Sequoia National Park’s historic backcountry ranger stations and their adjacent barns, meadows, and nearby campsites serve the parks and the public in many ways. They accommodate not only rangers, but also trail crews, cultural resources crews, snow surveyors, occasionally monitors of meadows, water, wildlife, wildfires, and weather stations, and sometimes backcountry visitors in distress.

     Their barns (also called tack sheds) store equipment and supplies used by these personnel, and their pastures provide grazing for their stock and, when conditions allow, for visitors’ animals also. Most of today’s backcountry visitors spend only a night or two in the campsites near these iconic cabins, but seasonal backcountry Wilderness rangers may be stationed in them or patrolling to them from May into October.

     This strenuous backcountry work is often carried out far from many comforts, conveniences, and sometimes even company. It can be dangerous, sometimes cut off from communications, and often far from help. Many of these Park employees are seasonals, whose paychecks start and end depending on when the snow melts enough to allow access to their work sites — and when autumn weather once again closes the trails. Yet many return year after year to the wilderness.

     Like all Park employees, backcountry Wilderness rangers are charged under the National Park Service’s mission to preserve unimpaired the natural and cultural resources set aside by the American people for future generations. Rangers also strive through their visitor contacts to promote appreciation and stewardship of these resources and compliance with the regulations designed to protect them.

     In 1906, when the national parks were still administered by the U.S. Army, prior to the creation of the National Park Service, Captain C.C. Smith, 14th Cavalry, Acting Superintendent of Sequoia and General Grant National Parks, defined the ranger’s qualifications to be “somewhat as follows: He must be an experienced mountaineer and woodsman, familiar with camp life, a good horseman and packer, capable of dealing with all classes of people; should know the history of the parks and their topography, something of forestry, zoology, and ornithology, and be capable of handling laboring parties on road, trail, telephone, bridge, and building construction. These men, in the performance of their duties, travel on horseback from 3,000 to 6,000 miles a year, must face dangers, exposure, and the risk of being sworn into the penitentiary through the evil designs of others.” In addition to the troops, four civilians were working as rangers in Sequoia and General Grant National Parks at that time.

     Stephen T. Mather, first Director of the National Park Service (established in 1916), described the early NPS rangers this way: “They are a fine, earnest, intelligent, and public-spirited body of men . . . . Though small in number, their influence is large. Many and long are the duties heaped upon their shoulders. If a trail is to be blazed, it is ‘send a ranger.’ If an animal is floundering in the snow, a ranger is sent to pull him out; if a bear is in the hotel, if a fire threatens a forest, if someone is to be saved, it is ‘send a ranger.’ If a Dude wants to know the why, . . . it is ‘ask the ranger.’ Everything the ranger knows, he will tell you, except about himself.”

     Author Eric Blehm describes the diversity of Sequoia’s modern seasonal backcountry Wilderness rangers and their commitment and dedication to their work: “[They] held master’s degrees in forestry, geology, computer science, philosophy, or art history. They were teachers, photographers, writers, ski instructors, winter guides, documentary filmmakers, academics, pacifists, military veterans, and adventure seekers who . . .were drawn to wilderness. In the backcountry, they were on call 24 hours a day as medics, law-enforcement officers, search-and-rescue specialists, and wilderness hosts. They were interpreters who wore the hats of geologists, naturalists, botanists, wildlife observers, and historians. On good days they were ‘heroes’ called upon to find a lost backpacker, warm a hypothermic hiker, or chase away a bear. On bad days they picked up trash, extinguished illegal campfires, wrote citations, and were occasionally called [bad names] simply for doing their jobs. On the worst days, they recovered bodies.

     “Park Service administrators often referred to these rangers as ‘the backbone of the NPS.’ Still, they were hired and fired [laid off] every season. Their families had no medical benefits. No pension plans. They paid for their own law-enforcement training and emergency medical technician schooling. And . . . each one of them knew the deal when he or she took the job.”

     In their end-of-season reports, the Wilderness rangers describe their patrols (miles on horseback, miles on foot, areas and sites patrolled), visitor services (contacts: backpackers, day hikers, park staff, private and Park stock users, and commercial stock users, both spot and full-service trips), law enforcement (contacts, warnings, education, citations). They report on search and rescue and medical incidents, opening and closing times and condition of the ranger station and grazing areas, signage issues, meadow health, and fencing. They discuss natural resources (wildlife, vegetation, water), cultural resources (historic and prehistoric sites, historic structures), and backcountry facilities (ranger stations, barns, outhouses, water and electrical and solar systems), sanitation (campsites, fire rings, pit toilets, “TP roses”), and food storage cables and bear boxes. Other areas covered include supply and equipment inventories and needs lists, aircraft observations, interface with area trail crews, and special projects and recommendations.

     Backcountry Wilderness rangers also do their own cooking, clean and maintain their cabins and barns, trap hordes of invading mice, cut firewood for their cabin stoves, build and repair fences, doctor and shoe horses and mules, help to clear and maintain trails, and assist park scientists with projects such as residual biomass monitoring on meadows. Rangers remove hundreds of pounds of trash from trails and campsites, break up illegal fire rings and restore abused camp areas, look for lost stock and missing hikers, conduct hunter patrols in the fall, and rarely work an eight-hour day, as they are on call as long as they are in the backcountry.

     Their work can be exhausting, and it goes on no matter what the weather. Bad weather or trail conditions are often when rangers’ aid is needed most, leading to some longer work days. And yet many of the parks’ Wilderness rangers return for duty repeatedly, as long as they can afford to. They love their jobs and the country they work in. There are hundreds of applicants for each opening every season.

     Many cite the beauty of their surroundings, their wholehearted support of the Park Service mission, the pleasure of working with their dedicated colleagues. They care deeply about the health of the backcountry, its lakes and streams, grasses and trees, wildflowers, birds, insects, fish, and animals from little haystack-making pikas to big black bears. They appreciate the opportunity to meet and interact with park visitors, sharing their knowledge of and joy in the backcountry, and keeping the parks safe from the people and the people safe from the parks. And, as Ranger Randy Morgenson said, backcountry rangers get paid in sunsets.

 “. . . July and August saw several days each of excellent afternoon thunderstorms complete with hail and strong winds. A family of six . . . were caught in one of the storms as they hiked back from Evelyn Lake to their camp at Hockett. At 6:30 pm the group had still not returned and I went out looking for them. I found the 8 year old and her 13 year old brother running down the trail about a half-mile from the station. . . . I sent these two who were soaked and shivering to the station where I had a fire going. . . . I continued up the trail and located the 10 year old and 16 year old . . . and a few minutes later I located [their parents].

 “On the way back to the station I came upon two other backpackers, both soaked and cold. The cabin was crowded that evening with everyone crowded around the stove, drying wet clothing and attempting to keep warm. The trail crew served up some pasta and sauce for everyone and by 9 pm the rain had stopped. The family went to their respective tents and the two backpackers spent the night in the tack shed.” — Joe Ventura, Hockett Meadow Ranger, 2008

May, 2020

     If you would like to see one of the most interesting and seldom-visited mountain cabins in Tulare County, take a long day’s hike or horseback ride on a scenic trail to the Barton-Lackey cabin. Built as headquarters for a long-term summer cattle range, it preserves the history of both an important mountain industry and a prominent early Tulare County family.

     The Bartons were typical Tulare County pioneers in many ways. In 1865, James T. and Susan Barton, natives of New Jersey, crossed the plains from Illinois with their ten (sometimes reported as 9 or 11) children, and arrived in Visalia in October. Soon they took up land at the site of Auckland, a settlement on the old Millwood Road (now Highway 245) that runs north up to Badger and on to the sawmills and high country meadows beyond. The little town was an important stop for hundreds of teamsters on their journeys to and from the busy mills that supplied wood products to many growing Tulare County communities.

     Four generations of Bartons lived at Auckland. James T. Barton raised cattle there on 440 acres for 14 years, then moved to Three Rivers in 1879.

     James and Susan’s sons Hudson (“Hud”) DeCamp Barton and Orlando Barton stayed in Auckland, where they ranched with their father and brothers and worked at the local sawmills. Hud, born in 1844, homesteaded land just above the village. He and Orlando built Auckland’s school and Hud was its first teacher. Over the years, he was also a rancher, sawmill owner, miner, hotel owner, orchardist, and carpenter. In his later years, he wrote many letters, a number of which were published in local newspapers, about his journey across the plains to California and events in our local mountains.

