Charles Augustus Elster built a two-story brick business block on Main Street in the little foothill community of Springville in 1912. For well over a hundred years now, this classic structure has anchored Springville’s “downtown.” It has had many different owners and tenants and survived two fires, but its handsome Main Street exterior remains almost unchanged from the long-ago day of its grand opening, and it continues to house a variety of businesses serving locals and visitors alike.

     Charles’s parents, Alonzo and Rebecca Elster, arrived in Tulare County with their eight children in 1866, when Charles was three. They settled first in Visalia, then moved to the foothills of the Tule River watershed to engage in logging, milling, and ranching, which, for over forty years, through booms and busts, were staples of the area’s industries.

     Charles bought his first land claim before he was 21, labored hands-on and learned his way up through the hard jobs in the forest, and in 1903, built his own mill just a few hundred yards above the old Mountain Home Hotel.

     In 1888, he wed 20-year-old Eva May Hubbs, daughter of local pioneer timber man James R. Hubbs. Two years later, Eva May died soon after birthing Charles’s only son, Irvy. In 1892, he married Eva’s younger sister, Mary Arminda “Minnie” Hubbs, age 17, who bore Charles’s only daughter, Lora, in 1894.

     Despite financial difficulties as the area’s limber industry began shutting down in 1904, the amputation of most of son Irvy’s right leg in 1902, and the death of daughter Lora, age 13, in 1907, Charles and his family persevered. Charles turned to ranching and stock raising and became active in large enterprises, including developing reliable water supplies and distribution, rail transportation, electric power — and Springville as a business center — all essential to the commercial success of these industries and the Springville region.

     He and other visionaries formed the Tulare County Power Company and secured valuable water rights on the Middle Fork of the Tule, which would be developed to provide electricity to the growing town. Their corporation also worked to bring an electric railroad to Springville, but a competing, steam-powered line, the Porterville Northeastern Railroad, got there first, with its inaugural engine rolling into town on September 9, 1911.

     The advent of electricity and rail transport boosted Springville into the modern age. In 1911, the community’s first “permanent” structure, the Wilkinson Building (now the Springville Inn) was erected on Main Street (now Highway 190). In 1912, Charles, having acquired 47 acres of property in the townsite, built the prominent, two-story, brick Elster Building right across the street.

     Springville became a weekend resort destination as the train and improving local roads sped visitors from the valley up to the dance halls on Main Street and at the nearby Soda Spring, tennis courts in town, and regular baseball games that drew large crowds. The new Elster Building became the retail center of Springville, and Charles became one of the largest taxpayers in the community. (He also owned an olive nursery, an orchard, and a large, comfortable residence near by.)

     Located on a main corner, the 48′ x 60′ Elster building cost $12,000. It was designed in an impressive architectural style found in many small California towns of the period, and its handsome front and east facades remain virtually unchanged today.

     Its various tenants have included the Pioneer Bank (1912-1918), the post office, the Odd Fellows Fraternal Hall, a drug store, the first telephone in town (1912), a meat market, a restaurant, many different professional offices, a bar, a drywall company, a real estate office, a personal trainer, a grocery store, and the Springville Visitors Center. Its basement housed the first ice plant in town. Its second floor provided lodging for tourists and new arrivals to Springville. The solid, attractive, busy building marked the prosperity and growth of its community and rural Tulare County.

     Charles got back into the lumber business with his Hot Springs sawmill by 1914, and then, in 1920, a new sawmill at Harper’s Point, near Mountain Home, that he established with A.M. Coburn. But hard times came again. Coburn died in an auto accident in 1921. Charles’s wife, Minnie, only 54, died of pneumonia in 1929. Less than three weeks later, the Elster Building was owned by the J.D. Miller Realty Company.

     As America sank into its Great Depression in 1930, Charles and his son, Irvy, were regularly receiving delinquent tax notices on their Springville properties, including the Elster Building, which they no longer owned. Charles sold his mill property in 1941 and died two years later, at age 84. (Irvy, known today mostly as the storied “Hermit of SCICON,” never married; he was found dead in his mountain cabin in 1965.)

     The Elster Building continued to change hands, in 1930, 1931, 1932, 1939, 1959, and 1964. In 1974, it was acquired by Leland E. Sweetser, an officer of Lesco Ltd., of Compton, California (who may have been urged by Springville residents to save the town’s principal building by acquiring and restoring it), and then by Lesco Ltd. in 1976.

     When Lesco purchased the Elster, then known as “the old Palace Hotel,” it had been condemned by the County and required major renovation to meet building codes for safety, plumbing, structural, and electrical requirements. Lesco spent over $250,000 on a new foundation, exit stairwells, structural support, and reconstructed office space, ensuring that the work would comply with the standards of the National Register of Historic Places, on which it got listed in 1982.

     Fire damaged the building in 1983, but Lesco again restored it to NRHP standards, and in 1985 quitclaimed the deed back to Sweetser. In 1997, Robert Gillett of Porterville purchased the Elster, then sold it in 2003 to Max and Valerie Walden, the developers of Hanford’s Courthouse Square.

     The Elster Building is currently owned by Bob Tucker, who had been coming to Springville since boyhood and loved the small community. In the 1970s, he bought a ranch nearby, and in 2019 he bought the building that he had long admired and considered to be a Springville focal point. “The building has good bones,” says Bob, who taught Industrial Decoration Arts for decades and enjoys doing historical restoration work himself. Bob’s nephew, Derrick Usher, a realtor, is managing the Elster from his upstairs office onsite. And so it appears that this classic edifice is once again in good hands for the next chapter of its long life as Springville’s landmark commercial center, still linking its community’s past to its future.

September, 2025

     Just beneath the surface of the Herbert Preserve is a layer of very tough clay, called durapan, which is largely impervious to water. Plentiful rains can create springtime vernal pools atop this clay in the low “hogwallows” between the preserve’s hummocky mima mounds. Typically at their largest from March to May, the pools gradually evaporate as the hot weather comes on.

     During their short lives, these vernal pools provide a rich aquatic habitat that is almost unique to California, and home to some amazing life forms.

     For example, the pools support paper-clip-sized fairy shrimp. These are crustaceans, like shrimp in the ocean, but the fairy shrimp are living in the Central Valley desert, far from the sea. During most of the year, when the pools are dry, the shrimp are not alive. They are enclosed in tiny, durable cysts, like hard little eggs, waiting in the arid clay for rain to fall.

     As soon as there’s enough water, the cysts wet and hatch. If their vernal pool is deep enough long enough, the hatched shrimp will live for a brief month or two, during which they will mate and lay eggs. The eggs will hatch and develop into adults, and the adult shrimp will encase themselves in their cysts once more as the pools dry again into clay.

     Fairy shrimps’ ancestors lived in the world’s salty ocean. As land began to form above the ocean, water on the land turned fresh, and some shrimp ancestors adapted to living in it. Creatures — such as fish –developed that could eat these little shrimp.

     But no fish live in vernal pools, because these unusual freshwater ecosystems are filled by rain and have no connection to a stream. So the tiny shrimp thrive in the vernal pools. They are in a sense celebrating life as it was on the planet before there were fish to eat them. If we put these fairy shrimp back into the ocean now, they’d be fish snacks in moments.

     The vernal pools also house miniscule clam shrimps and very small crustaceans called copepods, which most people call “Cyclops” because they look as if they have a little red eye in the middle of their head. Thus, the vernal pools create amazingly rich storehouses of food and provide wonderful meals, not for fishes, but for many different kinds of birds.

     The pools also host the western spadefoot, a toad reminiscent of a science fiction creature. The hind foot of this intriguing amphibian is equipped with a spade, a very tough, callused little black triangular area that the toad uses to dig in the mud.

     For most of the year, though, these toads aren’t digging. They’re living underground in a state that is very near death, rather like suspended animation. Their heartbeat is near zero. They are barely respiring. When they go underground, they have to bring with them in their body tissues all the moisture needed to sustain themselves for sometimes over a year, but usually from about May to November.

     Imagine that you’re a toad and it’s November, and the first winter storm is arriving in the Valley. In your little chamber below the dry bed of a vernal pool, you are listening for the sound of raindrops.

     Spadefoot toads don’t just respond to the soil getting moist; they literally have to hear the rain falling long enough to feel assured that there will be enough water to allow them to break out of their little tombs, get back above ground, find another toad, and mate and lay eggs.

     Suddenly, almost miraculously, as soon as the dry pools get wet again, adult toads are swimming about, looking for a mate. They give a “brrrrrrrrrt” call, like the sound of running your finger over the tines of a metal comb (Spadefoot Toad Mating Call).

     When the toads are calling, it’s a good indication that they’re going to have a successful year. Their eggs will hatch, and their tadpoles will grow, lose their tails, and turn into adults.

     And then, when the all the water has evaporated from the vernal pools, the mud that was solid, smooth like a bathtub bottom, will begin to dry and shrink and crack. And in those little cracks, you can see the heads of little toads backing down with the spade on their hind foot digging, digging, digging to bury themselves in the mud.

View A SPADEFOOT BURYING ITSELF.  Scroll down just a little to “Watch video”.  Then Be patient.  Spadefoots need to rest while digging.

