later, Allen flew (pedaled) the Gossamer Albatross, a successor plane, across the 22 mile wide English Channel. Pictures of both these flights are part of the display dedicated to his achievements.

     Admiral Zumwalt, a Tulare High class Valedictorian, attended the U.S. Naval Academy. In 1965, at the age of 45, he became the youngest Rear Admiral in U.S. history. He also commanded the U.S. Naval Forces in Vietnam. In 1970, he became a Full Admiral when he was appointed Chief of Naval Operations, once again the youngest in history. Tulare named a downtown park in his and his father’s honor, and the U.S. Navy recently named its newest class of destroyers for him.

     The Robert & Geraldine Soults Hall serves as the Military History Wing, which houses the Manuel Toledo Military Collection donated by World War II veteran and Tulare jeweler Manuel Toledo. Its foundation is an extensive group of U.S. military uniforms and artifacts from the Civil War to the first Gulf War. Uniforms from Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire, as well as other military memorabilia, round out the displays.

     Toledo grew up in Tulare and fought during WWII with the U.S. 7th Infantry in the South Pacific, where he was wounded several times. During his last long recovery, he resolved to do whatever he could to help other veterans. After returning to Tulare, he was instrumental in establishing the local AMVETS post, the largest post in the nation. In 1987, he opened his own military museum, which provided the foundation for the Tulare museum’s current collection.

     With its ongoing art exhibits, extensive displays, special events, and community involvement, the Tulare Historical Museum is indeed “A jewel among the small museums of California.”

March, 2016; updated July, 2023

     Nestled within the oak preserve protected by Visalia’s Mooney Grove Park, the Tulare County Museum complex holds a vast collection of our county and state’s history, including one of the largest Native American basket collections in California. It also displays a great variety of artifacts of the pioneer era, a trove of historic agricultural equipment, dozens of restored structures from the late 1800s on, and many other treasures, appealing to all ages, that tell the history of Tulare County.

     The seed of the Museum was planted in 1934, when Hugh Mooney and his family donated five thousand dollars to fund the building of a museum in Mooney Grove, which had itself been sold to the county in 1909 by his parents and is the oldest county park in California. But it wasn’t until 1947 that approval was given by the county Board of Supervisors to begin building the museum on the specified site.

     In 1948, construction began with the laying of corner stones and a dedicatory address by Dan McFadzean, who was one of the County Historical Society’s first members and also the attorney who had prepared the legal papers for the County’s acquisition of the park from the Mooneys in 1909. The museum was opened to the public on July 1, 1949, and the Tulare County Historical Society ran its operations from 1948 to 1956, when the county took over that responsibility.

     For almost three quarters of a century, the Tulare County Museum has actively partnered with the County Board of Supervisors, the County Historical Society, members of the county’s varied and historic cultures and communities, and many other local organizations and institutions “To protect, preserve and promote a shared understanding of Tulare County’s past and its place in the future by providing the community with innovative, diverse, and engaging exhibits and events.”

     The 1948 structure was originally a single gallery, now known as the Middle Room. Today, it houses a military display, tractor exhibit, Sequoia and Rankin fields aviation display, a Visalia Electric Railroad model train, and the Mountain Connection exhibit, which highlights the Sierra Nevada mountains.

     The East Wing, holding the native basket collection, was added in 1956 and the West Wing, or Annie Mitchell Room, with displays of living styles and early county families was added in 1967, making a total of three galleries. Around 1970, the Gun and Saddle gallery was added onto the main gallery to house the growing collection of firearms and tack, including several of the famous Visalia Saddles.

     The beautiful Masonic Building Façade was donated in 1961 and placed behind the original museum building to create an enclosed space for the Main Street gallery, which holds life-sized replicas of historic business establishments. During the 1960s, many structures, such as the Surprise School, the Emken House, and Visalia’s first jail, were added to a Pioneer Village of original historic buildings and preserved on the museum grounds.

     The museum’s newest addition is the History of Tulare County Farm Labor & Agriculture Museum. This building’s displays include a large steam tractor and a Hackney Auto Plow, along with a reconstructed Linnell Camp house that was used to shelter migrant farm workers. But the main focus of this Museum is its cultural gallery that highlights, one at a time, each of sixteen different cultural groups and their contributions to our county’s agricultural history.

