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By Bill Coate

Photo courtesy of Sanford Grover In Madera's horse and buggy days, these 500 pound concrete hitching posts could be seen all over town. Now there are just four remaining, and the one shown here is in Arbor Vitae Cemetery.

Madera's old, concrete hitching posts stand about three and a half feet tall. Attached to the top of the base of each one is a huge ball, and on top of each of these spheres is an iron ring. At one time these pieces of the past dotted all of Madera's more affluent neighborhoods. Most of the fashionable homes in town had these fancy, concrete hitching posts to which residents could secure their horses and buggies.

Today there are just a few remaining. This writer has found four, and one of them has quite a story. (Copy editor's note: One more has been reported in Madera for a grand total of five surviving hitching posts)

Finding three of the four hitching posts is easy. One is located in front of a beautiful, two story home on the northeast corner of West Yosemite Avenue and O Street. Another hitching post can be seen at 425 North C Street. A third hitching post stands at the old Barnett home on the corner of G and 1st Streets. To view the fourth hitching post, however, one must go to Arbor Vitae Cemetery, and that's where the story can be found.

To understand the full significance of the cemetery hitching post, one must go back to those days when Courthouse Park was just being developed by William King Heiskell, first superintendent of the park.

Heiskell was a Madera pioneer who possessed a healthy dose of optimism and imagination. When he first made his way to what is now Madera County, he found a job working as a sheepherder for Henry Clay Daulton. In the course of tending the sheep, young Heiskell met Daulton's children-in particular, his daughter Agnes.

Agnes Daulton was the sixth child of Henry Clay Daulton and his wife, Mary Jane. She was the last Daulton child to be born in the old home place, before Shepherd's Home was built in 1864. When Heiskell showed an interest in her, Agnes reciprocated the sentiment, and soon the couple became engaged.

On April 6, 1881, William King Heiskell and Agnes Daulton were married at Shepherd's Home. By this time, William had his own sheep and was doing a little mining. In time the couple had four children who lived to maturity-all girls. The youngest of these was Lucile Heiskell Desmond.

On November 27, 1895, Agnes Daulton Heiskell died. Soon after that, William King Heiskell caught a powerful case of the gold fever and took off for Alaska. By 1900, he was back in Madera with little to show for his gold rush adventure.

By 1902, construction of Madera's granite courthouse was completed, and the county hired William King Heiskell as groundskeeper. That's when he got his idea for Courthouse Park. Drawing on ideas passed on to him by the superintendent of San Francisco's Gold Gate Park, Heiskell proceeded to transform the ground around the courthouse into something of which the community could be proud.

He planted trees; he planted bushes; he built an aviary, a zoo, and a bandstand. William King Heiskell almost single-handedly created Courthouse Park. Then he got the idea for concrete benches and horse hitches.

After building Courthouse Park from scratch, Heiskell rarely left the place. He tended the grounds by day and served as jailer at night. In his spare time he built concrete benches for visitors to the park and concrete hitches for horses and buggies. So popular were his hitches that folks besieged him for hitches of their own. Soon Heiskell's horse hitches could be seen all over town.

In time, of course, the horse hitches lost their functional value and became street ornaments. Then they apparently became a nuisance, for in the early 1950s, the city passed an ordinance that they could not remain on the streets near the curbs. A city road employee was dispatched to remove the hitches, and that is how Sanford and Jane Grover obtained one. Jane had a strong sentimental interest in the hitches, so she and her husband rescued one from the dump and installed the 500-pound monument to the past in their back yard patio at 901 West 4th Street. It remained there until 1977 when the Sanfords moved to Tuolumne and took it with them. They even took it to Sonora and "planted" it in their front yard there.

On November 12, 2006, Jane Desmond Grover passed away. Her body was brought to Madera where she was buried in Arbor Vitae Cemetery. And what about the old concrete hitching post? It came with her and now marks her grave with an appropriate plaque affixed. It seems most fitting that one of Madera's old concrete horse hitches serves as a tombstone for Mrs. Grover, for you see, it was her grandfather who made them.

Jane Desmond Grover was the daughter of Frank and Lucile Desmond and the granddaughter of William King Heiskell. She was so proud of his horse hitches that she never let hers go, not even when she died.

So the next time you visit Arbor Vitae Cemetery, go the section near the freeway where many of the Daultons are buried. Look for a large tree with a hitching post beside it, and there you will find the final resting-place of Jane Desmond Grover, a Maderan who took her family history seriously.

Bill Coate William "Bill" Coate is a San Joaquin Valley historian, author, television personality and retired public school teacher with 36 years of classroom experience. He is the award-winning founder of the Madera Method, a research-based educational program that uses primary source materials to help students explore history. He writes about the past of our nation and valley with a weekly column and story. He also writes articles pertaining to local schools. The Madera Tribune online subscription To subscribe or log on, CLICK HERE. For more information first, CLICK HERE.