     In the springtime of wet years, hundreds of vernal pools may form in the Herbert Preserve, attracting myriads of birds and reflecting the snow-capped Sierra in their still surfaces. The water arrives from the clouds, falls to the ground, and fills the pools. But the water doesn’t sink into the ground because of the impermeable clay layer at the surface, and it doesn’t drain away down a channel because the land is comprised of mounds and swales. Instead, the water disappears by evaporation.

     Once a pool has formed, it will be at its maximum size for a fairly short time; then the water will begin to evaporate, and the shallow pool will slowly shrink until it’s all dry.

     Several flower species have adapted to this shrinking progression: some like very shallow water, others prefer it a bit deeper, and still others like to grow just at the edge of the pool. As the pool recedes throughout the spring, rings of these colorful flowers follow the retreating water.

     The Herbert Preserve’s location in Tulare County, near the southern, desert end of the Central Valley grassland, limits the variety of vernal pool flowers that can grow here. But when rain is abundant, we get to see rings of Downingia, a beautiful little purple flower; rings of tiny yellow “goldfields”; and in the years when things work their very best, small rings of white vernal pool “popcorn.” The colorful, delicate fairy rings don’t last long, and they need a good wet year to form at all, so you must time your visit carefully to witness these magical floral displays at their loveliest.

February 2015

UPDATE December, 2024: In December of 2022, Greg Collins purchased the Hogwallow Peserve from the Tulare County Historical Society. A life-long Visalia resident , with a strong affinity for the land, Greg spent his career here in city planning and promoting sustainable land management policies and practices. Upon retiring, he fulfilled his dream of buying and protecting some natural Valley land, and greatly enjoyed many days spent exploring and studying the Hogwallows’ ten acres. In December, 2024, Greg donated the preserve to Sequoia Riverlands Trust, as he had always intended, for its permanent preservation. SRT is now developing a management plan for its special habitat and policy for public access to the Hogwallows. 

     The 725-acre Herbert Wetland Prairie Preserve protects the largest remaining piece of natural prairie on the floor of Tulare County. It provides food and shelter for dozens of different kinds of birds, which in turn provides wonderful opportunities for even beginning birdwatchers to enjoy the sights and sounds of avians flying, feeding, courting, hunting, and sometimes even vanishing underground.

     Chances of seeing lots of birds are especially good in wet winters and springs, when the preserve’s seasonal vernal pools produce exceptionally abundant food for residents and migrators alike.

     The migrating birds, including ducks and sandpipers, can easily see the little vernal pools even from a great distance as they fly over the Valley, because the pools reflect sunlight at all different times of the day. They form the most productive wetland food ecosystem for birds in the Central Valley, more so even than a freshwater marsh, because there are no fish in these vernal pools to take any of this food away.

     If good rains keep the pools wet long enough, a pair of ducks can lay eggs in a nest near a vernal pool, raise a brood of young, maybe ten or twelve ducklings, and then they can do it again, raising two broods in one season. That would be really unusual in a freshwater marsh, but a vernal pool is so productive that it creates exceptionally valuable wetlands.

     Not all the birds that visit and reside at the Herbert are there every day, but visitors can almost always find watchable birds at the preserve, from delightful burrowing owls, to powerful raptors, to wetland species like egrets, herons, and sandpipers. Migrators pass through the area in spring and fall, winter species spend the wet months there, and summer birds come to nest.

     Burrowing owls are there year round, and are seen most easily and in the greatest numbers during drier years. Also called “ground owls,” these small owls live in the earth, but they don’t dig their own burrows; they just take over old squirrel holes.

     When my grandfather was a young man in the Valley, folks called burrowing owls “howdy owls,” because when a flying burrowing owl lands near you, on its long legs, it will quickly bob its head up and down to triangulate on you and figure out how close you are.

   In our best year so far, we had seven pairs of burrowing owls on the Herbert, and each pair can raise five to eight young. To be able to see twenty to thirty small owls on a single piece of property on a single day is truly remarkable.

     The preserve is large enough to attract several kinds of birds of prey. We’ve seen as many as three golden eagles at once foraging over the prairie for ground squirrels. Those squirrels end up as food for red-tailed hawks, as well. The white-tailed kites eat mostly a small brown meadow mouse that is related to the voles and lemmings of the Arctic.

     Harriers, including a small falcon called a merlin, also hunt on the Herbert. Merlins are in California only during the winter months; they don’t nest in our state at all. But the Herbert’s open prairie is their perfect hunting ground. They go after small birds like horned larks, sparrows, and other birds that flock in fields, like blackbirds. To see a merlin hunt is a most memorable wildlife experience. Selecting its target, the merlin accelerates with blinding speed, closes unbelievably quickly on its prey, catches it in mid-air, and then brings it swiftly to the ground to feed on it.

     Just walking along the edge of the preserve in a good wet season, you can look over the mounds and see flocks of mallards and widgeons and green-winged teal, sometimes even Canada geese. Over fifteen different kinds of sandpipers and plovers and phalaropes have visited the pools and the slough.

     So far, more than 150 different avian species have been counted at the Herbert. Bring your binoculars and a field guide and see what flies in on your day at this fascinating wetland prairie preserve.

January, 2015

NOTE:  Now read Rob Hansen’s MYSTERIOUS VERNAL POOLS

     On the first planting day of the 2013-2014 rainy season, several students from College of the Sequoias spent hours bent over soil scoured by a prescribed burn. They dug holes and patted small seedlings of oak, willow, cottonwood, and elderberry into the ground before watering them thoroughly.

     The students’ activity might not have seemed unusual to the Yokuts, the indigenous peoples of the Tulare Basin who lived off the land for thousands of years. They actively managed it by setting fire, by pruning dead undergrowth, by tending seedlings, and by transplanting some edible flora. Their resource management supported a diverse diet of seeds, roots, herbs, and meat, and helped them to maintain an adequate food supply despite variations in weather and water availability.

     Less than 150 years ago the Tulare Basin held the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi. The shallow lake, the rivers that fed it, and the miles of tule marshes and wetland prairie around it nurtured a rich diversity of plant species and wildlife.

     The first Euro-American settlers, who arrived in the 1850s, recognized the land’s agricultural potential and proceeded to drain the lake and marshes and divert its water sources to irrigation canals. By the early twentieth century, the lake had been reduced to small seasonal pools, and the basin was divided into a vast grid of intensively farmed land.

     Yet, about four percent of the original landscape remains, and an invaluable portion of that is enclosed within the fences of the James K. Herbert Wetland Prairie Preserve. This 725-acre site lies to the east of the vanished Tulare Lake shore, between the Kaweah and Tule Rivers, and protects the largest remaining piece of natural prairie in Tulare County.

     Its preservation is due to the efforts of biologist Robert Hansen, and the vision of farmers James and Carol Herbert. The Herberts hired Hansen in 1992 to assess the potential of the property. Hansen found a remnant of the land as it was before the Euro-American settlers arrived. It was ideally situated to serve as an important segment of the Oaks to Tules Wildlife Corridor and, if restored, could help preserve threatened plant and animal species while mitigating local flood and fire risk.

     After several years of study, Hansen recommended that the land be conserved, rather than converted into a dairy farm or orchard. The Herberts embraced the idea of protecting this vanishing habitat, which they fondly called their “wilderness.” In 2000, a coalition of government and private organizations provided the funds necessary for the Sequoia Riverlands Trust to purchase the land from the Herberts at less than market value.

     Two years later, the Trust took on restoration of the land with a rigorous scientific approach. With the help of the National Resource Conservation Service and the California Wildlife Conservation Board, the Trust began returning 83 acres of the site’s irrigated pasture to wetland.

     They restored vernal pools, dug three shallow ponds, constructed a meandering slough, and seeded the slough with native grasses. From 2005 to 2010, with a grant from the Central Valley Project Conservation Program, the Trust and dozens of volunteers continued wetland restoration while systematically monitoring how the native species respond to management programs that include prescribed fire and livestock grazing.

     The results are astounding. The diversity and abundance of native wetland prairie plants has increased. As a result, western spadefoot and freshwater invertebrates abound (seasonally). With the restored habitat, the long-tailed weasel, coyote, Golden eagle, and Swainson’s hawk come to forage. Ducks, grebes, and redwing blackbirds have returned to feed and nest. In all, the number of bird species on the property, including burrowing owls, has increased from 76 to 153.

     Of the animals that have returned to this land, perhaps none are more important than humans. Volunteers tend to return to the site again and again to see how the plants are doing and to enjoy the beauty of a thriving wetland prairie. “Human beings are a huge piece of the puzzle,” says project biologist Bobby Kamansky, “because we value biodiversity, and we, as a society, derive direct benefit.”

July, 2014

Note:  Now read Rob Hansen’s SOME BIRDS OF THE HERBERT PRESERVE and MYSTERIOUS LIFE OF VERNAL POOLS.  For more about hogwallows (Mima Mounds), see THE STORY OF THE HOGWALLOW PRESERVE.

    The First Congregational Church’s pipe organ is considered to be the oldest functioning Wurlitzer in California. It was built in 1916 to accompany silent films of the day in a Los Angeles movie house.

  That day passed when “talkies” took over in the late 1920s. The only large market left for the theater organs would be churches. But it was then considered “improper” for churches to use theater organs which had provided music for entertainment and sometimes risqué vaudeville shows.