     Each new exhibit brings new involvement in the museum as members of each group provide many of the photos and items on display. The Tulare County Office of Education also produces a video to accompany each exhibit, featuring interviews of local members of the highlighted group. An opening reception with food, guest speakers, and often music offers another opportunity for the Museum to connect with each community in a wonderful way.

     Over the years, the Museum has collaborated closely with the Tulare County Historical Society to acquire historical items for display and to host fundraising events that support vital restoration projects throughout the museum complex. The Clocktower that houses the clock that used to be in the Bank of Visalia building downtown, the Southern Pacific Caboose that was used on the Visalia Electric Railroad, the facade of the Masonic Building that used to be in downtown Visalia, the Main Street gallery, and recently the Agricultural Equipment project have all been funded by these events.

     The Agricultural Equipment Project has been in the works for several years with two components – restoration of displayed equipment, and construction of a building in which to showcase it. Don Vieira and Carl Switzer, members of the Tulare County Historical Society, have been integral in the conception of the project as well as bringing it to fruition.

   Through their efforts, the Museum has partnered with local high schools whose students have been working to restore several pieces of equipment from the collection that have been weathered by the elements over the years. The students’ research on each piece of restored equipment will contribute to the timeline of the history of local agriculture, a main focus of the new building.

     As the Tulare County Museum continues to expand its collection and its educational programming — including yearly classroom tours, lectures, publications, and events — community engagement is vital in making those efforts successful. The Main Street Jamboree is one such free and fun event for the whole family that has helped to connect the museum to the community. Held each year on the last Saturday in April, the Jamboree provides many new and fun ways for visitors to learn about Tulare County history and its important part in the life and growth of California.

     The Tulare County Museum, with its constantly growing and improving displays and events, lies at the core of our county’s history. Set in one of the most beautiful oak groves in Tulare County, it is the perfect place to discover the wonderful preservation of our fascinating past. History can be intriguing. It can be fun. Come join us!

March, 2021

     The gentle loop trail from the foot of Crescent Meadow to Tharp’s Log is one of the easiest and loveliest in Sequoia National Park. In just under a mile, at the top of this loop, lies the oldest man-made structure in the Park. It is a truly unique tree house — a genuine log cabin.

     Hale Dixon Tharp, the pioneer rancher who is credited with being the first Caucasian American to discover and explore the Giant Forest, modified this fire-hollowed fallen sequoia tree in 1861 to provide a comfortable, convenient, weather-proof dwelling for his summer sojourns there.

     Ten years earlier, the Michigan-born 23-year-old Tharp had come to California with a wagon train. He had been hired by Mrs. Chloe Ann Smith Swanson, an Illinois widow with four young sons, to drive her prairie schooner across the country to Placerville.

     There, Tharp began working in the gold mines, and soon married Mrs. Swanson. But after a mining injury, he decided to find a better way to make a living. Reasoning that California’s growing population would continue to make a ready market for beef, he went searching for free range for cattle.

     It was 1856, one of California’s worst drought years, but eventually, Tharp found what he what he was looking for. In Tulare County, he followed the Kaweah River east from Visalia. Where the Kaweah ran through a broad plain bordered by the last high foothills (now the site of Lake Kaweah), water, grass, and game abounded, and the hundreds of Native Americans living in the area seemed friendly and curious about the first Euro-American most of them had ever seen.

     Near the confluence of Horse Creek and the Kaweah (about 2-1/2 miles below what is now the town of Three Rivers), Tharp made a preemption claim on the land, erected a brush shelter as an improvement, and returned to Placerville.

     Two years later, he came back to his Kaweah homestead with his brother-in-law, John Swanson. They built a cabin and a barn, then explored the area further, looking for summer pasturage for their cattle. Tharp befriended his Native American neighbors, visited their large village at Hospital Rock, and was intrigued by their stories of green meadows and gigantic trees in the nearby mountains.

     That summer, two of the local Yokuts guided him up past Moro Rock into the Giant Forest. At Crescent and Log meadows, Tharp saw excellent forage for his animals. He laid claim to the land, inscribing his name and the date, 1858, with his knife on a huge, hollow fallen sequoia at the north end of Log Meadow.

