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Charles P. Converse
Charles Porter Converse was a mid-19th century Californian businessman who was the director of the Kings River Lumber Company and the namesake of Converse Basin Grove. He was involved in various controversies and legal issues during his lifetime and died by drowning in San Francisco Bay. Early life Charles P. Converse was born in Michigan in 1816. He migrated to California in 1849 during the California Gold Rush. He worked in a variety of occupations, including running a general store in Coarsegold, running a ferry at Friant, and logging in Crane Valley. He was also accused of murder, stuffing ballot boxes, and engaging in illegal gambling. Despite his reputation, he was awarded a contract to build a courthouse in Millerton, which included an "escape-proof" jail. On the day of a sheriff's election, Converse was attacked. He shot at one of his assailants, killing him. He was charged with murder. Ironically, he became the first prisoner to be incarcerated in his own escape-pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Converse Basin Grove
Converse Basin Grove is a grove of giant sequoia (''Sequoiadendron giganteum'') trees in the Giant Sequoia National Monument in the Sierra Nevada, in Fresno County, California, 5 miles (8 km) north of General Grant Grove, just outside Kings Canyon National Park. Once home to the second-largest population of giant sequoias in the world, covering acres, the grove was extensively logged by the Sanger Lumber Company at the turn of the 20th century. The clearcutting of 8,000 giant sequoias, many of which were over 2,000 years old, resulted in the destruction of the old-growth forest ecosystem. The Converse Basin Grove has not recovered despite attempts at restoration in the 20th century. The planting of single-species conifer plantations and the practice of fire exclusion has resulted in two high intensity wildfires since the end of the logging era, further degrading the giant sequoia habitat. Despite these challenges, the grove offers opportunities for studying fores ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hume-Bennett Lumber Company
The Hume-Bennett Lumber Company was a logging operation in the Sequoia National Forest in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The company and its predecessors were known for building the world's longest log flume and the first multiple-arch hydroelectric dam. However, the company also engaged in destructive clearcutting logging practices, cutting down 8,000 giant sequoias in Converse Basin in a decade-long event that has been described as "the greatest orgy of destructive lumbering in the history of the world." Public opposition of the company’s actions helped mobilize support for the early conservation movement, leading to the creation of Yosemite, Sequoia, and General Grant National Parks in the early 1880s. By the 1950s, almost all surviving sequoia groves were under public protection. Despite its efforts, the company never turned a profit and closed in 1924. In 1935, the land was purchased by the federal government and became part of the Sequoia National Forest. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1867 Millerton Courthouse (circa 1919)
Events January–March * January 1 – The Covington–Cincinnati Suspension Bridge opens between Cincinnati, Ohio, and Covington, Kentucky, in the United States, becoming the longest single-span bridge in the world. It was renamed after its designer, John A. Roebling, in 1983. * January 8 – African-American men are granted the right to vote in the District of Columbia. * January 11 – Benito Juárez becomes Mexican president again. * January 30 – Emperor Kōmei of Japan dies suddenly, age 36, leaving his 14-year-old son to succeed as Emperor Meiji. * January 31 – Maronite nationalist leader Youssef Bey Karam leaves Lebanon aboard a French ship for Algeria. * February 3 – ''Shōgun'' Tokugawa Yoshinobu abdicates, and the late Emperor Kōmei's son, Prince Mutsuhito, becomes Emperor Meiji of Japan in a brief ceremony in Kyoto, ending the Late Tokugawa shogunate. * February 7 – West Virginia University is established in Morgantown, West Virginia. * February 13 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
California Gold Rush
The California Gold Rush (1848–1855) was a gold rush that began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California from the rest of the United States and abroad. The sudden influx of gold into the money supply reinvigorated the American economy; the sudden population increase allowed California to go rapidly to statehood, in the Compromise of 1850. The Gold Rush had severe effects on Native Californians and accelerated the Native American population's decline from disease, starvation and the California genocide. The effects of the Gold Rush were substantial. Whole indigenous societies were attacked and pushed off their lands by the gold-seekers, called "forty-niners" (referring to 1849, the peak year for Gold Rush immigration). Outside of California, the first to arrive were from Oregon, the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) and Latin America in late 1848. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coarsegold, California
Coarsegold is a census-designated place in Madera County, California, United States. The population was 4,144 at the 2020 census, up from 1,840 in 2010. The Picayune Rancheria of Chukchansi Indians, a federally recognized tribe, is headquartered in Coarsegold. History Coarsegold has previously had several names, including "Coarse Gold", "Gold Gulch", "Michaels", "Oro Grosso", "Texas Flat", and "Coarse Gold Gulch". The place was first called "Texas Flat" after miners from Texas discovered gold there in 1849. By 1874, the name had changed to "Michaels", honoring Charles Michaels, a local merchant. A rival mining camp inhabited by Mexicans there was called "Oro Grosso", the Spanish translation of "coarse gold". The current name derives from the California Gold Rush of the mid-19th century, when prospectors discovered coarse nuggets of gold in a nearby creek. At one time, several dozen gold mines operated in the area. The Coarse Gold Gulch post office opened in 1878, changed the n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Friant, California
Friant (formerly, Converse Ferry, Jones Ferry, Hamptonville, and Pollasky) is a census-designated place (CDP) in Fresno County, California, United States. The population was 549 at the 2010 census, down from 778 at the 2000 census. Friant is located north of Clovis, at an elevation of 344 feet (105 m). Geography The CDP is located along the banks of the San Joaquin River and at the base of Friant Dam and Millerton Lake. According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of , of which 96.2% is land and 3.8% is water. Climate Friant has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate (Csa) typical of California's Central Valley with hot, dry summers and cool, rainier winters. History The place was first called Converse Ferry for Charles Converse, who established a ferry across the San Joaquin River in 1852. It was renamed Jones Ferry for J.R. Jones, a local merchant. The post office came in 1881 and named the place Hamptonville, after William R. Hampton, its first post ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bass Lake (Madera County, California)
