Kings and Madera

The legislative session of 1893 saw the last creation of new counties in the San Joaquin Valley. That part of Fresno county north and east of the San Joaquin River was set apart as Madera county. And the western half of Tulare county was cut off the be Kings county. This last was obviously named after the river Kings, which ran along a few miles of its northern line. Curiously, the new county of Kings took over Tulare lake, from which the mother county of Tulare was named. Within two year, however, Tulare Lake dried up, then was intermittently replenished by rainfall, seemed to be finally dry by 1905, and was overrun with settleres; then was filled up again in the wet season of 1908-09, and has been permanetly [sic] dry since 1915.

The Central Pacific Railroad, by-passing Visalia in 1872, had created the new and rival town of Tulare. Visalia citizens built a connecting short line to Goshen, and the Southern Pacific continued this cross line westerly, creating the new town of Hanford in the heart of the Mussle Slough district of the Kings river bottoms. The line continued onward to te cove of the Coast Range, which was early known as Pleasant Valley, ending at Coalinga and Alcalde, in Fresno Count. In theory this line should have gone on across the mountains to Tres Pinos and San Jose, but this building never occurred. Kings county was chiefly maintained at first by the rich fruit farming area of “Lucern Valley” or Mussel Slough district, and by the wheat farming around Tulare Lake; until 1929, when the Kettleman Hills petroleum discoveries on its western border added new richness to the county possessions. The high gasoline content of the Kettleman Hills product, enabling drivers to put petroleum from the wells directly into their motor cares, was the remarkable fact about the new field.

In the spring an summer of 1892, a number of leading citizens of what was then the first supervisoral [sic] district of Fresno county started a move for county division. They lived in the territory northeast of the San Joaquin river, with Madera as its principal city. The question was submitted to the legislature in 1893, and carried.

The population of what was about to become Madera county was then about 4500, of which number about 1500 were living in the city of Madera. The fist election, as authorized by the legislature, was held May 16, and the county was formally organized, May 23, 1893.

History of Fresno County and the San Joaquin Valley, pg 16

Lilbourne Alsip Winchell, 1933

Transcribed by Liz Brae 2007