     Thus Tharp was not only the first Euro-American settler on the Kaweah above the Central Valley, he was also one of the first non-Indians to see this majestic sequoia forest. Soon, however, others began to settle in the Horse Creek and Three Rivers area. As a result, the local Indians were decimated by the whites’ contagious diseases and steadily displaced from their homeland. By the summer of 1865, almost all were gone.

     Meanwhile, Tharp had moved his wife and family to Tulare County and continued to explore the mountains. By 1861, he decided that he had to take further action to hold his claim to the Giant Forest country: He drove a herd of horses up to graze Log Meadow all summer, and he turned its fallen sequoia into a summer home.

     The great tree’s trunk had split crosswise into two sections when it crashed to the earth some centuries before. The upper segment was not hollow, but the larger, 70-foot-long lower section was entirely hollow, its interior charcoal black from fire. Almost 55 feet of it was large enough in diameter for Tharp’s use, with an interior diameter of almost six feet at the large open end.

     For light and ventilation, he cut a large window into the south side of the log. He made a shutter for it of redwood shakes attached to a redwood frame with hinges made from leather straps and horseshoes. He enclosed the big west end of the log with an 8 x 10 foot shake structure of three walls, a roof, and a door, but left the east end open for additional ventilation. On the cabin’s south wall, he built a mud-mortared fireplace and chimney from local granite boulders. He furnished the cabin with a rough bed, table, and bench, made from massive slabs of redwood, all standing on a smooth floor of packed earth.

     Every year thereafter, until Sequoia National Park was created in 1890, members of Tharp’s family and herds of Tharp’s livestock spent summers ranging in the Giant Forest. Tharp’s Log also sheltered hired hands who tended his cattle, and various visitors — including a very famous one.

     Not everyone who came to the region wanted to exploit its resources for profit. In 1875, John Muir arrived, wandering over the plateau with his mule, Brownie, and marveling at the number, size, beauty, and extent of its Big Trees. Inspired, he gave it the name still used today — Giant Forest.

     Muir writes that he encountered a man on horseback, but doesn’t name him. It was likely Hale Tharp or one of his sons who then invited Muir to make himself at home in his “camp in a big hollow log on the side of a meadow.” Enchanted by this “noble den,” and greatly enjoying his host’s company and conversation, Muir spent several nights in Tharp’s Log before continuing south in search of the farthest sequoias. For years thereafter, he worked and wrote tirelessly to save the Big Trees from destruction.

     In 1920, eight years after Tharp died, the Park Service bought the last of his inholdings in the Giant Forest, paying his son Nort $33,130 for the 120-acre tract that included Tharp’s Log. Soon, the Log, also called Tharp’s Cabin, was opened for public display. The Park Service restored the structure to its original condition in 1923, aided by donations from the Three Rivers Woman’s Club. More work was done in the 1930s and ’50s. Unfortunately, Tharp’s engraving, “H.D. Tharp 1858,” was destroyed by vandals in 1953, even though it had been protected for many years beneath a glass plate.

     In recognition of its local significance in the field of exploration and settlement, Tharp’s Log was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977. The cabin is over 150 years old now; the log itself may last another thousand years. That adds a long perspective to the enjoyment of this special summer home and the contemplation of Tulare County’s history.

June, 2020

     The old foothill stage road to White River hasn’t changed much in one hundred seventy years. It is paved now and widened a bit, but still winds like a writhing snake through the green and golden foothills of the southern Sierra Nevada. Miles stretch without a building in sight.

     In the early 1800s, current Tulare County’s south borderlands were a virtual wilderness. There was little to draw settlers to the dry, summer-scorched area; only a few isolated Yokuts families and renegade outlaws called the southern Sierra foothills their home.

     Even California’s 1848 gold rush passed the area by. The Forty-niners who followed an ancient Indian, Spanish, and emigrant trail north from Los Angeles through California’s Central Valley were intent on reaching the American River diggings 400 miles away. If any of the travelers saw possible mineral prospects on the hillsides or in the gulches and streams they crossed, they seem to have ignored them on their flight to more certain riches. But that would change.

     As the easy pickings of the northern California placer mines played out, a few of the prospectors began heading back south, down the old Spanish trail, newly designated the Stockton-Los Angeles Road. Where it veered east to avoid the marshlands of immense Tulare Lake, they crossed the Kaweah, Tule, White, Poso, and Kern rivers and some paused to explore the foothill waters of each stream.