     Hud married Sarah Jane Harmon in 1870, and they had eight children. Their first son, James DeCamp (Jim) Barton, was born in Auckland in 1871. He married Nellie St. Clair in 1893, and they had two daughters. Early in life Jim acquired and lived on the property homesteaded by his grandfather (James T.), then gradually acquired much adjoining property, becoming a prominent cattleman. He also worked as a contract logger and owned a big bull team that hauled heavy freight. To advance his logging and ranching operations, he built many of the mountain roads leading into the high country.

     By 1904, the Bartons were driving cattle over these roads and trails to summer pasture on Federal Sierra Forest Reserve land. They chose the remote meadows at 7400′ along Roaring River in what is now Kings Canyon National Park, very near the present Roaring River Ranger Station.

     Around 1910, the Bartons began constructing a number of improvements at their Scaffold Meadows cow camp. These included a one-room log cabin with a fireplace, a covered porch, a dirt floor and no foundation, along with corrals and hitching posts, and several outbuildings to house tack, tools, food, equipment, a kitchen, and summer herdsmen.

     In 1915, Hud wrote one of his many letters to the newspapers. Alarmed by rumors of a proposed enlargement of Sequoia National Park, he railed against the parties whose sole purpose, he claimed, was “getting the cattle shut out of the mountains and thereby letting vast quantities of feed go to waste for the selfish satisfaction of knowing that no one else can get any benefit from that which they cannot use or destroy themselves.”

     He emphasized that the cattlemen were “always ready and willing to help the rangers in case of fire and also to help the fish and game wardens in stocking barren lakes and streams” and lauded the forest rangers as “men of intelligence, always on the lookout for the interests and welfare of the tourist.”

     Meanwhile, Hudson and Jim, father and son, continued to graze their livestock at Scaffold Meadows, and their children and friends often accompanied them on the annual trail drives. In 1922, they met the new administrator of their summer range. Forest Ranger Albert Roswell Lackey had transferred from the Sierra National Forest to take charge of the Kings Canyon District of the Sequoia National Forest. In March, 1923, Jim’s daughter Sylvia married Al Lackey, who took over the Barton family’s cattle business after Hud and Jim died.

     Hud died in 1929, at age 84, followed by Jim in July, 1931, at age 61. In accordance with his wishes, Jim’s body was cremated, and his ashes were scattered in the Roaring River country, “which he loved so well.” Al Lackey continued to take the cattle there every summer.

     Then Kings Canyon National Park was established in 1940, and grazing was to be phased out. However, life-time use permits were granted to historic users of the area, including the Barton-Lackey cattle operation, since Nellie Barton was still alive. When she died, in 1955, Al Lackey obtained an extension of the grazing permit, but by 1960, the Barton-Lackey cattle had left the Roaring River country for good. Al continued the business in the Badger area until he retired three years before his death in 1967. (Sylvia died young, in 1953, of cancer.)

     The National Park Service took over the fifty-year-old Barton-Lackey cabin and used it for many years as a storage shed. By the time Park staff nominated it for the National Register in 1977, the old fences and out-buildings were all gone and the historic cabin, which had never been altered from its original appearance, needed significant repairs and reconstruction. That work was done in the early 1980s and was accomplished again authentically in 2012 by the Parks’ Historic Preservation crew, led by Thor Riksheim.

     Into the twenty-first century, Barton descendants, along with thousands of backpackers and trail riders, have continued to visit the family’s summer cabin and to recall its long history in Tulare County. While mining, logging, and domestic livestock herding are not allowed in the National Park, the Park Service preserves the Barton-Lackey cabin as a visible reminder of the Euro-American pioneers’ presence on and uses of this land, which sustained Native Americans’ summer uses for thousands of years before them and will be protected for as long as the national parks endure.

June, 2021

     Nature rules again at Dry Creek Preserve.

     Situated on 152 acres of a former gravel quarry on a mostly dry stream bed north of Lemon Cove, Dry Creek is ecologically significant as a sycamore alluvial woodland. It is one of only seventeen such environments scattered through Central California and one of the largest. It was home to a thriving settlement of the Wukchumne tribe in pre-European-American times. Then it was used for cattle grazing. More recently, it was a rock and gravel mine for twelve years until that use was nearly exhausted by the end of the twentieth century.

     Dry Creek was restored to its natural – although not original – condition by a partnership led by Sequoia Riverlands Trust (SRT). It is the first such mining reclamation site in Tulare County and is singular because the restoration effort used the damage caused by the mining operations to create unique and enhanced habitat.

     Hilary Dustin, conservation director of Sequoia Riverlands Trust, worked on the restoration from its beginning in 2004. The first time she saw Dry Creek, it was so desolate and gloomy it reminded her of Mordor in “Lord of the Rings.”

     “This mine had affected virtually every square foot of the property,” Dustin said in an extensive video interview with Tulare County Treasures. “You would think, this is devastation, you know, it’s ruined; we can never do anything with it.”

     The multi-year mining operation at Dry Creek had never been popular with the neighbors. When the owner, Artesia Mining Company, eventually foundered, one of its creditors, California Portland Cement, took over the property and was considering what to do with it. One of the neighbors urged Sequoia Riverlands Trust to talk with the new owner. The land trust contacted the cement company and initiated a meeting.

     No longer viable as a mine, the property was subject to expensive reclamation work mandated by the state of California. After only weeks of deliberation, California Portland Cement decided to turn the property over to SRT. Both sides had seen an opportunity: California Portland Cement shed its obligation to clean up the mine site, and SRT saw a chance to restore a unique natural habitat. That was in 2004, and it began more than eight years of restoration to return Dry Creek to something resembling its natural state.

     Shortly after acquiring the property, SRT received a $200,000 grant from a private foundation to begin planning and restoration. That same year, the trust added another $100,000 from the Natural Resources Conservation Service, a federal agency, to pay for the reclamation. More assistance arrived in short order: The Nature Conservancy offered its services and connected SRT with experts at University of California, Berkeley and UC, Davis.

     Landscape students from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona supported the project. Kaweah Delta Water Conservation District extended its expertise. Two grants from the state of California helped pay for visitor amenities such as signs and restrooms. Volunteers showed up to help move rocks, clear trails, and plant trees.

     Dustin estimates that about $1.2 million in donations contributed to the Dry Creek Preserve restoration, and of that about a half million dollars was from in-kind donations of professional and volunteer work.

    “The vision for the reclamation was not just to get back to the way things were before mining,” Dustin said, “which was essentially open grazing land, but to actually do what we could to enhance the values out there for wildlife habitat and also for people to come and enjoy the place and to make it a wonderful outdoor classroom as well.”

      The restoration created opportunities to improve upon what nature had created. In some cases, the restoration project removed berms and ditches so that the water returned to its natural courses. Mining had also disrupted the water table, and some deep quarries created pools, including a small lake that wasn’t there before. With the natural habitat restored, oaks and sycamores began to return. Bird and animal species took hold in the newly restored environment.

    “There’s a lot of volunteer cottonwoods, willows, and other vegetation that came back on its own, once mining stopped,” Dustin said. “But we’re kind of nudging it along, trying to help the sycamore alluvial woodland come back a little faster than it might otherwise.”

     It’s a case of nature getting by with a little help from its friends.

   “We actually have more native plants out there now than we did before and we have a more natural stream flow,” Dustin said.

     Dry Creek was also established as a kind of open-air laboratory, with nature as the scientist in charge. SRT envisions it is as a place for field study and natural experiments. The trust has already established a native plant nursery and a native plant demonstration garden.

     The preserve welcomes what Dustin calls “citizen scientists”: visitors who make observations about habitat or wildlife and record them. It also encourages students to use the site as a classroom.

     Dry Creek has been a tribal village site, a cattle grazing site, a unique natural habitat, and a mine. Now a reclaimed site, it still shows evidence of all those uses in its past. And all of them have something to teach people.

    “Many people would have considered this place trashed, if they had gone out to Dry Creek ten years ago,” Dustin said in 2014. “If they go out there today, I think they would say, Wow, look what happened when we sort of got back out of the way of nature, and we helped a little bit to do some restoration.”

