The dilapidated jail having been pulled down as a preliminary in one of the frequent spurts to build a courthouse and jail, arrangement was made with the sheriff of Mariposa, for a time, to feed and guard Fresno's prisoners. At the last, so the story runs, the inmates of Burroughs' corral provided themselves with a conveniently concealed exit hole for frequent excursions into the open, always returning in time to incarceration and the certainty of meals and a bed for the mere inconvenience of temporary restrictions in personal liberty.
Eighteen per cent, remuneration was allowed for the collection of the four-dollar foreign miner's tax, but at the third meeting George S. Harden complained that because of the treasurer's change in the gold rate valuations and the consequent loss in blowing off sand from the dust his percentage as deputy sheriff in collecting was "too small to live on." The percentage was fixed at twenty-two per cent, and gold made receivable at fourteen dollars an ounce in value.
Early trouble was had with Bradley, the first selected sheriff, and pending action on a resolution of Clark Hoxie to depose him on August 7, 1857, he peacefully resigned. Harden succeeded him. Bradley had an insufficient bond. Supervisor J. R. Hughes, one of his sureties, having moved out of the county, and another, Alexander Ball, being a bankrupt. Bradley was lax in not making returns of his collections, failing to make seizures and sales for non-payment of taxes, and in general conducting the collections in "a careless, loose and incompetent manner."
So loosely and slovenly drawn was the act creating and defining the county and the boundary lines that it was not until May, 1878, that the last complaint on this score was received from Tulare asking for a joint resurvey. It was not the first time either that the line with Tulare, one of the contiguous counties, was in contention. Fresno could not perceive that any material benefit would result to either from the survey and curtly dismissed the proposition, as it did a similar one from Inyo in June, 1873. Resurveys were, however, had at intervals with every contiguous county under the original creative act, besides the attempted territory grabs, notably later by Kings in April, 1909, of a 120 square mile slice under the Webber bill, and the sensational effort and defeat after long and bitter litigation and the indictment of three of the commissioners to divide the county for the enlargement of Kings with the annexation of the Coalinga oil field in 1907-08.
As early as August, 1857, it was agreed between joint commissioners — Hewlett Clark, then a justice of the peace, and James Smith, ferryman at the Tulare Mansion at the Lower Kings crossing near Reedlev, for Fresno — that $2,609.55 was due— $744.16 to Mariposa, $1,362.42 to Tulare and $502.97 to Merced for the land taken in forming the county. The various surveys were made necessary largely by the faulty legislative description of the southeast boundary of Merced.
The first defeated land grab was in February, 1859, against the separation of the Upper and Lower Kings River territory to be attached to Tulare. Effectual protest was on the ground that the dismemberment was against every interest of Fresno, taking as it would two-thirds of the then small vote of 264 and a proportionate amount of taxable property, "which can illy be spared and which, if lost would greatly injure our county finances and perhaps lead to an abandonment of our county organization." for which "there is no good and sufficient reason and which is of no special value or necessity to the advantage and rapidly increasing prospects of Tulare County," and being "a movement so unnecessary in every respect."
In February, 1860, Fresno also successfully combatted the effort of Merced to diminish its territory, "contrary to every interest," reducing its income by more than $1,000 a year and jeopardizing its chances to elect a legislative representative independent of Tulare, with no special advantage to Merced, "further than robbing us of a large amount of revenue."
After the lapse of so many years, it would seem that all boundary line questions might be at rest, but in 1917-18 arose another as to the line between Fresno and Merced, which following the crest of the Coast Range in part and never having been run on the ground left in doubt in which county in reality respective assessors were placing values on land for taxation purposes. To run the extended line according to a joint agreed upon survey, Madera's surveyor furnished the known and accepted starting point in the lower molt of cottonwood timber of the original legislative described northern boundary line of Fresno, surveying the line in Madera to tie in with Fresno as now bounded with the severing of Madera, then to be taken up by the joint survey. That survey was never completed because of the death of Surveyor McKay and on account of the war.
So also on a survey of a few years ago between Fresno and Kings with the Kings River as the Une, the expected problem was to locate the channel center after all the years with the changes in the river bed but it was made easy with the fortunate discovery of the tree benchmark making the location of tile channel center of the years before a simple matter of measurement. The new line was run on the zigzag section lines, where before the diagonal bisected properties, ran through houses and left part in one or the other county so that it was no fiction for a man in his house to sleep in bedchamber in one county and stepping across the line sit down to a meal in kitchen in the other county.
FERRIES AN IMPORTANT CONSIDERATION
As a new county, the safety and convenience of the increasing settlers was early brought to the attention of the supervisors in frequent applications for and renewals of licenses to conduct ferries at favorable points on the travelled roads, doing away with fords which were not always safe. The earliest fords on the San Joaquin were at Cassady's Gravelly Ford and at oth.er points at and below Millerton. The first ferry was the one of Ira McCray, the political nabob and popularly accepted "mayor" of Millerton, alongside his hotel and opposite the courthouse. The earliest licensed ferries were these:
August, 1856 — McCray's at Millerton, on the San Joaquin.
Stephen Gaster at Mono City, on the San Joaquin.
November, 1856 — C. P. Converse across San Joaquin below Millerton at Converse Flat, afterward known as Jones' store.
May, 1857 — James Smith across the lower Kings at Smith & Crumbley's.
John Poole, across the upper Kings at Campbell's Crossing.
February, 1858 — W. W. Hill at Poole's crossing of the Upper Kings near Scottsburg (Centerville).
February, 1859 — L. A. Whitmore, on Lower Kings at Kingston.
Firebaugh's on the lower San Joaquin.
These ferries paid monthly licenses of five dollars and three dollars and were under bonds of $3,000 reduced later to $2,500. They multiplied fast, and for a time were evidently good investments. There was more or less trouble on their score because of the varying tolls and popular opposition because of the tax, so that in February, 1860, a regular schedule was adopted borrowed from Merced, after the road approaches had been declared public highway and the county mapped off into districts with roadmasters. Incidentally, "Mayor" McCray charged the county four dollars for ferrying a corpse across the river for burial, a tariff not taken cognizance of in the toll sheet.
By August, 1869, general traffic had so increased in volume that a new rate list was