     Few of their efforts bore fruit until, in 1853, De Witt Clinton Biggs and Andrew J. Maltby made a significant gold strike near White River. David James also claimed he had found gold farther south in the Greenhorn area. Then in spring of 1854, major finds of placer gold were discovered on Kern River.

     As word spread, thousands of miners rushed south, and some stopped at White River. When they found placer gold in the river’s waters, a rough camp sprang up that they called Dog Town. It wasn’t long before the seasonal river dried and the easy river pickings gave out, but there were good finds in the dry hillside gulches of the White River Mining District. Finds that required significant investments, big mining equipment, and a good wagon road to haul it on.

     California’s roadways were untidy affairs in the 1800s. They zigged and zagged around property lines, avoided ditches, led to private ferry river crossings, connected farms and ranches and were the lifelines of small towns. In the foothills, they also avoided cliffs and gulches, skirted granite outcroppings, curved around giant oak trees, and rose and fell at the whim of the mounded landscape; and they detoured or branched to every active mining district.

     The road to White River was no different. It headed as directly as possible for the mining district, by-passing the shanties of Dog Town. Undaunted, almost overnight, a core of serious miners moved upstream to the road and set up a more permanent settlement that sported real houses, saloons, and a store. They gave it the name of Tailholt.

     The name is shrouded in mystery. Passed down through generations, several stories have emerged. One claims the term originated as an identifying direction to the town’s original cabin where a miner (or the town’s first female occupant) had hung a cow’s tail on the front door to pull for entry. Another says it was in honor of an early miner who always took his faithful cow to town with him so he could hang on to her tail while she led him home from a hard-drinking night at one of the saloons. Yet another was of a screaming lady stage passenger grabbing the tail of her little dog when it jumped out of the stage, and the driver yelling back to her, “Get a good tail holt and hang on until I can help you!” Whatever the story, a general saying emerged that “a good tailholt is better than no holt at all.”

     Life in the extensive White River mining district was somewhat primitive in the early 1850s. Although Tulare County had been formed in 1852, White River didn’t get its own voting district, justice of the peace, or constable until 1855. The mining processes were limited, too, with the major digs still using the South American arrastra or a small stamp mill to crush the ore and separate out the gold. Gradually, stores, hotels, saloons, a church, and two graveyards dotted the hills.

     By 1862, Tailholt was a thriving community of perhaps 1,000 to 3,000 souls, and when an official post office was established that year, store owner and hotel keeper Levi Mitchell chose the more dignified name of White River for its postmark. It was a name the growing community could be proud of. But it was basically a one-purpose town, away from any major commercial route with little to sustain it beyond mining. This circumstance came from a decision made five years earlier.

     After California achieved statehood in 1850, the need for good connections to the rest of the nation became paramount. Congress immediately set up a national overland mail service to the west coast, but it was a fragmented system and it could take months for a letter to arrive. So, in 1857, the government issued a $600,000 permit to John Butterfield for development of a 2,700 mile-long transcontinental stagecoach service that would deliver semi-weekly mail service to 139 stations along the route.

     Speed, not passenger service or community connections, was the main criterion. The service began on September 15, 1858, and its route through Tulare County followed some of the old foothill road to Kern River. But it by-passed the foothill towns of White River and Woody to follow the more direct Los Angeles-Stockton route lower down. Gradually, the populations along the old Stage Road to the Kern diminished. Only during droughts and depressions did the mines see much activity through the years.

     By the late 1890s and early 1900s, the town of White River had become a small rural hamlet whose citizens valued the preservation of the area’s history and uniqueness, even petitioning the county in 1903 for the creation of a local fish and game preserve.

     Today, as we take the Old Stage Road to White River, we are following a drive through history: from the prehistoric route of what became the Los Angeles-Stockton and then Butterfield Road; along the 1854 miners’ foothill wagon road; to the remnants of the town of White River. Drive slowly, take a picnic lunch, relax and enjoy as side trips along the way and the continuing road to Woody and Posey beckon. It will be a day through rural California history to remember.