July, 2014

     Perched atop an enormous granite rock on the northern boundary of Tulare County is a historic building called the Buck Rock Fire Lookout. It is a working lookout, but it is much more. At an elevation of 8,502 feet, this observation post is an amazing place … one that Huell Howser, host of the hit television show “California’s Gold,” strongly endorsed, saying, “For high adventure, this is the place to come.”

     This granite outcropping first served as a lookout post for fires in 1912. To get to the top, early fire watchers had to scramble up a tree trunk that leaned against the rock, and then, using a series of makeshift ladders, make their way up the steep face to the summit and its 360-degree panorama of a vast portion of the southern Sierra. Not only did they have a great vantage point to spot fires, they had an amazing view of a spectacular section of a mountain range known for its beauty.

     In 1923, a one-room cabin, or cab as it is called, was built on top of the rock, and this live-in style structure became the prototype for many other lookouts that followed.

     Hundreds of fire watchers have served lookout duty at Buck Rock over the years, but none has been involved with it any longer than Leatrice Evinger Dotters. She started as a fire lookout on June 6, 1944. While most men were off to war, Lea took over what was traditionally a man’s job, and did it for $120.00 per month—the first female firewatcher at Buck Rock. She worked there the entire fire season and has been connected to this special place ever since.

     At one time about 600 fire lookout facilities served California, with about 8,000 nationwide. Over the years many have disappeared.

     Buck Rock might have been lost too, had it not been for U. S. Forest Service employee Kathryn (Kathy) Ball Allison.

     In 1997, in anticipation of a major lightning storm, Kathy was moved from Delilah Lookout to Buck Rock, which had been staffed only during emergencies since 1987. The reassignment decision was a good one. While at Buck Rock, Kathy reported multiple fires, made weather observations, relayed radio transmissions, and monitored the fire well after the firefighters left the scene. The Choke Fire, as it was called, proved to be a big one, involving hundreds of firefighters. Once it was out, Kathy returned to Delilah, leaving Buck Rock unstaffed again.

     But Kathy didn’t forget Buck Rock. Saddened by the prospect of its closing, she led an effort, with help from co-workers, to create an advocacy organization that would support not only Buck Rock, but all lookouts. From that, the Buck Rock Foundation, www.buckrock.org, was formed, a non-profit corporation “dedicated to preserving the tradition of forest fire lookouts and other historically significant buildings.” In 1999, with the help of the Buck Rock Foundation, Buck Rock was re-established as a primary location for fire detection and has been staffed seven days a week ever since during fire season by Forest Service personnel in partnership with Foundation volunteers who provide relief. Visitors can climb the safe, but thrilling, 172 steps to the cab and its catwalk when the lookout is open.

     Buck Rock has been nominated for the National Register of Historic Places. Kathy has been the foundation’s only president. Lea Dotters credits Kathy’s effort in the creation of the foundation and keeping Buck Rock a working lookout. “I just can’t say enough about her and her tireless work on behalf of Buck Rock and all the lookouts,” she said.

September, 2012

     The Circle J-Norris Ranch lies in the foothills of the Southern Sierra Nevada, 25 miles northeast of Porterville and seven miles north of Springville. Its 620 acres of rolling oak woodland was owned and ranched by one family, the Marion and Julia Gill Andersons and their offspring, for nearly eighty years. But in 1997, while still home to cattle, the ranch began to serve also as an outdoor classroom for children of all grade levels to study the amazing workings of the natural world they find there. This is the story of how that came to be.

     It all began with a dream – a dream I shared with my mother – that the Circle J would remain as open space, and never be broken up into many parcels with big houses, instead of cattle and wildlife, dotting its hills. I had no idea how the ranch could be preserved, but when my mother, Cora Norris, died in 1991, and left the ranch to me, I began to learn how to turn our dream into reality.

     That challenge led me to draw together a group of people to help create a land trust so that I could place legal restrictions on how the land could be used, now and “in perpetuity.” It took well over a year, but with the help of many friends and a few experts, we at last got our Tule Oaks Land Trust established as an official non-profit organization, and I got a conservation easement placed on the ranch, specifying that it could be used only for conservation, cattle ranching, or education. (Later, our Tule Oaks Land Trust merged with two other Tulare County land trusts to become the Sequoia Riverlands Trust, which stewards a number of preserves and other properties today in and beyond Tulare County.)

   While I was thinking about how the ranch should be used, SCICON came to mind, the Clemmie Gill School of Science and Conservation. Since it began, in the 1960s, SCICON has provided all Tulare County sixth-graders with a week of outdoor education on its residential campus, located just six miles from the Circle J. The campus’s original 35 acres were a gift to SCICON from my great-aunt Clemmie Anderson Gill.

     That led me, in 1992, to ask Jim Vidak, Tulare County Superintendent of Schools, “Do you need any more land for outdoor education?” “Yes!” said Jim immediately. They wanted to expand SCICON to include a day-use program for all grade levels. Soon we began meeting in my living room, with school teachers and administrators, dreaming into being the new life for the ranch.

     I explained that I loved the land, it was part of my family, and I wanted to keep it in open space. We walked over the ranch and saw it as a place where kids could come and experience being in the open, where many have never been — in the foothills, studying the oaks and the wildflowers, the streams and the pond, the wild creatures, and the long story of human use of that land.

     In 1997, this exciting educational endeavor got underway, with first graders from Springville as our first students. Dedication to outdoor education for young people must run in my family!

     In 2004, with the outdoor education program growing steadily, I sold the ranch to the Tulare County Office of Education (TCOE). TCOE manages the ranch as a second campus of SCICON, available for children of all grades, from pre-school through high school and into college, who come by bus for day use or, occasionally, for special weekend studies. With 600 acres protected under permanent conservation easements, cattle continue to graze there, as they have for close to 100 years. And so, my dream has come true.

     In closing, I want to tell you the story of how the Circle J-Norris Ranch got its name. When I was getting near to reaching my goal of protecting the ranch as open space, I wanted to give it a name that would honor both sides of my family. My Grandpa and Grandma, Marion and Julia Anderson, first owned the land, and their cattle were all branded with the Circle J.

     The Circle J brand was on cattle that belonged to Grandpa Anderson’s mother, Martha McDaniel Graham, and her first husband, John Graham, when they came across the plains in a cattle drive from Texas to California n 1859. They settled near Farmersville, but in 1866, John died from pneumonia. So it was Martha’s second husband, Garland Anderson, who registered the Circle J brand in Tulare County in the Anderson name in 1868.

     Martha and Garland Anderson were my great-grandparents. All four of their children, including my grandpa, Marion, were born in the old Anderson homestead in Yokohl Valley (where the family had moved to escape the wet flatlands of the Central Valley floor). Many years later, my mother, Cora Anderson, was born there, too.

     In the 1920s, my grandparents bought the land that I have named the Circle J-Norris Ranch. It was deeded to my grandmother, Julia Gill Anderson, in 1927. My grandparents,who made their year-round home in Porterville, ranched it, and they spent a few weeks there every summer, out of the valley heat. Then, in the late 1940s, my family moved to the ranch, and it was my dad, Norman Norris, and my mother, Cora Anderson Norris, who kept the place going for so long, until it came to me. So there you have it, the story of how the Circle J-Norris Ranch got its name.

October, 2012

  William Pitt Bartlett left Tulare County a lasting legacy. He was not only a prime and tireless mover in establishing and developing several of the public parks that we still enjoy today; he also secretly aided deserving Porterville students, and his generous scholarships continue to be awarded every year in that city.

  Born in New Portland, Maine, in 1855, Bartlett moved to California as a young man and at age 22 became a newspaperman. He acquired the Livermore Valley paper, renamed it The Herald, and for the next 15 years worked to better the valley through the paper. Always interested in civic, conservation, and beautification activities, he used this platform to advocate for the valley’s agricultural and economic possibilities and to encourage environmentally friendly projects such as spreading gravel over dirt roads to keep down dust and plowing stubble under instead of burning fields. He got hundreds of drought-tolerant locust trees planted along the city’s streets and the roads leading into town.