     With their sales value rapidly dropping, the now almost worthless organs were stripped of their “toy ranks” that produced the sound effects — such as drums, whistles, and horns — for the movies. Their remaining ranks were renamed to sound more ecclesiastical, their consoles were stained darker to look more ecclesiastical, and the instruments were rebranded as “Robert Hope-Jones Concert Organs” and given false provenances that would make them more saleable to conservative churches.

     The First Congregational Church’s pipe organ was delivered in 1931, church officers having been told that it came from a large church in Chicago. But when the Crome Organ Company of Los Angeles came to rebuild the organ after it was damaged in the 1936 fire, the workmen recognized it as the old Wurlitzer from the Los Angeles Deluxe Theater.

     In 1963, a four-manual [keyboard] Moller console with a full AGO pedal board was purchased from Pomona College’s Little Bridges Hall of Music. Famous organists have played on this console: Albert Schweitzer and E. Power Biggs. Over the years, the church has methodically added back the stripped toy ranks so that silent films can be shown in the sanctuary with full accompaniment for the community’s enjoyment.

     A major organ funding drive in 1991 raised over $45,000. In addition to upgrades, an endowment fund for future maintenance was established. The organ now has 24 ranks (rows of pipes) which can be expanded to thirty eight in the future. While false pipes have been added as architectural features behind the choir loft and pulpit, operating pipes are spread throughout the sanctuary.

     Many generous congregation members — musicians and technicians, fundraisers and donors — have worked tirelessly to keep this great organ singing. Its magnificent voice may well resound for another hundred years.

April, 2017

     As the peals of the carillon bells from the First Congregational Church steeple drift over Porterville’s downtown, residents are reminded daily that the church is a longstanding element in the city’s life.

     The nationally recognized structure sits on three city lots east of downtown at the southeast corner of Mill and Fourth streets. With no nearby buildings, the church is clearly visible with its distinctive Late Gothic Revival architecture, arched stained-glass windows, cedar shingle siding, native stonework, and soaring steeple. It was approved for recognition on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998, ninety years after its construction.

   Still, the story of the First Congregational Church dates farther back and is uniquely linked to the history of the Porterville. A cornerstone marker on the building is dated 1891-1908, marking the church’s establishment before construction of the current facility.

     Church member Joe Faure is a frequent tour guide for visitors who want to see inside the building. As he explains it, the city was first just a cluster of houses, saloons, and shops serving as a stopover for land schooners carrying newcomers eager to search the gold fields farther north. When Royal Porter Putnam, a shopkeeper and owner of 40 acres on the banks of the Tule River, began laying out a grid for streets and lots for a new town in 1864, his wife, dismayed by the “wild west” feel of the village, insisted he set aside three lots for churches.

     As settlement in the area by farmers began, it brought an influx of mid-Westerners, many of them of the Congregational faith. Sharing similar theological views, they merged with a dwindling Presbyterian church at the site, and in 1891 the congregation became affiliated with the Congregational Church. It was identified as an “institutional church” — providing not only religious services but multiple uses for the entire community, with culture, education, recreation, and respectable entertainment – meant to help tame the rough and tumble town.

  Thus, they built a multi-level edifice in 1908 where young people could develop body, mind, and spirit with physical fitness, mental training, religious ideals, citizenship, and service. They brought the first daily kindergarten to the area, provided an indoor swimming pool with a gymnasium on the second story – the first in southern Tulare County, and a 250 seat sanctuary that doubled as the town’s only auditorium. The church even bought two additional lots south of the building in 1915 to construct the first tennis courts in town for public use.

     Some alterations have been made over the years, but the church building today is essentially unchanged from its original plan, as attested to by the framed blueprints on display, the work of San Francisco Bay Area architects George C. Meeker and Francis W. Reed. Its design is in the Shingle/Bay Tradition of the Gothic Revival style. It is now the only site representative of this architectural style in the south San Joaquin Valley – others of the era having been mostly destroyed by fire.

     However, fire did significantly change the church in 1936, burning the south wall of the sanctuary, a portion of the altar and recessed chancel, and the entire gymnasium. Since area high schools were now providing swimming, gymnasium, and tennis venues to the public, the Congregationalists replaced theirs with a social hall, complete with a modern kitchen and raised stage over the original swimming pool. This lower level addition adjoins the Fireside Room, a large area with comfortable seating and a fireplace.

     In 1961, a separate building south of the church was built for classrooms; and in 1978, an elevator was installed from the ground level Mill Street entrance side to the upper vestibule for wheelchair access. The church still provides a home for gatherings of community groups such as Girl and Boy Scout troops, quilters, and Alcoholics Anonymous, and for entertainment in the form of plays and musical concerts.

     Music has been an important part of the Congregational church since its beginning. The church maintains two Steinway pianos, a magnificent pipe organ, and its original pump organ, which is still used for special occasions, such as the church’s 125th anniversary celebration in 2016.

     Another source of pride and contributory factor in the church’s selection for National Register recognition are its outstanding stained glass windows. The unique windows were designed by a San Francisco artisan who was unfamiliar with the region and was fascinated by its changing seasons and the emerging citrus industry on the nearby hillsides. Thus, the windows feature the greens and golds of spring and fall, and each is anchored at the bottom by a panel featuring a cluster of three oranges and leaves. This motif, many congregants believe, suggests the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.

     This brings us full circle in our tour of the church and back to the carillon system. It, too, has a story. The sound system was a gift to the church in memory of Richard Moore from his family and friends. It was first installed in 1957 by the Maas-Rowe Company of Escondido. It served well for twenty two years, when the installing company was re-hired to upgrade the parts and system. Once again the carillon sounds marked the passage of time for the city, with songs at 8 a.m., noon, and 5 p.m., and chimes on the hour in between — a fix that lasted until 2001.

     After 15 years of silence from the carillon, the family of the late Harry and Virginia Falconer pledged the entire sum for the carillon replacement project in their memory, providing a modern, digital system with over 600 songs to choose from. And so, just before Christmas 2016, the familiar musical interludes once again emanated from the First Congregational Church spire daily and for special occasions. It is an audible indicator that the church continues to serve its community well into its second century.

April, 2017

     Two elusive plants and the love for flowers of a rancher/naturalist were the factors in a formula that conserved 110 acres of Lewis Hill as a nature preserve in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Tulare County. Cole Hawkins is the rancher, and his family once owned 600 acres of Lewis Hill. From his childhood fascination with plants, through his developing interest in conservation and persistence in preserving a site he loved, Hawkins worked with many others to protect what he saw as miracles of nature.

     Set in rocky foothills north of Porterville, Lewis Hill is an unprepossessing, grassy hump that rises to 1,028 feet in the middle of grazing country. Arid and speckled with random outcroppings of rock, it is typical of foothills grassland and blue oak habitat, although treeless. Each spring the hill supports an enticing mix of wildflowers: California poppy, wild hyacinth, miner’s lettuce, blue dicks, fiddleneck, popcorn flower, milk thistle, and cluster lily among them.

     Two flowers are imperiled: the San Joaquin adobe sunburst (Pseudobahia peirsonii, classified as endangered) and the striped adobe lily (Fritillaria striata, classified as threatened). The common names of both plants indicate they grow only in rocky, clay-based soil called adobe, Lewis Hill is one of the few places on Earth with the appropriate soil and climate for these species to thrive. They flower on Lewis Hill briefly from mid-January into early spring, and disappear the rest of the year. In this ephemeral botanical environment, Cole Hawkins fell in love.

     “I‘ve always had a real interest in plants and animals,” Hawkins said. “I think I was born with it. I was just amazed by plants.” Hawkins grew up in citrus orchards in Southern California. His family bought the Beatty Ranch, which included much of Lewis Hill in Tulare County, in 1953, when Cole was three years old. His father named it Hermosa Tierra, “Beautiful Land.” They grew citrus and olives and ranged cattle on about 600 acres bisected by Plano Road and rising from the base to the peak of Lewis Hill.

     From spending his early years there off and on, Hawkins became enchanted with the place. At first he was more taken with the animals than the plants – bobcats, coyotes, squirrels, the occasional mountain lion, deer, fox, and striped and spotted skunks. But gradually he started noticing the plants, too, especially the bright indigo cluster lilies. “One of my milestones of the year was when the first brodiaea would bloom,” he said. “And brodiaea is a beautiful small blue lily. I was always excited when that happened.”

     Hawkins started working on the ranch in 1969, but took time off to pursue his college degree. Although he enjoyed the natural wonders of the property, the purpose of the farm was to raise food. The focus on the ranch was to suppress plants that weren’t citrus and olives, Hawkins said. “My uncle was afraid they were competing with the trees for water and nutrients.”

     They knew that grazing cattle on the ranch would suppress the wild oats, an introduced species that competed with the native plants. Hawkins said his interest in managing the land and encouraging the native plants started with his experiments in selective grazing. And that led to the conservation of Lewis Hill.

     Hawkins worked toward a Master’s degree in biology at California State University, Fresno while he nurtured his interests in botany. He would roam the fields of Lewis Hill, armed with a Munz guide to California plants, cataloging the various species he found.