Bass Lake is located in the Sierra National Forest, of Madera County, California, approximately south of the entrance to Yosemite National Park. The lake is approximately four miles long and one-half mile wide. The lake is formed by the construction of the Crane Valley Dam across Willow Creek, a tributary to the San Joaquin River, and is referenced as Crane Valley Lake. Releases from the dam drive the hydro-electric powerplant operated by Pacific Gas and Electric Company. The concrete gravity dam was completed in 1910 by Pacific Gas and Electric. Most of the land around the lake is part of the Sierra National Forest. The U.S. Forest Service designated the lake an official Recreation Area and has developed campgrounds and picnic areas on the south shore of the lake. The north shore of the lake is primarily made up of private cabins and homes of the unincorporated community, Bass Lake, California, with a year-round population of 575. Geography Bass Lake is located on the w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Millerton, Madera County, California
Millerton was a settlement located on the San Joaquin River and was the original county seat of Fresno County. Millerton was populated from about 1853 to the 1880s and is now inundated by the waters of Millerton Lake. History Mining camp As part of the California Gold Rush, placer miners explored the San Joaquin River. A man named Cassady set up a placer mining operation, near where the Temperance Flat Dam was later built, around 1851. The mine became known as Cassady's Bar. Cassady was killed by a local tribe and found on the bank of the river with his legs cut off and his tongue cut out. Despite the hostilities, miners continued to flow to the San Joaquin River and a settlement called Rootville sprung up along the south bank of the free-flowing San Joaquin River due to the mining and trapping activity. The settlement was located along the Stockton - Los Angeles Road which allowed travelers to visit by stage and freight wagon. McCray's Ferry on the north bank of the riv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kings River (California)
The Kings River is a river draining the Sierra Nevada mountain range in central California in the United States. Its headwaters originate along the Sierra Crest in and around Kings Canyon National Park and form the eponymous Kings Canyon, one of the deepest river gorges in North America. The river is impounded in Pine Flat Lake before flowing into the San Joaquin Valley (the southern half of the Central Valley) southeast of Fresno. With its upper and middle course in Fresno County, the Kings River diverges into multiple branches in Kings County, with some water flowing south to the old Tulare Lake bed and the rest flowing north to the San Joaquin River. However, most of the water is consumed for irrigation well upstream of either point. Inhabited for thousands of years by the Yokuts and other native groups, the Kings River basin once fed a vast network of seasonal wetlands around Tulare Lake that supported millions of waterfowl, fish, and game animals, in turn providing susten ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sequoiadendron Giganteum
''Sequoiadendron giganteum'' (giant sequoia; also known as giant redwood, Sierra redwood, Sierran redwood, California big tree, Wellingtonia or simply big treea nickname also used by John Muir) is the sole living species in the genus ''Sequoiadendron'', and one of three species of coniferous trees known as redwoods, classified in the family Cupressaceae in the subfamily Sequoioideae, together with ''Sequoia sempervirens'' (coast redwood) and ''Metasequoia glyptostroboides'' (dawn redwood). Giant sequoia specimens are the most massive trees on Earth. The common use of the name ''sequoia'' usually refers to ''Sequoiadendron giganteum'', which occurs naturally only in groves on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain range of California. The giant sequoia is listed as an endangered species by the IUCN, with fewer than 80,000 trees remaining. Since its last assessment as an endangered species in 2011, it was estimated that another 13–19% of the population (or 9,761–13,63 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Joaquin Valley
The San Joaquin Valley ( ; es, Valle de San Joaquín) is the area of the Central Valley of the U.S. state of California that lies south of the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta and is drained by the San Joaquin River. It comprises seven counties of Northern and one of Southern California, including, in the north, all of San Joaquin and Kings counties, most of Stanislaus, Merced, and Fresno counties, and parts of Madera and Tulare counties, along with a majority of Kern County, in Southern California. Although the valley is predominantly rural, it has densely populated urban centers: Fresno, Bakersfield, Stockton, Modesto, Tulare, Visalia, Hanford, and Merced. The first European to enter the valley was Pedro Fages in 1772. The San Joaquin Valley was originally inhabited by the Yokuts and Miwok peoples. The Tejon Indian Tribe of California is a federally recognized tribe of Kitanemuk, Yokuts, and Chumash indigenous people of California. Their ances ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Panic Of 1873
The Panic of 1873 was a financial crisis that triggered an depression (economics), economic depression in Europe and North America that lasted from 1873 to 1877 or 1879 in France and in United Kingdom, Britain. In Britain, the Panic started two decades of economic stagnation, stagnation known as the "Long Depression" that weakened the country's economic leadership. In the United States, the Panic was known as the "Great Depression" until the Great Depression, events of 1929 and the early 1930s set a new standard. The Panic of 1873 and the subsequent depression had several underlying causes for which economic history, economic historians debate the relative importance. American inflation, rampant speculation, speculative investments (overwhelmingly in railroads), the Legal tender#Demonetization, demonetization of silver in Germany and the United States, ripples from economic dislocation in Europe resulting from the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), and major property losses in th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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