  The Herald took a prominent part in the introduction of many new industries to the area, including vine and fruit growing, manufacturing, and coal and chrome mining. Bartlett also campaigned for better roads, pushed the growth of the local wine industry, and urged a prominent local farmer to take his wines to an international competition in Paris, where he won the gold medal and made the Livermore Valley famous.

  In 1891, Bartlett sold the paper and moved with his wife, Anna, to the Mojave Desert to spend the next five years in borax mining. He traveled all over California, constantly curious about its plants, people, landscapes, and industries, then moved to Porterville in 1901, to manage the local magnesite mines for the Willamette Pulp and Paper Company. The company built a house for him at the end of Sunnyside Avenue, and he and Anna lived in it the rest of their lives.

  Bartlett soon became involved in community affairs, especially in parks and conservation. He contributed material and money to the construction of “El Granito,” the Porterville high school built in 1905. In 1907, he helped to form the Porterville Chamber of Commerce, which he served as both director and president. He was appointed a member of the Porterville Park Commission, a position he held until he died. The commission soon got the Pioneer Land Company to donate 20 acres for a city park, and the people of Porterville subscribed $6,000 to improve the site. As a member of the Park Board, Bartlett was vitally active in the development and continuing improvement of the new Murry Park (originally named Burbank Park); 110 years later, the people of Porterville still flock to it.

  In 1910, as another life-long, unpaid appointment, Bartlett was named to the new Tulare County Parks Commission. Renamed the Board of Forestry in 1913, the commission was charged with developing and managing 100-acre Mooney Grove Park, which the county had purchased in 1909. Roads, bridges, and amusement areas were installed, and Bartlett was instrumental in creating its small lake. An avid gardener and botanist, he also implemented a large nursery there, where trees, shrubs, and other plants were grown to beautify county and community roadsides and parks. The Forestry Board published his illustrated booklets on “Roadside Trees” and “Sun-loving Trees and Flowers,” and planted over 600 miles of roadside trees, including grevillea, acacia, palms, peppers, and Arizona ash, to beautify the county.

  By the time Bartlett retired from the mining operation in 1921, the Forestry Board was in charge of two big parks, having been given the land for 52-acre Cutler Park in 1919. Another park was added in 1923, thanks in large part to Bartlett’s efforts. The Porterville Chamber of Commerce sponsored a successful fundraising drive to buy land along the Tule River for a city park, with the understanding that it would be donated to the County and the Forestry Board would develop and maintain it. The goal was to acquire the best, most easily accessible place to swim and to beat the summer heat.

  Bartlett planned and supervised much of the work of developing and landscaping the new 34-acre park for the public — clearing brush, enhancing the swimming area, building picnic tables, planting trees and shrubs from the Mooney Grove nursery, constructing two dressing room buildings, and digging wells. The new Tule River Park was very popular, so the next year, a caretaker’s cottage was built, along with a pavilion, tables and seats set in concrete for 400 people, fencing, and a rock dam to increase the depth of water in the 400 foot long swimming area.

  Bartlett wrote of his innovative planting plan that the Forestry Board was including only wild trees, shrubs, plants, and flowers, such as wild lilac, manzanita, mountain mahogany, bush monkey-flower, toyon, and more than 100 other species. The wild grape vines were being trained into arbors above the picnic tables, “making, with the California sycamores, delightful picnicking grounds the entire length of the park.” He thought that Tule River Park was unique, “probably the only wild plant park in the State,” and that its beauty would “soon begin to appeal to all visitors.”

  All his life, Bartlett kept writing, and not just about plants. He published two books, Happenings and More Happenings in California, about California history and personalities and his travels in the state. As a senior member of the Quiller’s Club, a local writers’ group, he contributed both prose and poetry. He loved the California mountains and had a second home, called Tumbling Waters, above California Hot Springs. He extensively landscaped the area around this cabin as well as the property around Green Acres, his Porterville home. He also farmed citrus.

  In 1923, Bartlett’s beloved wife, Anna, died. They had no children. Bartlett, despite failing health, continued his civic activities, especially those that engaged his special interest in nature.

  Then, in 1925, he undertook a significant new project. As an anonymous “Unknown Friend,” he began awarding scholarships every year to deserving Porterville students, with the condition that his name would not be revealed until he died. The Reverend John Milligan bestowed these gifts as Bartlett’s agent, keeping the benefactor’s secret.

  In February, 1929, to honor his many years of service to the parks and people of the county, and in response to a petition from the Porterville Chamber of Commerce and many other local organizations and citizens, the Board of Supervisors renamed Tule River Park as Bartlett Park. Bartlett died on July 5th. Businesses and city offices closed for his funeral. The services were conducted by Reverend Milligan, who revealed during his eulogy that Bartlett was the scholarship students’ “Unknown Friend” and that the bulk of his estate would be placed in a trust to continue the annual awards.

  The Quillers Club planted a tree on the front lawn of the high school in Bartlett’s memory, and in 1938, a new Porterville elementary school (now Bartlett Middle School) was named in his honor. In 1960, Bartlett was named to the California Newspaper Hall of Fame, which honored him as a community builder, publisher, author, mining man, and nature lover. For close to a century, Murry, Mooney Grove, Cutler, and Bartlett parks have continued to provide beauty, recreation, and relaxation to Tulare County residents, and Bartlett’s scholarships are still given to Porterville area (including Springville, Terra Bella, and Strathmore) students every year. It was indeed a fortunate day for Tulare County when William Pitt Bartlett moved to Porterville.

                                                                                                                                                                                               August, 2018                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

                                           For current information about the W.P. Bartlett scholarships for Porterville

                                        area students, contact the counselors at area high schools or Porterville College.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

   In the mid-1800s, people from all over the world began settling in the great fertile valley of Tulare County. Most hoped to make their living by farming or ranching. They needed reliable water supplies to grow their crops and cattle, and efficient transportation to get their produce to market. Soon they were forming irrigation districts to lead water from the rivers to their land. Thus, in the early 1880s, the 129,000-acre Alta Irrigation District was established in the northern end of what was then a much larger Tulare County.

     Meanwhile, communities sprang up and grew, and as construction of the Southern Pacific Railroad moved south down the valley in the 1880s, all the little towns’ boosters vied to become stops on the railroad line. Joining forces, the boards of trade in Dinuba, Sanger, and Reedley managed to change the route of the Southern Pacific to come through their communities, and when the trains began to run in February of 1888, Dinuba built a depot to accommodate them.

     That depot burned down in 1911, but it was promptly replaced. The handsome new depot served the town until the last stationmaster retired, in June, 1978. Fortunately, the Alta District Historical Society (ADHS), had been formed before then, in 1962, initiated by Dinuban W. N. Davis. Its purpose was to encourage and promote the study of the history and culture of the Alta District and surrounding environs, and to collect, classify, and publish related historical information, data, facts, and folklore.

     Recognizing the depot’s historic value, ADHS purchased it in 1979. However, as a condition of its sale, the building had to be moved. After an extensive search, in November of 1982, the society paid $40,000 for a large corner property, now known as Heritage Square, at Ventura and K streets in Dinuba, and in January, 1984, moved the depot to its new home. Having played such a critical part in the area’s history, the depot was to become the repository for that history — a museum for the Alta District, whose boundaries roughly followed those of the still-operating historic Alta Irrigation District and included the towns of Dinuba, Cutler, Orosi, Yettem, Monson, and Reedley.

   In July, 1984, Dinuban Evelyn Dopkins Corr donated the 1912 “White House” to the ADHS. She, too, required that her building be moved, but she included a $10,000 donation to cover the cost, so in January, 1985, this large historic home joined the Depot at Heritage Square.

     From 1976 through 1989, through volunteer and youth program efforts, as well as dues, donations, memorials, raffles, food booths, dinners, auctions, fireworks sales, and other fundraising efforts, ADHS was able to pay for substantial renovation work on the White House and the Depot, and numerous improvements on Heritage Square.

     Fundraising and construction projects have continued apace ever since. The White House gained a library, named in honor of donor Evelyn Dopkins Corr, in 1990. In 1991, Rose Ann Vuich of Dinuba (born in Cutler), the first woman to be elected a California State Senator (in 1977), donated $50,000 to ADHS, which greatly contributed to additional major work on the White House.