     He decided he needed to learn more about what was on his ranch, so he asked for help from biologist Dave Chesmore and botanist Howard Latimer at Fresno State. He conferred with Bob Barnes of the Tulare County Audubon Society and biologist Rob Hansen. He called on another local farmer, Jack Zaninovich, who was active in the California Native Plant Society. They eventually determined that Lewis Hill had two threatened or endangered species, the striped adobe lily and the San Joaquin adobe sunburst.

     Hawkins began managing the ranch when his uncle retired in 1978. A few years later, he met a self-described “city girl,” a musician from Detroit named Priscilla Haapa. Priscilla moved to Porterville in 1972, where her daughter, Shanda Lowery, was born. Priscilla played principal cello in the Tulare County Symphony, taught private cello students, and started the string instrument program in the Porterville schools in 1973. She met Cole Hawkins at an Audubon Society meeting in 1981. He was looking for a volunteer for his water conservation booth at the Porterville Fair.

     “I was the only one who signed up for helping him at this booth,” Priscilla said. “So that was the start of us realizing how much we really had in common. “About six months after that, I was going to leave Porterville, because I thought, ‘Oh, this is just too small of a town and all that.’ But by then I had already realized that Cole and I had something very special going.” Cole and Priscilla married in 1982. Two years later they moved into a house they built on Lewis Hill on 25 acres of ranch property the Hawkins family gave them.

     They both knew they wanted to keep Lewis Hill just as it was. They reveled in their views of wildlife, sweeping vistas, and delicate flowers. The fact that some were threatened or endangered was an asset. They would share strategies to preserve the place, talk to dozens of other people, and explore their options. Family events forced their hand.

     Hawkins’ mother, who owned a majority of the ranch, died in 1989, and the Hawkins family made plans to sell the property. Cole Hawkins was eager to pursue a Ph.D. in wildlife and fisheries science, and Priscilla wanted a place where she would play her cello and teach. They moved to Davis in 1991.

     Meanwhile, they continued their plans to preserve some of Lewis Hill. His brothers and sister donated 90 acres to the project, and Hawkins donated 20 of his 25 acres. Cole gives Priscilla the credit for coming up with the idea of a conservation easement for the property. They approached various organizations that could take the land in trust. For a time, the Nature Conservancy was interested, but the project eventually wasn’t big enough for them.

     Finally, in 1994, the family donated 110 acres to the Kern River Research Center, which Bob Barnes had helped to establish. Six years later, Lewis Hill was acquired by the Tule Oaks Land Trust, which has become part of the Sequoia Riverlands Trust (SRT). Each spring, SRT conducts a guided wildflower walk on Lewis Hill. Other times the property is open to groups for study and research only by arrangement with SRT.

     Cole and Priscilla Hawkins still return to visit Lewis Hill and Hermosa Tierra. The farmer who bought the ranch has kept it in citrus production, allaying the Hawkines’ fears that the property would be developed. “We just loved Lewis Hill and we wanted to keep it for other people to be able to enjoy it the way that we did.”

     Lewis Hill remains a preserve for the unique natural habitat of the Southern San Joaquin Valley and Sierra Nevada foothills, just the way Cole and Priscillla Hawkins wanted it to be.

February, 2016

     As far as the eye could see, there were oak trees — over four hundred square miles of woodlands stretching westward from the Sierra Nevada foothills to the vast Tulare Lake. When the first Spanish and American explorers came into the southern San Joaquin Valley almost two hundred years ago, they struggled for days through a maze of rivers, wetlands, and towering trees.

     The riparian landscape of the Kaweah River delta was especially formidable with thickets of willows, tangled wild grape vines, elderberries, and blackberries. It was so marshy, particularly during the annual winter flood season, that the local Yokuts people could not live in it. They fished in its ponds and streams, hunted its great variety of wildlife, and harvested its abundance of plants and acorns, but they located their villages on higher, drier ground.

     Then the European and American settlers arrived. They created the town of Visalia on the flood plain of the Kaweah River and began to farm the area. They cleared the surrounding land of oak trees so they could grow grain crops, orchards, and vineyards, and also use the oaks for firewood. Decade after decade, farmers channeled the river and streams into ditches and canals until only one large area of wetlands to the east of Visalia survived. “The swamp” flooded each winter and its water table was too high for successful farming. However, even there the land began to dry, especially after Terminus Dam was completed in 1962 to control the Kaweah River’s flooding.

     In the mid 1900s, the Davis family of Woodlake gained title to this land and for three generations grazed cattle in its meadows. In 1982, young Myrtle Davis Franklin inherited the 324-acre property. It was no longer a swampland and she decided she wanted to clear it and turn it into a walnut grove. On friends’ recommendations, Myrtle sought the advice of the University of California’s Tulare County Farm Advisor, Alan George. Surveying the land, Alan found that the water table was still only about eight feet below the surface. He advised Myrtle that her property was suitable only for high-maintenance field crops.

     Alan then asked Myrtle if she might consider preserving the land. He and his friend, educator Max Cochran, had discussed the fact that the area was one of the few Valley Oak woodlands still in its near-natural state, and they felt it should be preserved. Nevertheless, Myrtle wanted to pursue farming and declined Alan’s suggestion. Later, however, she reconsidered. Alan promptly contacted Jack Zaninovich of Delano, a farmer and also a Director of the Nature Conservancy. Jack referred Alan to Steve McCormick, chairman of one of the Conservancy’s acquisition projects. Steve hurried down to inspect the acreage and immediately knew it was prime conservation land.

     A few months later, after extensive negotiations, the Nature Conservancy bought the land for $1,010,000, about $3,000 an acre. In a drive organized by Alan George, the people of Tulare and Kings Counties raised over $100,000 through community donations to help The Nature Conservancy pay for the 324-acre oak woodland.

     In 1998, The Nature Conservancy turned over control of the preserve to the newly formed Four Creeks Land Trust, made up of local volunteers who had been successfully managing it for several years. (Four Creeks merged with two other local land trusts in 2003 to become today’s Sequoia Riverlands Trust.)

     Now thousands of visitors enjoy Kaweah Oaks Preserve every year. Education is a major emphasis of activities at the preserve, highlighted by school tours, guided public walks on its trails, interpretive materials, and historical information. As Alan George tells us, if we could see “all the young people that go out to Kaweah Oaks to enjoy the beauty of this area and to imagine what the area was like before the white man came in,” we would fully understand the preserve’s importance.

     More than 400 people attended the dedication of the Preserve on May 15, 1983. Many of them had worked hard to contribute to the success of one of the most unique preserves in our nation. However, none of them could feel the joy that Myrtle Davis Franklin felt. “You don’t know what this means to me,” she exclaimed to Alan George that day. “This is one of the most exciting things I’ve done in my life.”

                                                                                                                                                                          October, 2012

     Note: Now read Alan George’s first- person account of the origins of the Kaweah Oaks Preserve: “A Lucky Day in the Office.”

     The southern part of Kings Canyon National Park is in Tulare County, including readily-accessible sequoia groves, such as the southern part of General Grant Grove, the Redwood Meadow Grove, and the Buena Vista Grove. Take the trail to the top of Buena Vista Peak, an easy day hike, for terrific views.

     For a wonderful backcountry experience, hike from the Lodgepole Visitor Center area in Sequoia National Park into the spectacular Sequoia Kings Canyon Wilderness section of Kings Canyon National Park, where peaks, meadows, lakes, streams, and many beautiful trails await you. (You can also hike out of Wolverton and over the Tablelands into this wilderness portion of Kings Canyon National Park.)

     However, if you’re here during the three seasons when the road to it is open, you must see also the great canyon of the Kings River for which Kings Canyon National Park was named, and to do that, you must leave Tulare County (although that tremendous canyon was within our county, until boundary changes in the 1870s put it into Fresno County). From the Kings Canyon Visitor Center in Grant Grove Village (in Tulare County), take Highway 180 north, cross the county line, and drive through the northern section of Giant Sequoia National Monument (where you’ll glimpse the effects of the logging over 100 years ago in the sequoia groves that impelled the campaigns to save these giants).

     After winding steeply down the flanks of the vast canyon (on a good, paved 2-lane road with many curves), stop for sensational views of the Wild and Scenic Kings River at Junction Vista and again at Horseshoe Bend, just before you finally reach the level of the river, where you can tour beautiful Boyden Cavern (guided tours only; fee).

     Now follow the tree-lined Kings River up-canyon and stop to visit marvelous Grizzly Falls, just a few steps from the roadside picnic tables.

     Soon after that, you’ll re-enter Kings Canyon National Park, with several campground options, a lodge, a restaurant, a ranger station, a riding and packing stable, picnic areas, abundant wildlife, trails for people of all abilities and inclinations, ranger programs, and some of the most sensational scenery in the nation.

     John Muir called Kings Canyon “another Yosemite,” and the forests, flowers, meadows, rivers, creeks, waterfalls, lakes, cliffs, and peaks calling you to explore and enjoy them make spending at least one night, and preferably several, in this richly rewarding environment a must.

     Be sure to take the short walk (paved trail) to Roaring River Falls, the easy walk along the river at Zumwalt Meadows, and the quick walk to the huge rock in the river where John Muir spoke. The trails on the canyon floor are almost flat, and you’re sure to see wildlife along them.

