![]() The belongings are on display in Hanford's Carnegie Museum. She befriended local resident and student of hers Mary Packwood with whom she gifted a personally-designed dress and left luggage shortly before her disappearance in the Pacific Ocean in 1937. ![]() ![]() In the 1930s, famed pilot Amelia Earhart lived in Hanford to teach flying lessons at Fresno Chandler Airport. Saloons flourished in Hanford's early days despite an anti-saloon movement until the town voted to become "dry" in 1912, eight years before nationwide Prohibition was enacted. In 1903, steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie donated $12,500 for the construction of the Hanford Carnegie Library which opened in 1906 (and is now the Carnegie Museum of Kings County). The original east–west Southern Pacific Railroad branch line is now operated by the San Joaquin Valley Railroad. When Kings County was created in 1893 from the western part of Tulare County, Hanford became its county seat.Ī second railroad was laid through Hanford in 1897, which today is the main north–south line of the BNSF Railway through the San Joaquin Valley. Cranmer, and an average enrollment of fourteen. The first public high school, Hanford Union High School, was started in 1892 with one teacher, W. S. The Lacey Milling Company was still operating in Hanford in 2016. Lacey, bringing the first electric lights to the city. Its first mayor was local resident Yamon LeBaron.Īn electrical generating plant was built in 1891 by pioneering flour miller H.G. The need for fire protection led to the town becoming an incorporated city in 1891. On several occasions, major fires destroyed much of the young community's business district. Forty-four of them were Chinese immigrants who resided in what's known today as China Alley. The next month, the town's first census was held counting some 269 residents. This event became famous as the Mussel Slough Tragedy. In May 1880, a dispute over land titles between settlers and the Southern Pacific Railroad resulted in a bloody gun battle on a farm 5.6 mi (9.0 km) northwest of Hanford that left seven men dead. On August 1, California Governor candidates George Clement Perkins and Romualdo Pacheco (and on August 10, O F Thornton and W F White W P C) spoke in Hanford and Lemoore. In May 1878, the Upper Kings River Canal and Irrigation Company filed articles of incorporation. In June 1878, the Workingmen's Party was reported to have a majority vote over the Democrats in the town. In May 1878, Hanford residents drafted a resolve against the South Pacific Railroad from purchasing land with residing settlers. In 1878, Hanford began running their own newspaper service and wiring called "The Public Good" which fed into other papers. In 1877, Hanford began to appear in state newspapers, giving details of events in the town's early days. The Hanford Carnegie Museum, originally built in 1905 as a library. According to History of Kings County: "It was but a short step from sheep-camp to village and with the railroad as an attraction the village flourished and became a town within a few historic months." Many of those working on the tracks were Chinese immigrants. Tracks were laid through a sheep camp in 1877. The earliest known document labeling the settlement as "Hanford" is an 1876 map of Tulare County which once included the territory of present-day Kings County. Hanford's namesake was James Madison Hanford, an executive for the company. As the settlement grew, Tulare Lake's feeding rivers were diverted for agricultural irrigation, causing it to gradually shrink and, over the 19th and 20th centuries, effectively become extinct.įrom the mid-to-late 1870s, the Southern Pacific Railroad planned to lay tracks towards the developing farmland west of Visalia, spurring a growth in labor and population. The earliest dated grave in the area was that of a young Alice Spangler who was initially buried in the Kings River Cemetery just north of her family's farm in 1860. Since the annexation of California after the Mexican-American War, the locality was settled by Americans and immigrants as farmland, broadly referred to as "Mussel Slough". They occupied locations along watercourses such as creeks, springs and seep areas (such as sloughs), along perennial and seasonal drainages, as well as flat ridges and terraces. The area was inhabited by the Tachi Yokuts Indians for several thousand years prior to Euro-American contact. Today's Hanford was once north of Tulare Lake, historically the largest body of fresh water west of the Mississippi River.
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