   This fine example of American Foursquare/Prairie architecture now serves as a cultural center for the community, and houses, in addition to the library, historical exhibits, art displays, and the ADHS offices. It hosts ADHS meetings and cultural and community celebrations, such as the annual Christmas at the White House.

   Exhibits have included photography, quilts, Depression glass, wedding gowns, art from local schools, and Japanese, Armenian, Filipino, Mennonite, Cowboy, Korean, and Native American cultures. An exclusive highlight is the striking private collection of textile art and art on paper created by Dinuba resident Katchidor “K” Boroian, which he donated to ADHS in 1983. The White House can also be reserved for public and private functions.

   The first display to be installed in the restored and refurbished Southern Pacific Depot Museum building was the Rutan Brothers Aviation Exhibit, in November, 1997. World-famous aviation pioneers Burt and Dick Rutan grew up in Dinuba, and graduated from Dinuba High School. Among many other innovations, Burt designed, and his brother Dick and partner Jeana Yeager piloted, the Voyager, the first plane to fly around the world without stopping or refueling. Burt also designed the sub-orbital spaceplane SpaceShipOne and the BiPod, a hybrid flying car.

     The Rutan brothers arrived for the 1997 grand opening of the Depot in Burt’s experimental “Boomerang” plane. Since that grand opening almost 20 years ago, many exhibits on a wide range of subjects have been installed. Community members have donated hundreds of interesting items, including those comprising a veterans’ display, a Native American display, the Orosi Room, a kitchen from the early 1900s, a Rose Ann Vuich display, and a blacksmith shop.

     Recently, ADHS began searching for more exhibit space. In 1997, Burt Rutan donated to the museum another of his experimental aircraft, the “Solitaire” sail plane, “a product of the genius who lived among us.” The Society hopes to find a place in which to permanently display this exciting gift where it can be seen by the public.

     Additionally, the Society partners with schools and other organizations, making the Heritage Square facilities available for events, such as the Dinuba Festival of the Arts sponsored by the ADHS, the Chamber of Commerce, and the city.

     ADHS has also been working with the school district, the city, and local service clubs to bring third-graders on field trips to Heritage Square. The service clubs finance the bus transportation, and volunteer docents guide the students through the exhibits and the blacksmith shop. The youngsters get introduced to 100-year-old technology such as wringer washing machines and to old-fashioned toys and games like jacks and horseshoes, then join in singing historical songs played by Brad McCord and Ron Jefferson on guitar and harmonica.

     Another innovative ADHS outreach project is volunteer Nancy Hoyt’s delightful “Museum in a Trunk.” Nancy visits classrooms with a trunk full of treasures to introduce students to the history and cultures that have created the community that they live in today.

  “Remembering the past, working for the future,” the ADHS strives “to preserve the cultures that have joined talents and customs to form the Alta District, and to educate and develop appreciation of their importance to present and future generations.”

     On June 3, 1919, the people of Tulare County received a wonderful gift. John Cutler, Jr., and his wife, Mary, donated to the county approximately 70 acres of splendid oak woodland along the St. John’s River, stipulating that “Said lands shall be used and maintained forever by the [County] as and for a public park and public pleasure ground, and for no other purpose.” Thus our county acquired the land for its second park, for free, just ten years after purchasing the 100 forested acres of Mooney’s Grove for $15,000.

     The donated land was part of the Cutler family’s 1854 home ranch, where John, Jr.’s generation had been born and raised. He gave the gift as a memorial to his parents, John and Nancy Cutler, pioneer settlers and leading citizens of Tulare County, requiring that “Said lands and premises shall forever thereafter be named . . . Cutler Park.” The deed also emphasized the new park’s importance as a preserve for posterity, specifying that “None of the oak trees now growing on said premises shall ever be cut down, destroyed, or removed from said premises, so long as the same shall remain in a healthy, growing condition, excepting only such trees as it shall be found necessary to cut down or remove for the purpose of erecting buildings or structures on said premises for the convenience and pleasure of the public.”

     Land to the center of the St. John’s River was included, to provide the public with boating and swimming opportunities. The county envisioned the new park as a picnic ground as attractive as Mooney Grove that would relieve the pressure of heavy use on its first park. It even considered moving some of its growing population of zoo animals from Mooney to Cutler. But first, it set to work to fence the new park, build an attractive entrance gate, and improve accessibility to the property.

     By July, 1920, two 12-foot driveways were under construction, leading into the park through the impressive new entrance and looping through the grounds. A well had been dug, brush cleared, trees pruned, and with comfort stations and picnic tables installed, it was expected that “The new park will be a delightful camping spot for motorists passing on to the mountains during the summer.”

     A year later, a large water tank, pump, and waterlines were installed, enabling 400 oak saplings, uncovered in the brush clearing, to be watered and cultivated for posterity. The Pomona Grange organized a big ceremony and all-day picnic on October 1 to celebrate the dedication of Cutler Park to the public. The whole county was invited to attend, with a special invitation to the old surviving pioneers to come and talk about early life in the area and their memories of John Cutler, Sr.

     Superior Judge W. B. Wallace, who had taught many of the Cutler children at the little school near the parkland, gave the dedicatory speech. Chairman Newman of the Board of Supervisors then formally accepted the park for the county and promised funding for its development and maintenance. “The gift of this fine grove of oaks constitutes one of the greatest acts anyone can do,” he said. “As we grow older as a county we find that more playgrounds are needed and must and shall be provided.”

     The next day, the Visalia Morning Delta announced that the County Supervisors had cut the tax levy for park purposes in the new county budget from two and one-half to two cents. The funds raised would not be sufficient to carry out the park’s development program, with the possible exception of a few swings and some road work. The paper noted later that week that as of the first of September, 100,000 people had visited Mooney Grove in 1921, and 37,000 had come to Cutler Park (out of a total county population of just over 59,000).

     Despite its continuing lack of facilities, the park continued to serve many outdoor recreational interests. In addition to picnicking and river play, it hosted statewide archery tournaments, training exercises by the Visalia Infantry Regiment, the sheriff’s pistol practice, and many Girl Scout and Boy Scout day camps and overnight Camporees.

     At last, in April, 1951, the county supervisors adopted a master plan for Cutler, with a number of proposed enhancements. Unfortunately, since park funding had been slashed, the planned improvements would be delayed.

     By 1954, none of them had been made. (Furthermore, the park was now described as comprising only 50 acres, far less than the 70 acres donated in 1919.) A Visalia Times Delta article in August described the park’s condition as “so poor as to render the area offensive to sight.” Declaring Cutler “unfit for public use due to lack of facilities and its generally run-down condition,” the Ivanhoe Chamber of Commerce, American Legion Post, Garden Club, Elbow Creek Grange, and Visalia Chamber urged the Supervisors to get a plan approved and funded and get to work on the park.

     Earl Ingrim, County Planner, outlined several proposed long-term developments, but emphasized that, unlike crowded Mooney Grove, “a commercial and carnival-type park suited primarily to mass recreation facilities,” Cutler should feature casual, family-type recreation.

     In December, 1954, the Supervisors unanimously adopted the amended plan, which included adding a youngsters’ fishing pond and upgrading the roads. By September, 1956, the Times Delta was able to report that “Improvements Make Cutler Park Popular Recreational Spot.” The roads had been paved, nineteen acres of lawn planted for a children’s play area, and a third picnic arbor completed. And the new park superintendent, Merle Harp, had more plans for Cutler: irrigation sprinklers, barbecue pits, new playground equipment, more arbors, and eventually a bath house and rest rooms near the river.

     In six months, his work was underway, and by 1959, Cutler boasted horseshoe pits, 82 picnic tables, five arbors, twelve fire pits, the ball diamond, swings and merry-go-rounds, a new shop building, and parking space for 210 cars (but no pond or bath house). It was one of our county’s most popular parks.

     Sixty years on, it still appeals to people of all ages. Eleven hundred cars filled Cutler on Easter Sunday in 2017. The mile-long loop of the park’s road through the picnic areas under the big trees and along the river on the levee hosts strollers, joggers, cyclists, and cars taking slow scenic drives. Children race to explore the two big modern sets of play equipment. In 2018, the County, working with Kaweah Delta Water Conservation District, built a beach to enhance enjoyment of the river. Rafters and waders, picnickers and bicyclists, students running cross-country meets and their elders racing in the Senior Games post photos of their good times on the park’s Facebook page.