     What to see in Tailholt/White River:

     Visitors can still find intriguing traces of the old boom town, signed by a Tulare County Historical Marker: a couple of short dirt roadways leading off the well-maintained Old Stage Coach Road, sites and remnants of a few old buildings; a tall tombstone in the graveyard on the hill north of the road; some small tunnels; a smattering of rock tailings; and the remains of a reverberatory furnace—all sitting on private land. (Permission to explore can depend on the local residents.)

     Here’s What Tailholt Looked Like circa 1898:

November, 2019

     From tiny seeds, great things grow.

     In Woodlake, the Bravo Lake Botanical Garden has grown fruits and vegetables, flowers, trees, and samples of the San Joaquin Valley’s agricultural bounty since 2003. Its 13 acres of plantings extol the area’s botanical diversity, teach people about the value of natural resources, and promote community pride.

     “We sort of knew that we wanted to create the first agricultural botanical garden in California,” said its co-founder and director, Manuel Jimenez.

     Manuel and his wife and garden collaborator, Olga Jimenez, both lifelong Woodlake residents, trace the origin of the botanical garden to 1972, when they first began beautification projects and planting community gardens in Woodlake, with the help of youth volunteers. “Our premise was that we would grow kids by planting gardens,” Manuel said.

     The Jimenezes had almost 30 years of experience planting community gardens when the city of Woodlake approached them in 1999, wondering if they would be interested in a barren stretch of ground near Bravo Lake that had been the Visalia Electric Railroad right of way. “The city had an empty area that was available,” Olga said, “and we had been doing beautification projects in different parts of the little town.”

     The couple launched into the large project with their Woodlake Pride youth as grass-roots collaborators with the city of Woodlake. They sought funding from service clubs, including the Woodlake Rotary. They received donations of plantings from nurseries, notably L.E. Cooke for fruit trees and Monrovia Nurseries for ornamentals. They visited other botanical gardens throughout California. They appealed to local businesses and farms for financial and technical support, including carpenters, plumbers, and electricians for infrastructure. Grading and grooming the site took a couple of years.

     They planted tens of thousands of annuals with the help of a labor force composed mostly of volunteering teenagers. When they began planting, they solicited experts to lay out specific areas of the garden. They planted 1,700 rose bushes in 130 varieties. The garden began to take shape, not just as a ground for growing plants but as a complete ecosystem.

     “The botanical garden was just a piece of dirt that was barren,” Olga said. “Now, if you go and visit it, you will see that not only have we got plants growing, kids growing, but we also have a variety of birds that have come to visit us. We have cottontails that are there, and turtles, and doves, and lizards. Things that were never there. And since we put the plants down, we see a lot of variety of wildlife just existing in our area.”

     The garden officially opened in 2003, and welcomes the public on weekends. Visitors walk a 1.2-mile trail that takes them past fruit trees and vegetable patches, ornamental shrubs and rose gardens, row crops and flower beds. Young people plant between 10,000 and 20,000 specimens a year.

     The garden is organized to show off not only the plants that grow in California, but the abundance of its agriculture and the heritage of farming in the San Joaquin Valley. “Once we did that, the next phase was to begin to include the key things that we thought were important for the community to learn, and that was conserving the natural resources that we have,” Manuel said.

     Water conservation was a priority, so the Garden installed several different efficient irrigation systems. They encouraged wildlife, and gradually observed snakes, frogs, birds, small mammals, and insects using the garden.

     “We share our resources with the wildlife,” Manuel said. “So we plant fruit trees, you know. Fifty percent is for us, and fifty percent is for the wildlife. We let them feed.

     At the gardens, we let nature take its course.”

     The Bravo Lake Botanical Garden is a place for hands-on learning. People are encouraged to taste the produce. “You don’t have to visit 10 farms to see 10 crops. Our goal is eventually to plant everything that’s grown in the state. And so, I believe that people do seek to visit a facility like ours.”

     As complete as the garden is, it is not finished, Olga said. “I know that the seed, that it comes from the seed, but then the good Lord provides the water and all these beautiful plants that come up,” she said. “So, it’s been a learning experience, having this garden, and I’m sure that there’s more to be learned.”

October, 2012

 2017 Update: The City of Woodlake has changed the garden’s name to Woodlake Botanical Garden, and management, maintenance, plantings and purpose of the garden may be subject to change.