     When other commitments force you to leave this gigantically grand and yet invitingly intimate canyon, there’s only one road out: take Highway 180 back to Grant Grove and be amazed all over again by the views going the other way.

May, 2014

     For more than 120 years, the tiny Kaweah Post Office has served the folks on the north fork of the Kaweah River. A rustic wooden cabin, just 10 feet by 12 feet, it has withstood time and the elements to carry out its mission.

     It has also withstood periodic challenges to its very existence. Many times the U.S. Postal Service has pursued closure and each time loyal supporters from far and near have defended this historical gem. It has become more than a post office; it is a gathering place, a vestige of the community’s idealistic roots and a touchstone to history.

     The building is tangible evidence of the once-famous Kaweah Cooperative Colony – an effort to form a Utopian community that garnered international attention but only lasted from 1886 to 1892. The post office was first established in 1890 in a tent at Advance, the name chosen as the townsite of the Kaweah colonists. In 1890 the office was moved a short distance away and the name changed to the Kaweah Post Office.

     When the cooperative dream failed, many colonists stayed in the area. They kept the postal connection, moving the location several times to suit their needs.

     As the area became more populated, the post office outgrew this portable system. In 1910, local ranchers pitched in $2.50 each, along with their labor, to build the sturdy little redwood building in use today.

     For awhile, it sat at Bartlett’s Dairy on North Fork Drive, the road constructed by the Kaweah Colonists to reach the higher elevations for their planned lumbering business. Tourists used it as well, since it served as the entrance to Sequoia National Park until a new road on the Kaweah’s Middle Fork was built in the 1930s.

     In 1926, Ida Purdy, whose family were colonists, was appointed postmistress of the Kaweah Post Office. Since she was also the Kaweah Branch librarian and the library was in her home, she asked that the post office be moved there too. No problem. Neighbors put the building onto logs and rolled it down North Fork road about 800 feet to where it remains firmly planted under a towering oak tree to this day – still serving as a community gathering spot where box holders share greetings and news as they gather their daily mail.

     Often called quaint and picturesque, on October 24, 1948, the Kaweah Post Office had its historical status officially recognized by the California Centennial Commission and the Tulare County Historical Society. A special cachet was designed by a local artist for the occasion and 4,000 letters from far and near were posted that day.

     The operating post office has always gone with the land it sits on. Still, it came as a surprise to Kathleen McCleary when she bought her 32-acre ranch in 1999 and was told that she also owned and was responsible for the structure. She has taken that responsibility seriously.

     And, in the cooperative spirit of the early colonists, a whole host of other people took it seriously every time closure threat was imminent, especially in 1953 and 1975.

     The 2010 closure threat came as residents were gearing up for the building’s 100th birthday celebration. School children painted a large “Save the Kaweah Post Office” banner; a special cachet cancellation was welcomed by stamp collectors from around the world; the birthday party featured food and craft booths and music and, as Kathleen put it, “people came in droves.” Beyond public support, the event generated some income – enough to trim the big oak tree for the safety of the building and its patrons.

     The latest appeal for the endangered little building was made as recently as March, 2013. In a letter to the editor of The Kaweah Commonwealth, Kathleen urged more people to sign up as box holders to create a larger revenue stream. The office is now staffed by a volunteer who puts up the mail daily for the 50 box holders and is “open” for counter work one hour a day on weekdays.

     Knowing we cannot always count on tourist appeal and historical nostalgia to convince the government to continue service at the small post office, Kathleen worries about what might become of it when she’s gone. She and others are beginning to research how a permanent land easement could be placed on the property on which the building sits. “It would be nice to preclude somebody from developing the land in a different way. My dream would be to have the post office fully operational again, with a paid postmistress,” says McCleary.

     Pipe dream? Who knows. As we’ve seen before, dreams do come true in Kaweah country.                                               

                                                                                                                                                                                                 September, 2013                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Update: In 2021, Kathleen McCleary sold the parcel containing the Kaweah Post Office to her neighbors Ramon and Maria Rodarte, who have vowed to maintain it in its vintage condition and treasure it in honor of their grandchildren and all the generations to come. Mail is still picked up at the post office, but, alas, it can no longer be postmarked “Kaweah.”

     The Buckman family were Tulare County pioneers, arriving here in the late 1800s. The journey of those early settlers in covered wagons through mile upon mile of rough, uneven primitive land is an important part of our heritage; and it led to the creation of the Hogwallow Preserve – to protect in perpetuity some of that wild hogwallow land as it appeared for hundreds of thousands of years before intensive farming began.

     My father, Dr. Phil Buckman, purchased 40 acres of hogwallow property near Lindcove sight unseen in 1943. But he knew what he was getting. He knew the region well, having traveled through it every summer from his boyhood home in Exeter to the cool High Sierra country of Mineral King. He supported his college education by operating the Mineral King Pack Station during the summer months before graduating and eventually returning to Exeter to practice medicine.

     To him, the hogwallow land was much more than just a piece of property. It was one of his favorite places. He was humbled by the panoramic view of the Sierra Nevada that included Homer’s Nose and Sawtooth Peak. He used the clay soil to make the adobe bricks for his impressive home. He grazed livestock on the hogwallows’ mounds and swales and hunted quail. He appreciated the unique land’s rare plants, animals, and vernal pools, and its changing beauty in each season. He enjoyed its peace where he could sit quietly and hear birds sing.

     Hogwallows, also called mima mounds, are land forms of mounds and swales; some of the mounds are three or four feet high. Vernal pools appear in the low areas between the mounds in wet seasons, producing uncommon vegetation and providing habitat for wildlife. Mariposa lilies and brodiaea bloom during the spring; in the summer months the hogwallows are mostly covered with dried grasses.

     When we were children, my brother, sister, and I loved playing there, running up and down the mounds and discovering treasures like four-leaf clovers, frogs, and tiny, delicate plants. In really wet years when the vernal pools were very full, our hired man built a Tom Sawyer-type raft that we navigated across the pools by pushing with a long stick.

     As nearby property owners leveled their parcels of native land to plant grapes and citrus, my father grew even more appreciative of the hogwallows. They once had covered thousands of acres in Tulare County, and soil scientists estimated them to be as much as 150,000 years old. He knew the mounds and swales were disappearing and he wanted to preserve an example of them for future generations. To him, the land was more valuable in its natural state than a cash crop or the profit from a sale.

     And so, on a beautiful day in April, 1979, the Hogwallows were formally dedicated to the Tulare County Historical Society to be preserved in perpetuity, through the generosity of Dr. Phil Buckman and his daughter, Carol Buckman.

     I am very appreciative that my father and sister had the foresight to donate the ten acres of hogwallows to the Historical Society. Soil scientists continue to visit the preserve to study and evaluate the phenomenon of this ancient and remarkable landform. I hope that you, too, will visit the Hogwallow Preserve and enjoy seeing this piece of Tulare County as it once was.

June, 2013

                                                    Note: For additional information, see the Origins of the Hogwallows.

                                                      Read more about vernal pools at Mysterious Life of Vernal Pools.

Emerging Towns and Inquiring Minds Garner Carnegie Libraries — The Story of the Exeter Public Library/Carnegie Community Building/Senior Center and the Orosi-Cutler Branch Library

     At the turn of the twentieth century, no one in Tulare County had a radio. Such electronic marvels as television, computers, and cameras as we know them had not even been dreamed of. There were few schools with sufficient supplies, and many households could not afford to buy much in the way of books or magazines. Yet, as small towns across America grew, their residents were hungry for knowledge. They yearned for schools and libraries.

     Scottish-born American industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie fully understood this. Between 1889 and 1929 his Carnegie Corporation funded construction of 1,681 public library buildings in the United States, as well as many more in Africa, the Caribbean, Canada, and Europe. Rural Tulare County received six of them.

     Of those six, only two remain in use today. The Orosi Carnegie still serves as a free public library. The Exeter Carnegie building serves as a community center for senior citizens. Both have achieved listing on the National Register of Historic Places, Orosi in 1983 and Exeter in 1990.

     Tulare County established its own library system in 1910. This added stimulus and encouragement for cities to submit grant applications to the Carnegie Foundation to fund their own buildings. To qualify for the Carnegie grant each city had to meet four requirements: it had to demonstrate need for a library, provide the building site, provide ten percent of the grant amount annually for operational expenses, and provide free service to all.

     The Exeter and Orosi proposals moved forward nearly simultaneously. Both communities had to deal with James Bertram, Andrew Carnegie’s private secretary and fellow Scotsman, who was in charge of the library grant program and who monitored – some might say gave an undue amount of attention and advice to – even a small library

   Exeter’s Carnegie approval was not without some testy correspondence.

     Exeter became an incorporated city in 1911. Two years later, with a population of 1,500 in the city and 1,000 more in the surrounding rural area, Exeter made its first application to the Carnegie Corporation for a library. There was no response. Undaunted, the city made a new request the next year (1914) with a letter of support from the county librarian. This brought an almost immediate offer of $5,000, subject to the above-listed contingencies.

     Soon the first disagreement arose. A controversy over the location of the library was reported to Bertram, and he urged that the whole community be satisfied. He required that the lot be large enough for light all around, plus room for future expansion. Thus, the location at the northwest corner of the new one-block square City Park at the corner of Chestnut and E Streets seemed a natural and was finally chosen.