     For those who relish the simple pleasures of being outdoors in beautiful, historic, natural, family-friendly surroundings, Cutler continues into its second century as a well-loved Tulare County treasure.

     CAUTION: The river may look calm and peaceful, but it can be running very fast, especially when water is being released from Terminus Dam at Lake Kaweah. Enjoy it carefully, and never leave children unattended.

June, 2019

     Allensworth is the only town in California that was founded, financed, built, populated, and governed by African Americans. This pioneering venture in the ongoing struggle for freedom and opportunity resulted from the vision and determination of Lieutenant Colonel Allen Allensworth. Today, a hundred years after its heyday, visitors to the historic townsite are still inspired by the Colonel’s ideals and accomplishments and by his town that refuses to die.

     Born into slavery in 1842, Allen Allensworth learned to read and write as a young man. He eventually escaped slavery by joining the Union forces during the Civil War. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy, and quickly rose through the ranks. In 1886, after civilian careers in teaching and business, and earning a doctorate in theology, he re-entered the military as the U.S. Army’s first Black chaplain, guiding the spiritual well-being and moral education of the soldiers serving in the 24th Infantry, one of several army units comprised of all African Americans (the renowned Buffalo Soldiers). Twenty years later, Lieutenant Colonel Allensworth retired, the first African American to achieve such high rank. His vision and vigorous leadership continued into the next phase of his life.

     In a series of lectures he delivered, Allensworth stressed the importance of self-determination and urged African Americans to develop economic, social, cultural, and political self-sufficiency. During his extensive travels, he noticed thousands of Blacks migrating to California in order to free themselves from systemic prejudice — the South’s segregation policies and the North’s discriminatory policies and practices.

     He moved his family to Los Angeles, the seeming land of opportunity for his dream. But it was in the southern San Joaquin Valley that he found all the right elements for pursuit of that dream — affordable land, rich with good soil, ample water, and a railroad stop that promised transportation and freight business.

     He joined forces with other like-minded individuals, including Professor William Payne, Rev. William Peck, Rev. John W. Palmer and Harry A. Mitchell, to form the California Colony and Home Promoting Organization. With Colonel Allensworth as president, the group purchased 800 acres and filed a township site plan in August 1908 for a town called Allensworth. It would be an all-Black community where families could prosper free from the crippling effects of discrimination and unfair governance.

     The town’s founders highly valued education, scholarship, self-governance, and hard work. Those who shared this vision were attracted to Allensworth and contributed to its growth. Within a year, thirty-five families called Allensworth home.

     Artesian wells supplied water to the growing town and farming operations, and the Allensworth Rural Water Company was formed to provide community water services. The town built a beautiful schoolhouse and hired Professor William Payne as teacher. Mrs. Josephine Allensworth, the Colonel’s wife, started a library with books donated by Colonel Allensworth and other residents. It was Tulare County’s first free library.

     The town expanded to include a post office, several businesses, a hotel, churches, and two general stores. The American Dream seemed to be thriving in Allensworth, and the Colonel proposed the establishment of a Vocational School, a “Tuskegee of the West,” to provide higher education.

     But, starting in 1912, a series of circumstances created setbacks for the Allensworth community. The artesian wells dried up and a legal battle ensued with the Pacific Farming Company over water rights. Though the people of Allensworth eventually prevailed, water shortages continued to plague the area, a serious problem for the town’s agriculture-based economy.

     A second setback occurred when the Santa Fe Railroad built a spur line to Alpaugh, just 7 miles away, and discontinued its stop at Allensworth, taking away the lucrative freight loading business and greatly reducing income for Allensworth.

     Then disaster struck in September, 1914: Colonel Allensworth died suddenly when he was struck by a speeding motorcyclist as he crossed the street in Monrovia, where he was to speak at a church.

     Shocked at the loss of their dynamic leader, the community nevertheless rallied and two new leaders took up the fight for a vocational school, a venture that promised a new source of income for Allensworth. Things seemed to be going well until the State legislature declined the project, handing a bitter defeat to the town.

     Some people held on living there, trying new ideas and innovations to keep the town alive, but gradually most people moved on and only a handful of dilapidated buildings remained. A water crisis occurred in the mid-nineteen sixties when dangerous levels of arsenic were found in the town’s drinking water supply and a mass exodus began.

     All hope of reviving the town seemed to be lost. Buildings were torn down as residents fled. But in that turmoil, two brothers saw the face of opportunity. George Pope and his younger brother Cornelius “Ed” Pope had grown up in Allensworth. As the town was being dismantled, they talked about raising public awareness of the African American experience in California and the possibility of preserving the community.

     Pain, anger, and devastation following the 1968 assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King created an aching void in the heart of Ed Pope and galvanized him into action. “I had to do something . . . . And I remembered Col. Allensworth and the town he founded.”

     Pope helped prepare a proposal to restore Allensworth as an historical site and he pitched it to his employer, the State Parks department. Why not make Allensworth a park to celebrate Black achievement?

     A groundswell occurred as the African American community stood up and began advocating for the creation of a State historic site. The NAACP, Urban League, and Black Historical Societies from far and wide pledged their support. In the nineteen seventies the State planned to set up an historic marker, but those involved wanted much more than just a marker. They got busy. They lobbied for support from the local county Supervisors, State Senator Mervyn Dymally, and all the way up to Governor Ronald Reagan.

     In 1972, the Allensworth Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1974, California State Parks acquired the 240-acre parcel of the historic townsite, and Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park was born! Since then, many of the town’s significant buildings have been lovingly restored. Though often quiet, the place comes alive for special events throughout the year that are well attended, full of activities, and supported by churches and community groups from all over California and the West.

     Allensworth, a community built by African Americans, deeply rooted in values of resourcefulness, dignity, and self-determination, is the town that refuses to die!

June, 2016

   Of the tens of millions of photographs taken in Sequoia National Park each year, perhaps the most popular man-made subject is the iconic Indian Head sign that welcomes visitors to the park about a quarter mile up the road from the Ash Mountain entrance station. But why does the sign depict an Indian instead of a Big Tree? And what does this Indian have to do with a sequoia?

  Part of the answer might be traced to Stephan Friedrich Ladislaus Endlicher. A leading Austrian botanist, ethnologist, and linguist, Endlicher, in 1847, scientifically classified the coast redwoods and published Sequoia as their genus name. However, he left no record of the reason for this name, leading to much speculation ever since.

  When the massive redwoods of the Sierra Nevada were discovered in the early 1850s, they were originally given the scientific name Wellingtonia gigantea, but after further study revealed their similarity to the coast redwoods, the Sierra’s Big Trees became known as Sequoia gigantea. (The coast redwoods are now known as Sequoia sempervirens, and ours as Sequoiadendron gigantea.)

   In 1868, Josiah Dwight Whitney, California’s state geologist (for whom Mt. Whitney is named), published The Yosemite Book. In its chapter on “The Big Trees,” Whitney wrote, “The genus was named in honor of Sequoia or Sequoyah, a Cherokee Indian . . . known to the world by his invention of an alphabet and written language for his tribe.” In a footnote, Whitney explained that Endlicher had seen an article about Sequoyah in a magazine, “The Country Gentleman,” which led him to use the name Sequoia. However, that magazine’s first issue did not appear until 1852, three years after Endlicher died, and scholars have been unable to document Whitney’s conclusions.

   More recently, it has been argued that Endlicher named the genus “Sequoia” because it is derived from the Latin for “sequence,” and the new genus fell in sequence with the other four genera in his suborder. But unless long-lost papers of Endlicher’s turn up stating his reasons for the name, these theories will remain speculation.

   Nevertheless, the idea that this great American tree was named for a great Native American has been widely repeated since Whitney’s time. And that’s why the Sequoia National Park entrance sign features an Indian, although he looks nothing like the real Sequoyah.

   Portraits of Sequoyah depict him in a red, striped turban, a white shirt, and a blue jacket or coat, often wearing a red cravat and his silver medal, holding a copy of his syllabary, and smoking a small pipe with a long slender stem. So, where did the image of the Indian wearing the feathered head-dress on the Sequoia sign come from?

