Of the three largest rivers of the state, the San Joaquin-Sacramento is the most important irrigation water provider with its" many branches heading in the snow-covered Sierras. The Sacramento in the northern arm of the valley carries water in abundance, it is thought, for all future agricultural needs, besides navigability. The San Joaquin with the other streams of the southern arm carry not so much water as will be required for the larger area to be irrigated. The fuller development of this region, and of California for that matter, will be governed in large measure by careful and rational conservation of the forests and streams. The government has taken up this important subject.
The Great Valley is well adapted for water transportation, and the statement is not such a wild flight of fancy that there will be a day when the natural water courses will have been deepened, and light draught vessels will dot the plains of the interior basin. There is no insurmountable engineering difficulty against a canal from Buena Vista Lake at the extreme southern end of the valley northwest through Tulare Lake and via the San Joaquin to tide-water. Indeed such a project in part was once in the air in Fresno County to connect Tulare Lake with the San Joaquin River.
Articles of incorporation of the enterprise were filed, and the town-plat of Fresno City was recorded as on Fresno Slough, or the South Branch of the San Joaquin, by A. J. Downer as the agent for C. A. Hawley and W. B. Cummings, on April 25, 1860. The plat pictured an ambitious town of eighty-nine blocks on both sides of the slough channel, located a mile or two "from what is today Tranquility town in the big farm colony of that name. La Casa Blanca (White House") the principal structure of the town on paper, occupied as headquarters and the upper floor as a hotel, stood for years a landmark on the slough after the project was abandoned.
About the time of this enterprise two men, Stone and Harvey, attempted to reach Tulare Lake with the small stern-wheeler, Alta, descended the San Joaquin and the Kings River Slough as far as Summit Lake, near the southern boundary line of the county and bordering on the Laguna de Tache grant, but there it was stranded in one of the' slough branches and abandoned upon subsidence of the water in the slough by drainage consequent upon the dredging of the section nearest the San Joaquin, upon the proof of which labor land patent had issued.
Noncompliance however with the law in other respects in the disposal of the reclaimed land resulted in successful litigation in San Francisco to void the patent, and the enterprise came to naught, leaving the stern-wheeler with its smoke-stack as another strange landmark to excite the curiosity of the mail-stage passenger and of the lone traveler or wanderer on the inhospitable and drear West Side plains.
Later the stack was removed and did service for years for one of the steam sawmills in the mountain forests in the county.
The only craft that ever passed from Tulare Lake to tidewater was in 1868, when Richard Swift took a small scow-boat, 16 x 18, through, loading it with a ton of honey at the mouth of Kings River, passing through Summit Lake and Fish Slough, thence through what was known as Fresno Slough into the San Joaquin. It was with the hope of the successful issue of the canal enterprise that on January 21, 1860, the steamboat, Visalia, was completed on Tulare Lake for the navigation of the San Joaquin between Stockton and Fresno City, where the overland stages halted and near which at the head of Fresno Slough steamers landed freight up to a few years before the valley railroad extension from Lathrop.
The 1911 agitation to open the river to navigation came to naught because the government engineers reported that the traffic in promise would not warrant the expense of dredging and improving the river channel to make it navigable. At any rate the community succeeded some years later in doing away with the discriminatory terminal freight rate against Fresno and river navigation was left as a matter for agitation for future years. It is like harking back to the dim past to read the following newspaper publication of forty years ago (June, 1878) of practically the last attempt at river navigation:
"The steamer Clara Belle, Capt. Jack Greier, unloaded lumber and posts for Gustavus Herminghaus at Parker's old store, last Monday. This is only fourteen miles below the railroad on the San Joaquin at Sycamore and is the highest point on the river ever reached by steamer, and the only time a steamer has come up so far since 1867."
And in explanation thereof the following:
"Gustavus Herminghaus, who owns a very large tract of land bordering the San Joaquin River and the Fresno Slough, has already received 250,000 feet of lumber by steamer, from San Francisco and will fence in some 15,000 acres of fine grazing land. The fence will follow the line of surveyed road from White's to Fresno, and will force travel from its present and long used route along the river."
CHAPTER VII
Total manifested gold shipments from California ports via Panama from April, 1849, to the close of 1856, not including unascertained sums taken on privately, are given as $365,505,454. Estimated yield is reported as $596,162,061. Known receipts from this state foot up $522,505,454, not including foreign shipments other than to England, nor quantity manufactured in the United States, indicating a state total yield after analysis of the figures of about $600,000,000. Estimate has been made that since discovery, gold bullion in an amount exceeding $1,500,000,000 in value has been produced in California.
Singular it is that the exact date of Marshall's discovery near Coloma, on the south fork of the American River, should be a disputed question. Hittell gives January 19, 1848, as the date. Bancroft says on Marshall's authority that the find was made between the 18th and 20th, but that the 19th has generally been accepted as the date. Marshall was so confused as to time that Bancroft by other records fixed the day as the 24th. And yet the event has been ranked second only in importance to California's discovery and later settlement by the padres.
A commission had been appointed by Gov. William D. Stephens of California under the authority of a legislative bill, the inspiration of that exclusively Californian fraternal order, of three members of the Native Sons of the Golden West, to make research of historical data to ascertain, if possible, the date of the discovery of gold and also to correct the date of inscription on Marshall's monument at Coloma. Under Assembly Concurrent Resolution No. 25 (42nd Session) the committee named by the governor, Phillip B. Bekeart representing the Pioneers of California, Fred H. Jung the N. S. G. W. and Grace S. Stoermer the N. D. G. W., made report October 15, 1918, based on entries in historical diaries, recorded statements and conclusions drawn therefrom, to find that January 24, 1848, and not the 19th, is the correct date of the discovery of gold in California and to recommend that the inscription on the monument of Marshall at Coloma in El Dorado County be corrected accordingly.
Little dreamed the Mexicans of the value of the land they ceded, other than as to its probable future value commercially. As little, the buyers how fat the soil with wealth untold and that rivers flowed over golden beds. Between the discovery and cession periods of the territory, many examinations were made by enterprising and inquisitive officers and civilians, but none discovered that the Sierra Nevada streams poured golden sands into the valleys of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin. No hint of it in legend or tradition was learned from white or red man. As Historian John Frost remarks: "A nation's ransom lay within their grasp but strange to say it escaped their notice — it flashed and sparkled all in vain." Capt. Sutter, despite a residence of ten years in the vicinity of the discovered placer regions, was none the richer or wiser for the treasure about him lightly concealed under the surface soil.
It is a remarkable fact, which has been more or less commented upon, that with the insatiable greed for gold the Spaniard, and those that followed him, never made investigation to ascertain the existence or non-existence of it, or that if they did and made discovery that the secret was kept inviolate. The fact is, however, that the existence of gold was unknown by them and the Indians. The latter had no golden ornaments — in fact did not know of the value of gold, until the white man taught him it in barter at the trading post stores, and then