     When the City Clerk sent Bertram plans from three separate architects, a flurry of correspondence ensued. The first letter from Bertram said, “… it is about as much as we can do to go over one set of plans which has been tentatively decided by a community, without having to take up the points for, or against, three different sets.” He then proceeded to comment on all three, suggesting revisions. He also cautioned that lack of a basement might prejudice against any request for future expansion funds.

     The Carnegie library, which combined Mission and Spanish Colonial Revival style elements – and yes, it has a basement – was completed in 1916. When it was outgrown, the city built a new, larger library nearby on city park land in 1975. The Carnegie building was then renovated, with the only major revision being the addition of a wheelchair accessible ramp on the back side, and has been used as a gathering place for senior citizens since that time.

     Orosi’s construction was delayed until the end of World War I

     As in many other unincorporated communities, the first lending library in Orosi served the area from a private building, initially in a room of Ryan’s Cyclery beginning in 1911. Three more moves were made, each time to a small room in an otherwise occupied building. Then, in 1914, a group of enthusiastic women organized The Improvement Club for Orosi “for the general welfare of Orosi and vicinity.”

     Through creative fundraising efforts they were able to pay $250.00, one-half the purchase price, for the corner lot at 12646 Avenue 416 (El Monte Way), where they proposed to build a library. The owner took a mortgage for the balance, to be paid in three years, and in 1917 a Carnegie grant of $3,000 was obtained. Construction was delayed because of World War I, but the Improvement Club went on to raise $2,000 more to match the grant funds, and provided some materials and labor. In 1921, the library, the last Carnegie library to be built in California, became a reality.

     Planners of the Orosi building, like those in Exeter and all others, had to deal with James Bertram, who published his “Notes on Library Buildings” in 1911. The leaflet detailed his requirements – that each community obtain the greatest amount of usable space consistent with “good taste in building.” He also advised that the edifices should be plain and dignified structures, not Greek temples.

     The Orosi library reflects Bertram’s advice faithfully and is one of only three in California designed in the simple style of a Craftsman bungalow. Key features of the Orosi building were two fireplaces, one at each end of the two main rooms that comprise the T-shaped structure. It has shiplap siding, and all masonry, both inside and out, is random stone with an unusual overlaid tubular grouting.

     Large double-hung windows on all sides allow ample light into the rooms and, in pre-air conditioning days, provided good air circulation. The fireplaces are no longer in use, with the stonework of just the one on the east side still in view.

     In 1978, the Orosi library’s service was expanded to the nearby community of Cutler, so in the county’s library system the branch became known as the Orosi-Cutler Branch Library. It was given a remodel in 2013 with new carpeting and fresh paint. “The Orosi-Cutler Library represents the history of libraries and the strength of the community,” said the county librarian at the time of the branch’s grand re-opening. “The work performed on this renovation will ensure the library will provide the same great service for many more years.”

December, 2015

     Nature instigated the creation of Lake Kaweah. The story of this Tulare County treasure chronicles a classic struggle between nature and humanity, in which nature repeatedly exerts its power and humanity stubbornly shrugs it off.

     The conditions that led to the creation of Lake Kaweah might be unique in North America. From its headwaters at an elevation of 12,000 feet in the Sierra Nevada the Kaweah and its tributaries create one of the steepest cataracts on the continent. Its waters drop to the San Joaquin Valley floor more than two vertical miles over a horizontal distance of 30 miles if it were drawn as a straight line on a map.

     When tame, the Kaweah is a life-giver. Indigenous people thrived along this river for centuries before Europeans arrived. Cattleman Hale Tharp started a ranch at the confluence of the Kaweah River and Horse Creek in 1856 and lived there until his death in 1912. Prospectors, ranchers, and homesteaders pursued prosperity along the forks of the river and into its canyons and fertile flood plains.

     But the Kaweah has a wild side. When conditions are right — warm rain melting mountains of snow or sudden torrential deluges cascading down the steep slope — it is a natural flood maker that has produced a devastating inundation on average about every 10 years.

     The river’s first documented flood, in 1862, was so powerful that it created a new channel, the St. John’s River, and wiped out a new town built along a small Visalia creek. Visalia itself was immersed in four feet of water, and people used boats to get around. In 1867, it began raining on November 1 and continued almost non-stop until late December. People in Visalia again got around in boats, not for the last time. The river flooded in 1877, 1884 and 1890.

     In June, 1906, heavy winter snows rapidly melted under a spring heat wave and warm rains. The waters rose to a height of two feet on Visalia’s Main Street and stayed that way for two weeks. The Visalia Times-Delta suggested that the river be dammed to prevent future flooding. That was the first time it was proposed to build a dam, but it would not be built for another 56 years. A flood in 1914 again stirred talk of a dam, but the idea was easily quelled when the next two decades were relatively dry.

     Then came the flood of 1937. It caused more than $15 million in damage to crops and property. More than 80 people on the valley floor died. Finally, some concrete steps were taken to dam the river. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers determined the best spot for the dam was near Lemon Cove at Terminus Beach, a popular recreation spot since the 19th century.

     The Kaweah was only one of many rivers in the nation to flood in the 1930s. Congress passed, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed, a series of flood control acts, including ones in 1937 and 1944. The 1944 act was directed mainly at flooding on the Missouri River, but it also authorized the building of Terminus Dam.

     Although the Kaweah flooded again in 1943, 1945 and 1950, work on Terminus Dam stalled because of opposition by ranchers downstream over their water rights. The flood that broke the logjam of resistance arrived in 1955.

     Snowfall had been heavy early that winter, and then warm, heavy rain began falling on the evening of December 22. Twelve inches of rain fell in 12 hours. The Kaweah soon crested, and water began barreling downstream into the valley. The volume rose to 85,000 cubic feet per second, wreaking destruction on Three Rivers, Farmersville, and Visalia. Water in downtown Visalia rose to more than five feet deep, and boats were used again. Floodwaters affected more than 100,000 square miles. Damage was estimated at $12 million to $20 million.

     The 1955 flood galvanized the political will to build the dam. Newspapers demanded action. Local governments sent lobbyists to Washington, D.C. and pushed Congress to appropriate the money. The matter of ranchers’ water rights was set aside.

     In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the legislation that authorized construction, and money was appropriated in 1958. Construction began in February, 1959, and the project was completed in November, 1961, at a cost of $19,375,000. Terminus Dam was dedicated on May 18, 1962, and began operations in June, 1962.

     Terminus Dam/Lake Kaweah has staked its claim as Tulare County’s most successful public works project. At the dam’s 50th anniversary, the Army Corps of Engineers estimated that Terminus had prevented damage that would have totaled $373,225,000.

     But while the dam had prevented or minimized flood damage, it still could not prevent all downstream flooding. A “50-year” flood in 1997, for example, did not breach the dam, but the reservoir was filled and emptied twice. It was then decided to increase the lake’s capacity and the protection capability of the dam.

     In 2004, the Corps installed the world’s largest fusegates atop the dam. Six 21-foot high structures essentially raised the height of the dam to withhold a 1,000-year flood event (a flood so great that its statistical likelihood is once in 1,000 years). The enlargement project cost an additional $48 million and included funding from federal, state, and local agencies.

     Flood control was the initial motivation for building Terminus Dam, and the primary purpose of Lake Kaweah continues to be flood control. But it has also become an important installation for water conservation, agricultural irrigation, power generation, and recreation. Boating, water-skiing, swimming, fishing, horseback riding, hiking, and camping attract 40,000 visitors a year.

     Terminus Dam has tamed the capricious and dangerous Kaweah River. In extremely dry winters, it is nearly possible to see the river as it used to flow through the lake’s valley. It is much harder to imagine the devastating flood flows that tormented residents from Three Rivers to Tulare Lake. With the taming of nature, the Kaweah’s waters have been harnessed. It has been decades since anyone needed a boat to get around downtown Visalia.

March, 2015

                                                          For a related article, see the Kaweah Delta Water Conservation District

     In 1971, over 30 years had passed since Tulare County had last established a park for its residents (in Pixley, in 1938). But in 1971, thanks to Lee and Hazel Ledbetter of Orosi, and many dedicated local volunteers, that was about to change.

     The Ledbetter family forebears had arrived in Tulare County in 1876 by emigrant train, and soon established a tradition of farming, civic engagement, service, and generosity. In 1879, Lee’s grandfather James purchased the land which became the site of Orosi. Later, he traded that parcel for another half a mile south of the townsite, where he spent the rest of his life.

     Education and young people were important to James. In 1880, he was instrumental in organizing on his property the first school for the local pioneer children in what was then known as Sand Creek. His own wife was unable to read or write, but since then four Ledbetter women have taught successively in the Cutler-Orosi community — for almost 150 years. One of them was Hazel Church, who married Lee Ledbetter in 1912, when she was teaching school in Orosi.

     In the family tradition, Lee Ledbetter farmed and lived in the Cutler-Orosi area all his life. He was also a county tax assessor. While Lee and Hazel had no children of their own, Hazel taught and often served as principal in the local schools for 41 years. Both were philanthropists, who gave generously to their community in many ways. But perhaps their greatest and most lasting gift was the land for Ledbetter Park.