   In 1931, while working in Sequoia as a National Park Service Landscape Architect, Merel S. Sager designed an entrance sign for Ash Mountain featuring an Indian, possibly Sequoyah. This sign, like the current one, was carved out of redwood, but was only about a third as big — and it was soon replaced.

  By 1935, the next Sequoia National Park landscape architect, Harold G. Fowler, decided to improve the entrance sign. To execute his idea, he looked to the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) enrollees employed in Sequoia at the time. (Hundreds of thousands of unemployed young men across the nation were enrolled in the CCC, established by President Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1933 to provide relief from the Depression by putting them to work in conservation projects on public lands.)

  In CCC Company 915, Fowler found George Walter Muno, a native of nearby Lindsay. Muno had demonstrated woodworking skills in his high school industrial arts class, had taken a wood carving class offered to the CCCers, and had carved the High Sierra Trailhead marker at Crescent Meadow.

  Muno agreed to carve the big new sign. Up in the Giant Forest the two men found a piece of fallen sequoia wood large enough to hold Fowler’s idea. Then Fowler outlined on it in blue chalk the image he wanted Muno to carve. The model for it was in his pocket — the iconic profile of an American Indian on the obverse side of the “Buffalo Nickel,” first issued by the U.S. Mint in 1913.

  Muno spent several months in Giant Forest, carving the Indian head and routing out the foot-high letters on the massive redwood slab, that was ten feet long, four feet high, and a foot thick. Meanwhile, the park machinist at Ash Mountain made the beautiful curved metal bracket to hold up the sign and CCC crews prepared the supporting log pylon and masonry. The pylon, a fifteen-foot sequoia trunk, four feet in diameter, rests on a two-tiered boulder masonry platform approximately ten feet square. Early in 1936, all the pieces were put together and “Sequoyah” began welcoming visitors to Sequoia National Park. Many stopped to have their pictures taken with the monumental Indian.

   In 1978, the Ash Mountain “Indian Head” Entrance Sign was listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its significance in the fields of art, landscape architecture, and social humanitarian endeavor. The nomination form concluded that, “Excepting required maintenance, no alterations should be allowed.”

  However, the sign has been altered more than once since it was erected. Originally unpainted, it was stained a redwood color in the 1950s and Sequoyah’s face was painted. In 1964, the sign was moved about 100 yards, due to construction work on the entrance station, and a second log pylon, which had originally stood across the road from the Indian sign’s pylon, was destroyed.

  From January to May, 2002, the sign was removed from its support for major restoration work, carried out by Steve Esson, Park Sign Maker, assisted by painters Bill Robertson and Jim Dennis. First, its paint was stripped off and the sign was allowed to dry out; it shed about 100 pounds of water weight that had accumulated over 65 years outdoors. Rot damage was removed. Cracks and insect damage were repaired. Epoxy was carefully applied to fill the voids and seal the 450-pound slab while maintaining its weathered character.

  After being painstakingly repainted, the sign was re-installed on May 24, 2002. And so “Sequoyah” — whether or not he was known to Endlicher, or considered by Sager or Fowler — continues to greet the millions of visitors streaming into the park at Ash Mountain, many of whom will stop to record their encounter with this famous face of Sequoia National Park.

Note: See related article on Sager’s enduring work: Moro Rock Stairway.

     For most of the 20th century, the tallest building in Visalia was also its leading bank. The Bank of Italy building is now a landmark on the National Register of Historic Places. It is still a working bank, although it is no longer the Bank of Italy nor the tallest structure in downtown Visalia. Since its inception as the Bank of Italy in 1923, the stately brick edifice at the northwest corner of Church and Main streets has been home to several other banking institutions, but it has remained true to its origins: customers can still enjoy the charms of the original construction — its marble floor, neoclassical arches, vaulted ceiling, and decorative appointments.

     The Bank of Italy building (also known by its successor institution, the Bank of America) has a historical provenance that predates the building itself. The Bank of Visalia, Tulare County’s first incorporated bank, was founded in 1874 and occupied a converted saloon building – the Gem Saloon – at the northwest corner of Church and Main streets. That old building gave way after a couple of years to a new bank that was also the city’s tallest structure and a local landmark. The bank’s clock tower presided over downtown and was visible from miles away.

     The Bank of Visalia was the county’s leading financial institution for decades, and was connected with some the most prominent individuals of early Visalia, whose names persist on the city’s streets and institutions to this day: The founding directors were W. J. Owen, Tipton Lindsey, Cuthburt Burrell, R.E. Hyde and A.H. Broder. Hyde was president and J.W. Crowley was the cashier.

     The story of the Bank of Italy, both the bank and the building, begins with a visionary entrepreneur named Amadeo Peter Giannini. The son of immigrant parents, Giannini made his fortune as a produce broker and retired from that career at the age of 31. As a director on the boards of several banks, he made a revolutionary observation: banks at that time served only the rich. He intended to provide banking services for the growing working and middle classes. To that end, he founded the Bank of Italy in San Francisco in 1904. Thanks to its innovations and booming business resulting from the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, the Bank of Italy flourished. By 1921, it had 24 branches throughout California.

     In that year, the Bank of Italy bought the Bank of Visalia (which had been renamed the National Bank of Visalia in 1908) and the Visalia Savings Bank and Trust Co., and combined them into a new Bank of Italy branch that opened in the old Bank of Visalia building on April 16, 1921. The Visalia Delta welcomed the new business with an editorial noting that the Bank of Italy placed “at the disposal of the community the entire $300,000,000 resources of that wonderful organization.” Later that year, Giannini himself visited Visalia and announced plans for a new building.

     Bank of Italy branches constructed in this period were typically designed in a Classic Revival style, with elaborate fixtures and appointments. Seven Bank of Italy buildings built during this period later were listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The same spirit was invested in the Visalia branch.

     Construction required the banking operation to move to temporary quarters. Happily, the S. Sweet furniture business had recently moved from Center Avenue to a new store on Main Street. The Bank of Italy moved to the old furniture store to make way for the demolition.

     Excavation began in late 1922, and by early 1923, 186 piles had been sunk into the ground to provide the foundation for what would be Visalia’s largest and tallest building, with five stories, a basement and the capacity for expansion.

     R. F. Felchlin & Co. of Fresno, famous for its classic design of public buildings including the 1918 Bank of Italy in downtown Fresno, provided the architectural, engineering, and contracting services.

     The designers and builders sought to make an impressive statement that reflected their vision of stability, classic proportion, and elegance. Today, both the exterior facade facing Main Street and the east facade facing Church still present a vision of a stately public building, including fluted pilasters, tall windows and imposing cornices around the roofline.

     The ground floor rests on a granite base rising into a sandstone facade “evoking Greek Doric classical order,” as the NRHP registration form attests. Among the decorative touches are sculpted leaves, rosettes and a row of semicircular medallions at the top of the building.

     Even more impressive is the interior. Visitors are greeted with a long, vaulted space that runs nearly the length of the building. Six octagonal pillars rise to the ceiling, which is decorated with moldings and panels that include animal motifs and classical designs.

     The building included the latest in early 20th century technology, some of which still remains: Two elevator shafts were constructed, although the second elevator was not put in until the 1940s. A brass mailbox and mail chute were installed. The main lobby was illuminated with impressive chandeliers and had 12 windows for customer service, with brass grilles, alphabetized to organize those waiting in line by their last names.

     Construction of the building took six months, with more than 25 contractors and about 100 laborers working on the building every day. The entire project cost $375,000.

     The new Bank of Italy was dedicated on Sept. 1, 1923, amid great fanfare, with an outpouring of congratulatory letters and testimonials from dignitaries. It officially opened for business on Sept. 24, 1923.

     It became the Bank of America in 1930, after Giannini merged the Bank of Italy and the Bank of America in 1928 and then renamed his whole financial enterprise. Many Visalians still refer to the landmark structure as either the Bank of Italy or the Bank of America building, even though B of A sold it in 1972 for $360,000, about what it cost to build, and moved across Church Street in 1976.

     Visalia Community Bank moved into the historic building in 1979. The current tenant, Bank of the Sierra, moved in in 1995.

     In 1981, Pat Clevenger and Betsy Bradley of the Visalia Historical Preservation Board began the process of nominating the Bank of Italy building to the National Register of Historic Places. It received the designation on April 1, 1982.

