Articles Pending Q-Z

St. John’s River Trail is a scenic City of Visalia treasure, inviting you to travel up to 4.4 level miles along its namesake river on a paved path suitable for people of all ages and abilities (and dogs, allowed on leash) to walk, hike, run, or wheel along while enjoying the views, reading the interpretive signs, admiring the areas where native trees and smaller plants have been restored, birdwatching, taking a break on a trailside bench, or visiting some of the adjacent parks via their short connecting trails. Early morning and sunset hours are most photogenic.

Success Lake, in the scenic Sierra Nevada foothills just 8 miles east of Porterville, formed in 1961 after its huge earth-filled dam was completed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to provide flood risk and water supply management, wildlife habitat, and extensive recreation opportunities including biking, birdwatching, boating, camping, learning at campfire programs and Ranger talks, fishing, hiking, hunting, photography, picnicking, stargazing, swimming, and wildflower and wildlife viewing. Open year-round, the 2,450-acre reservoir and its neighboring 1500-acre wildlife refuge promise visitors of all ages and abilities a great day out in nature.

The Tulare Assembly Center at the Tulare County Fairgrounds (one of 16 Temporary Detention Camps for Japanese Americans) incarcerated almost 5,000 people in April-September, 1942. Most were then transferred to the hastily built Gila River concentration camp in Arizona and imprisoned there until autumn, 1945. (It was Executive Order 9066, issued in February, 1942, after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, that a month later stripped of their rights about 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry — 2/3 of whom were U.S. citizens — on the U. S. West Coast, followed by their forced imprisonment beginning in April.)

The original Tule River Indian Reservation in Tulare County was established in 1856 on prime farmland in what is now east Porterville. After California’s Gold Rush began in 1848, thousands of discouraged prospectors began settling instead in the Central Valley to farm its rich soil. Their rapidly increasing population and conversion of the natural landscape caused increasing conflict with the Yokuts-speaking people who had thrived here for thousands of years and were being rapidly dispossessed of their land and livelihood. In 1856, hundreds of the Yokuts were forced onto this “permanent homeland” reservation.

The Tule River Stage Station serving the Butterfield Overland Mail stage route through Tulare County in 1858-1861 was housed on this site (which had been a riverside stopover on the old emigrant trail since 1854). In 1860, Royal Porter Putnam was the station’s keeper. In 1862, a huge flood moved the Tule River’s course south a mile. Convinced that the river would stay in its new course, Putnam bought 40 acres of land around the station’s site, got the parcel surveyed, and laid out the plat of a new town, still called Porterville today

Woodville Park provides the small town of Woodlake with a free, fenced, 10-acre gathering space for residents and visitors of all ages and abilities, offering shaded playground equipment, an arbor, 5 picnic tables with BBQ grills, a soccer field, a 9-hole disc golf course, a baseball diamond with backstop, a basketball court, horseshoe pits, paved pathways, open green spaces, and a restroom. Volunteers tend and add to the grounds (new plants, flagpole, baseball field), and put on events (movie nights, resource fairs, holiday celebrations) keeping the park alive and lively.