     In 1970, the couple began talking with then County Supervisor Fred Batkin about their desire to donate 12 acres of their property to the county for the creation of a neighborhood park to serve both Cutler and Orosi.

     That September, the Board of Supervisors authorized Batkin to work with County Park Superintendent Merle Harp, Chief Administrative Officer Dave Ogden, and Planning Director Don Woolfe to develop the park, which would be located at the southwest corner of Avenue 408 and Highway 63.

     In April, 1971, the Board of Supervisors gratefully accepted the deed to the parkland from the Ledbetters, calling their gift “another milestone in a long path of community service that the Ledbetters have given to the Cutler-Orosi community” and “an act of generosity which will benefit the Cutler-Orosi community for many years to come.” Supervisor Batkin announced that the park would be seeded with grass immediately and interested people would be asked to help devise a master plan for it.

     The Ledbetters, along with the Cutler Latin American Club (CLAC) and a Cutler-Orosi park committee chaired by Batkin and Orosi Union High School principal Jack Mann, worked with Superintendent Harp to plan the site. Concurrently, the County decided to build a new fire station there: A firehouse would keep responsible people on the premises 24 hours a day, and the money saved by not having to buy land for the station could be used for landscaping the park.

     By early 1973, bids had been let, and construction of the fire station and a park restroom was about to begin. A sprinkling system had been installed, and some Monterey pines had been planted. The committee appealed to Cutler-Orosi area clubs and organizations for donations to cover more trees, shrubs, and other park construction items.

     While elements in the park have changed through the years, the original grand design included parking for over 100 cars; a baseball field; a multi-use sports area for tennis, volleyball, and basketball; plus a quieter area for horseshoes and croquet to meet a broad range of recreational interests. Two picnic arbors and 25 picnic tables would be installed, and a bandstand had been designed, in hopes that it could be completed before the annual spring Tomato Festival organized by the Cutler Latin American Club.

     On July 3, 1973, following a steak barbecue sponsored by the Latin American Club, the new park was officially dedicated to the public. The ceremony was held in the new fire station, which already provided welcome shade and was scheduled to open in August. Master of ceremonies Ed Tellalian, Orosi High School civics teacher, read letters of congratulation from local, state, and national politicians, including one on behalf of President Nixon from the White House.

     Although the tennis and croquet courts never got built, the bandstand/stage was ready for the 1974 Tomato Festival’s festivities, and much has been added to Ledbetter Park in the decades since its dedication. From its conception, the Cutler Latin American Club has contributed countless hours of labor, constructed many improvements (including the bandstand), carried out maintenance work, and held dozens of community events there.

     The County’s Cutler-Orosi Senior Center, in 1984, and a County Sheriff’s substation, in 2007, have joined the fire station in offering essential services to their communities. In June, 2003, the Little Tikes fire engine playground equipment was installed. Volunteer firefighters from the real fire station helped County Parks employees put the fire engine structure together to inspire kids’ imaginations for play and to serve as a memorial to the firefighting heroes of the 9/11 attacks on New York City in 2001.

     In 2008, the Cutler-Orosi Community for Youth Organization, working with County Parks, the Cutler-Orosi School District, the Stewardship Council, and the Tony Hawk Foundation, raised the funds to build a skate park next to the Sheriff’s substation at Ledbetter Park. Spearheaded by former school district superintendent Frank Murphy, the campaign, helped by the County, which contributed matching funds, covered the total project cost of $100,000.

     Through the years, Ledbetter Park has served as its communities’ hub. It was the destination of the annual parade of the Tomato Festival (eventually re-named the Pre-Harvest Festival and then the Spring Festival). It was the venue for its booths and carnival, and its bandstand was the stage for announcements, music, and other entertainment. The park has hosted major concerts, firefighters’ training exercises, Summer Night Lights events, health fairs, thousands of basketball and baseball and soccer games, picnics and barbecues, celebrations of all kinds, and endless hours of safe and healthy play.

     Long-needed upgrades to the parks’ accessibility features and its electrical and irrigation systems were completed in 2018, helping to prepare this vital green and open space for its next 50 years of service to the enjoyment and well-being of the people of these north county communities.

December, 2018

     Although only about twenty percent of Kings Canyon National Park falls within Tulare County, the saga of how this superb mostly wilderness national park came to be is very much a Tulare County story. Tulare County residents, in fact, played key roles in the decades-long campaign to create the park.

     Like both Sequoia National Park and Sequoia National Forest, the area that is now within Kings Canyon National Park was placed within the original Sierra Forest Reserve in 1893. In 1908, that vast reserve was broken apart and its several portions re-designated as national forests. After that date, what later became the Tulare County portion of Kings Canyon National Park fell within the newly created Sequoia National Forest.

     From the beginning, although both were conserved as public lands for the public good, areas identified as national forests and national parks drifted in very different directions. National Forests fell under the control of the United States Forest Service, an agency in the U. S. Department of Agriculture. Forest Service management policies emphasized using land for public benefit. Potential uses included grazing, mining, and logging – all to be carried out in a responsible manner. Agency policy also emphasized dams, reservoirs, and hydroelectric development, undertakings that seemed to many to be well-suited for the mountain gorges of the Kings River portion of the Sierra Nevada.

     At the same time, areas designated as national parks evolved to have their own unique mission. In 1890, Congress had created Sequoia and General Grant national parks in Tulare County as well as Yosemite National Park to the north. All three were envisioned as nature preserves – places where natural features would be left undisturbed and human use would be limited to recreation and inspiration. Management of these federal parks fell to the Department of the Interior.

     Each of these two visions reflected the hopes and dreams of its supporters, and Congress eventually created a federal agency to manage each system. The Forest Service came into existence in 1905, and the National Park Service, an Interior Department agency, was created in 1916. The competing land management visions represented by the two agencies both made sense. Clearly, America had lands that ought to be used for the benefit of society as well as special places that ought to be protected for their beauty. Inevitably, however, these two agencies, each with its own mission, sometimes set their sights on the same places. The Kings River portion of the High Sierra was such a place.

     The battle over the fate of the Kings Canyon region began early. The men who had led the campaign to create Sequoia National Park in 1890 dreamed almost from the beginning of enlarging the park to take in more of the spectacular High Sierra. They were particularly interested in two scenic regions: the Kern Canyon/Mt. Whitney area immediately to the east of the 1890 boundaries of Sequoia National Park and the Kings Canyon region to the northeast of the existing park.

     The Sierra Club, in those days a San Francisco Bay Area-based mountaineering organization, began taking large groups into these two areas in 1902, when it brought over two hundred persons into then-remote Kings Canyon for several weeks. The club returned, always with large groups, to either the Kings Canyon or the Kern Canyon in 1903, 1906, 1908, 1910, 1912, 1913, and 1916. These trips exposed hundreds of people to the beauty of these areas and laid the foundation for political action leading towards their protection.

     In 1915, the Department of the Interior recruited Chicago businessman Stephen T. Mather to take over administration of the national park system and lead the campaign to create a national park agency – the National Park Service. Mather, a native of California, had strong ties to the Sierra Nevada and had taken part in the Sierra Club’s 1912 outing to the Kern Canyon. On that trip, like many others, he had become convinced that Sequoia National Park must be enlarged. When he joined the Interior Department in 1915, he put this enlargement high on his list of goals. In the summer of 1915, Mather organized an overtly political pack trip into the Kern Canyon/Mt. Whitney region. Visalians George Stewart and Ben Maddox met the group when it first assembled in Visalia and made clear their support for park enlargement.

     Mather became the first director of the newly created National Park Service in 1916, and in this role he continued his efforts to enlarge Sequoia National Park. The Forest Service prized the area highly, however, and worked hard to keep both the Kern Canyon/Mt. Whitney and Kings Canyon regions within the Sequoia National Forest. Finally, after a decade of contentious political debate, a compromise was struck. In July 1926, Sequoia National Park was more than tripled in size to include the Kern Canyon and Mt. Whitney areas. Kings Canyon, however, remained within the national forest systems and open to development.

     The Forest Service, pursuing its mandate to find uses for its lands, began to make plans for the development of the Kings River region. In the late 1920s, in cooperation with the State of California, the Forest Service approved the construction of a modern highway into the region, and the following year the Federal Power Commission issued a report making clear the potential of the area as a locale for reservoirs and power plants. As early as 1920, the city of Los Angeles had also filed claims for dam sites and reservoirs on the Kings River. There were even rumors that the Los Angeles interests intended to tunnel under the Sierra Crest to divert Kings River water eastward into its Owens Valley Aqueduct.

     All these proposals eventually reinvigorated those who still wanted to place the Kings Canyon and its surrounding high country within a national park. In the middle 1930s the Sierra Club resumed its campaign. This time the goal was not to add the area to Sequoia National Park but rather to create an entirely new park centered on the great glacial canyon of the Kings River. Local opinion split between those who wanted dams and those who thought the area worth protecting for its natural beauty and spectacular scenery. Nearly everyone in Central California agreed, however, that allowing the water to go to Southern California would be a mistake.