     Visitors to the Bank of Italy building today can see most of the same features that impressed customers in 1923. The handsome exterior is virtually unchanged. Inside, the chandeliers and the brass-grilled wickets are gone, replaced with modern lighting and features. But remaining are the tall windows, the marble floor and columns, and the mail chute, among many other elegant touches.

     On the outside of the building is a brass plaque noting the building’s historic status. It contains the name of only one person: Amadeo Giannini.

February, 2017

     Just eight miles east of Porterville, there’s a big, beautiful, shady park named in honor of William Pitt Bartlett. This park offers amenities for everyone: plenty of picnic tables, group arbors, playgrounds, a little fishing lake with a picturesque fishing platform for kids and seniors and folks with disabilities, a disc golf course, fields for sports, volleyball poles, horseshoe pits, restroom facilities, scenic views, a lake right above it, a river running through it, and lots of room to roam.

     But it’s not where it used to be. The original park site now lies under the waters of Success Lake, which covered it in 1961. The “new” Bartlett Park stretches along the river below Success Dam.

     In 1923, the citizens of Porterville wanted to secure the best easily-accessible swimming area along the Tule River for recreation and relief from summer’s heat. In response, the city’s Chamber of Commerce began a fundraising drive in early January of that year and collected the purchase price for the desired land before the month was out. The 34-acre parcel extended for a quarter to a half a mile along both banks of the Tule on the north side of what was then called Success Highway (now State Route 190), near the little dot then on the map named Success.

     Tulare County had established two county parks by that time — Mooney Grove, which it had purchased in 1909, and Cutler Park, donated to the County in 1919 by the family of Judge John Cutler. These were managed by the County’s Board of Forestry, which in 1913 replaced its previous Park Commission. Prominent Porterville businessman and gardener extraordinaire William Pitt Bartlett headed the Forestry Board in 1923.

     The Board had agreed to develop and maintain Porterville’s new river park if the Chamber purchased it and then donated it to the County. As soon as this was accomplished, Bartlett went to work, directing the development of the land to his specifications. By the last day of April, the Odd Fellows were initiating Tule River Park with a picnic, and the next week, a group of Porterville boys was at the park all day being instructed in forest lore, woodcraft, wildlife, and first aid, and participating in athletic events and hikes on the trails.

     The park land was heavily forested, with sycamore, cottonwood, willow, and other trees and shrubs. The first year’s improvements included clearing brush, scooping out a swimming hole, erecting two buildings containing 16 dressing rooms each, putting in two driveways, and constructing picnic tables and seats. The park proved very popular, so in 1924, a caretaker’s cottage was added, along with a pavilion, tables and seats set in concrete to accommodate 400 people, more parking areas, fencing, and arbors over which to train the wild grapes to shade the picnic tables. When the river went dry that summer, the Forestry Board cleared its bed for 400 feet and built a rock dam that would fill the river to a depth of six feet in its middle.

     Bartlett’s design for the planting made the park unique. Only native plants — trees, shrubs, flowers, and vines — were used. In 1925, a new cemented swimming pool was opened, along with more dressing rooms. Another well was drilled, a water system was installed, and electric lights were put in so that the park could be safely enjoyed into the night.

     In 1929, in response to a petition signed by many organizations, businesses, and citizens of Porterville, the Board of Supervisors changed the name of Tule River Park to Bartlett Park, as a “perpetual memorial to W.P. Bartlett, pioneer citizen . . . [who] was largely instrumental in developing this beautiful park.” Just a few months later, Bartlett, age 74, died.

     But Bartlett Park continued to serve the residents of Porterville and all of Tulare County for the next three decades, until the tremendously damaging flood of 1955 generated huge demand for a dam on the Tule River. By 1957, planning for the new dam made it clear that beloved Bartlett Park would be inundated by Success Reservoir. Two years later, the County was awarded $16,975 and the right to remove from the park’s premises “the items of improvement and equipment,” which by then included the caretaker’s residence, a laundry and garage, a pump house with pump and pressure system, more than 4,000 feet of pipe, picnic pavilions, storage sheds, a tool shed, and a concession stand.

     Meanwhile, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had prepared a license agreement to transfer to the County the administration of recreational purposes at the two new reservoirs it was creating — Success Lake and Lake Kaweah. By mid-1960, the Corps and the County had agreed that the County would lease and develop Area 11C below Success Dam into a 110-acre County park, to be named Bartlett Park at the urging of the County Historical Society and the City of Porterville.

     Success Dam was completed in June, 1961, and dedicated in May the following year. The Army Corps finished its work in Area 11C in February of 1961 and permitted the County to begin construction there. In its cost estimates to develop the new Bartlett Park, the County itemized funds for rest rooms, a bath house, fire pits, pipe, picnic arbors, roads, and wells, but listed nothing for trees and shrubs, since staff had determined to follow Bartlett’s example and use only native plants: oaks, sycamores, cottonwoods, and willows.

     The new Bartlett Park was soon as popular as the original. In 1965, more than 136,300 people visited its delightful grounds. Then, in early December, 1966, another disaster struck. Heavy rains washed out the levee along the spillway of the dam, causing major flooding that destroyed 78 picnic tables, pipelines, 500 feet of road, part of the parking lot, large and small trees planted in the spring, and 10 acres of new lawn.

     Undeterred, the County went back to work on the park. By 1969, its developed portion was being doubled, necessitating the hiring of an additional groundsman to assist the two who were maintaining the 50 already-developed acres, including 45 acres of lawn. Two more restrooms were being added, bringing the total to four. In the last 50 years, the ponds, playgrounds, and baseball field were added, and almost the entire property has been groomed and made accessible. This is our third-largest County park, but many residents have never heard of it. Bartlett Park is definitely worth discovering!

August, 2018

     The largest trees in the world grow in the mountains that dominate the eastern half of Tulare County. Most of these trees can be found in two large federal reservations – Sequoia National Park and the Giant Sequoia National Monument, which is a part of the Sequoia National Forest. But nestled amongst these vast and famous places is a unit of the Tulare County park system – Balch Park. How is it that Tulare County came to protect this beautiful piece of land?

     The story goes back to the late 19th century and a pioneer entrepreneur named John Doyle. Taking advantage of the generous land sales statutes of the times, Doyle took control of the 160 acres of sequoias in the middle 1880s. He intended to develop the property, which he called “Summer Home,” as a mountain resort. Doyle hoped to sell up to 125 lots to families seeking relief from the summer heat of the San Joaquin Valley.

     The lot sales never happened, however, and Doyle maintained control of the entire tract until he finally sold it in 1906 to the Mt. Whitney Power Company. This corporation, which was developing hydroelectric facilities on the Tule River, intended to cut the sequoias and use the lumber to build a flume to carry water to a new power plant. (Just a few years earlier the company had done the same thing on the Kaweah River, where it cut sequoias at Atwell’s Mill to build a flume to provide water to Kaweah Power Plant Number One.)

     Now fate intervened. A major figure in the power company was engineer John Hays Hammond, and it was Hammond’s wife, Natalie Harris Hammond, who, after visiting the property, convinced her husband not to allow the harvesting of the 200 large sequoias on the site. So the Mt. Whitney Company cancelled its logging plans and held on to the property. Eventually it was purchased privately in 1923 by Allan C. Balch of Los Angeles, president of the San Joaquin Light and Power Company. (San Joaquin Light and Power had taken over the Tule River power plant project from the Mt. Whitney Company; today, its facilities are part of the Pacific Gas and Electric system.)

     Allan Balch and his wife Janet purchased the property with the express intent that it be given to the County of Tulare as a public park, and that donation was finalized in December 1930. In subsequent years, an attempt was made to transfer the property to the State of California for addition to the surrounding Mountain Home Demonstration State Forest, but the terms of the Balch donation made such a transfer impractical.

     Eventually, the county parks department installed a number of recreational improvements on the property, making it a comfortable place to camp, and confirmed the identity of the site as “Balch Park.”

     Now, more than eighty years after Tulare County took title to Balch Park and its campgrounds, the small park offers exactly what John Doyle dreamt about so long ago: a “Summer Home” in the green, cool forests of the Sierra for those seeking relief from the heat of summer. For that we can thank Natalie Hammond and Allan and Janet Balch.

September, 2012