     Eventually, the fight over whether there should be a national park in the Kings Canyon region came down to a political dispute between two local elected officials. The U.S. congressman from Fresno, a Republican named Bud Gearhart, led the campaign to create the park. He was opposed by Representative Alfred Elliott of Visalia, a Democrat.*  The Sierra Club sided with Gearhart, and the Forest Service worked hard to help Elliott. The final vote could have gone either way, but Elliott overplayed his hand when he charged that Gearhart was accepting illegal donations from national park supporters. Gearhart, in an impassioned speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, successfully demolished Elliott’s accusations, and the bill passed the House shortly thereafter.

     President Franklin Roosevelt signed the legislation creating Kings Canyon National Park in March 1940. The political deal that led to the creation of the new national park also committed the federal government to building a dam on the lower Kings River at Pine Flat. That dam was constructed between 1947 and 1954.

     The highway into Kings Canyon that the Forest Service commissioned in the late 1920s finally reached the canyon floor in 1939. Today, as California State Route 180, that route provides a scenic drive into the heart of Kings River country. The highway ends just past Cedar Grove on the floor of Kings Canyon. The rest of the main section of Kings Canyon National Park, including all of it that falls within Tulare County, remains as un-roaded wilderness. It took half a century, but the 1890 dream of Visalian George Stewart that the Kings Canyon region should be part of a national park eventually did come to pass. Today, Kings Canyon National Park stands as the great wilderness park of the Sierra Nevada.

     * Observers of contemporary politics in Central California may be surprised to read of a Republican leading a campaign to create a national park while a Democrat fought against the park. Over the decades, the two parties have changed positions several times on these matters. The greatest presidential advocate ever for public lands, for example, was Republican Theodore Roosevelt, and both the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act were signed by Republican Richard Nixon.

May, 2014

     If there’s one thing the residents of Tulare County understand, it’s the importance of water. The fact that there is sometimes too much or often too little of it is the norm for our most unpredictable climate. Water is the lifeblood of Tulare County’s agricultural economy and communities. The heart and the arteries that regulate and move that lifeblood to these critical components in the Kaweah River watershed is a water management concern that has been evolving for decades — the Kaweah Delta Water Conservation District.

     Commercial farming began in the San Joaquin Valley in the early 1800s. Although the valley averages only ten inches of rain per year, the meltwater from the Sierra Nevada’s snow pack enabled farmers to irrigate their crops, greatly expanding production.

     Shortly after California became a state, in 1850, its legislators adopted laws to insure riparian water rights were maintained, allowing property owners along rivers and streams to divert water for their own use. But relatively few farms were close enough to the rivers and streams to take advantage of them; and often this surface water was available only during the wet season. As the population increased, and farming exploded, water began to be collected and funneled to key distribution points through a vast network of channels, canals, and ditches. However, there was no “beneficial use” mandate at the time for farmers, and the water could essentially be wasted at the landowners’ discretion, and often was. Soon the farmers were also pumping water from the valley’s underground aquifers, to meet ever-greater demand in the dry season. Aquifer levels dropped alarmingly, forcing the ever-growing population to recognize that local water was a very precious and limited resource.

     In 1927, California’s Water Conservation Act was adopted, to better manage the state’s water. The Act allowed for the establishment of Water Conservation Districts across the state, and local citizens were quick to respond. The Kaweah Delta Water Conservation District (KDWCD), encompassing 337,000 acres of Tulare County and parts of Kings County, was voted into existence that same year.

     Since its inception in 1927, KDWCD has worked hand in hand with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the many area irrigation districts and ditch companies on important matters such as flood control; development of the Terminus Dam (forming Lake Kaweah) for flood control, irrigation, and power generation; and ensuring that the agricultural needs of the valley are met by maintaining over 200 miles of waterways and hundreds of acres of recharge basins. While both the dam and Lake Kaweah are federal resources managed by the Corps, KDWCD was instrumental in sponsoring the lake enlargement project and developing environmental mitigation sites in surrounding areas to help ensure that affected plant species are preserved.

     Over the years, the District’s responsibility has grown beyond maintaining and distributing local water resources to encompass the role of enhancing them. It is incumbent on the District to manage surface water allocations and to oversee the importing and exporting of water during dry and wet years to ensure there is no net loss of the precious resource to our residents. More recent discussions have focused on the need for managing our shrinking ground water resources and what role the District might play in that critical arena.

     In addition to regularly maintaining and clearing primary rivers and channels in the district, KDWCD responds to flood events during major rains. By moving and storing water in the many basins owned by the District, KDWCD can reduce potential damage downstream in Exeter, Visalia, and surrounding areas. You will also find KDWCD employees out in the rain, shoulder to shoulder with the irrigation district employees, clearing mounds of debris from the many gates, diversions, and other restricted flow areas around the county. (There have been 36 major flood events in and around Tulare County from 1950 to 2010.) Many lessons have been learned since the floods of 1861-62 and 1955. Terminus Dam itself is a product of those lessons.

     In the decades since its beginning, KDWCD has acquired over 5000 acres of land around Tulare County for the purpose of developing recharge basins and to assist with flood control. These basins are used primarily to capture rainwater and return it to the aquifers, but some are configured to receive water diversions during high water years to help reduce the effects of flooding.

     KDWCD has also purchased the 5000+ acre Davis Ranch north of Lake Kaweah as well as a 40-acre parcel alongside Dry Creek, just south of Homer Ranch, for the purpose of mitigating the environmental impacts of the lake enlargement project. The District sponsored that project in 2001 to increase the lake’s capacity from 150,000 acre-feet to approximately 185,600 acre-feet. These parcels will remain in their natural state in perpetuity and are inspected regularly to ensure that protection. Davis Ranch is leased to local ranchers for raising and grazing cattle, and many other parcels owned by the District are leased back to farmers for raising crops.

     Employees of KDWCD also manage the Kaweah River Power Authority to operate and maintain the Terminus Power Plant, a 20- megawatt hydropower facility that was constructed just below the dam in 1990 through a partnership between KDWCD and the Tulare Irrigation District. The plant generates power during flood releases in the winter and agricultural releases during the summer growing season. The release of water is strictly controlled by the Corps of Engineers. The power is currently sold to Southern California Edison, providing additional funds for maintaining and improving the waterways and properties throughout the district.

     While the district offices and the power plant are not generally open to the public, arrangements can be made for group tours and site visits by calling the office. Annual open houses and water education presentations for schools and civic groups are under consideration by the District.

March, 2014

     For more than a century, the people of Tulare County have had a special relationship with the Giant Forest, the giant sequoia grove that is the most-visited single feature in Sequoia National Park. Over the years, local residents have involved themselves in the grove in many different ways, and this involvement has made a real difference. The story reminds us that just because a place is “saved,” our responsibility for it is far from done.

     The giant sequoia trees of the Sierra Nevada grow only in very limited geographical areas called groves. The entire Sierra Nevada contains only about seventy-five such places, which vary in size from less than an acre to several square miles. Tulare County provides a home for over three-quarters of these groves, and most are to be found within either Sequoia National Forest or Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.

     Only a handful of groves are larger than the Giant Forest, which covers about three square miles and contains about 2,000 sequoias larger than ten feet in diameter. Of the ten largest sequoias, five are found in this single grove, including the General Sherman Tree, the largest of them all. No other grove even comes close.

     As detailed in our Sequoia National Park story, the addition of the Giant Forest to Sequoia National Park came as a surprise to those who had campaigned in the summer of 1890 to convince Congress to create that park. George Stewart of the Visalia Delta newspaper, who led the campaign that year, knew how special the grove was but believed that the government had already made a commitment to sell the forest to the Kaweah Colony.

     A week after the original Sequoia National Park bill was signed by President Benjamin Harrison on September 25th, a second bill arrived on his desk. Among other things, this second bill, signed by the president on October 1st, added the Giant Forest to the new national park. At the time, no one stepped forward to take credit for the second wave of legislation, but modern historians give credit to attorney and railroad land agent Daniel K. Zumwalt of Tulare. In the fall of 1890, when Congress was considering these questions, Zumwalt was visiting in Washington, D.C. After his death in 1905, Zumwalt’s family felt comfortable giving him public credit for the creation of General Grant National Park, which was another part of that same bill. Without Zumwalt’s likely involvement, it is quite possible that the Giant Forest would ultimately have been sold and logged.

     A century later, it’s easy to assume that everyone immediately understood the significance of Sequoia National Park, but for the first decade of its existence, Congress allocated no money whatsoever to make the park accessible to visitors. Frustrated by this obvious omission, the residents of Tulare County sought to correct the situation. In the summer of 1899, the Visalia Board of Trade (we now call similar organizations “chambers of commerce”) organized a political pack trip into the park to show off both its potential and its needs. Playing a key role was Ben Maddox, publisher of the Visalia newspaper known as the Tulare County Times (an ancestor of the modern Visalia Times-Delta). Out of this came an annual appropriation to build roads and trails within the park.

     In 1903, using this money, the park completed a wagon road into the Giant Forest. Almost immediately, Tulare County residents started visiting the cool, green grove, especially during the hottest part of the year. Farmers and businessmen alike would take their wives and children up to the forest to camp for a month or two while they stayed in the valley to earn a living. By the 1910s, the Giant Forest sheltered a sizeable contingent of local residents each summer. To this day, old-time local families still remember stories of the many happy months they spent beating the heat in the shade of the towering sequoias.