For The Madera Tribune George Washington Mordecai. Every year in November my mind is filled with memories of the Mordecai family. This is when the descendants of George Washington Mordecai gather at Refuge, the ranch he founded in 1868. It is impossible to think about them without remembering that day almost 40 years ago when I led my sixth grade class down the winding dirt road leading from the highway to the Mordecai Ranch to visit the grave of Mr. Mordecai. There were abou

For The Madera Tribune John Gordon (far right) continued serving as Madera’s mayor in 1948. The year 1948 proved to be a watershed in Madera’s politics. Earlier city elections had been fairly tranquil. Over the previous 40 years, if an incumbent was challenged, the contest didn’t raise anybody’s blood pressure. City elections in 1948, however, revealed that Madera had grown up. All of a sudden city leaders such Mayor John Gordon, Councilmen Arthur D. Cook, J. Wesley Smith, Jo

For The Madera Tribune J.F. Lewis and his wife Adelia, 20 years before he was elected sheriff and had to face, an angry, one-armed painter who was determined to shoot someone. [Editor’s note: We found this story to be worth telling exactly as it appeared in 1918.] • • • “Alonzo Wood, an old painter with one arm was arrested last evening about 8 o’clock by Sheriff J.F. Lewis and Deputies Andy Clark and Clarence Osborn on a charge of threatening the lives of several workmen on

For The Madera Tribune Fire destroyed the Alta Hotel in 1931. As Maderans neared the end of the 1920s, they were full of optimism. Prospects of oil wells on the outskirts of town danced in the heads of some local capitalists, while others dreamed of raising the funds to build a brand new, four-story hotel on Yosemite Avenue. In the end, however, both schemes failed, and the town entered the 1930s rather tentatively as the nation’s economy took a nosedive. One of the first ind

For The Madera Tribune Richard Nixon campaigns on Yosemite Avenue in Madera. In 1950, national politics caught the eye of most Maderans, especially the race between Congressman Richard Nixon and Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas for the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by Sheridan Downey. While the record shows that Douglas campaigned in Madera once, Nixon upstaged her by doing it twice. On April 11, 1950, Nixon came to Madera to campaign from the back of a station wagon. He pa

For The Madera Tribune A job at Brammer’s shoe store wasn’t enough to dispel Jim Brammer’s despondency. He committed suicide after his father made him a partner. In 1917, Herman Brammer and his son, Will, decided to expand their shoe store and build that three story, brick building that still stands on the north side of Yosemite Avenue. At about the same time, they determined to bring Jim Brammer, Herman’s stepson, into the business by placing him in charge of the new clothin

For The Madera Tribune Alapoleno, Joaquin Murrieta’s cook, is seen here panning for gold near Coarsegold. Joaquin Murrieta — legends about him are legion, and so conflicting are these stories of his life, that it has often been asserted that there were as many as five outlaws by that name. Whatever the truth behind the lore, one curious anecdote has escaped the history books. William Henderson, the man who fired the shot that killed Joaquin Murrieta, and Alapoleno, the bandit

For The Madera Tribune Chief Thomas “on duty” throwing snow balls. There are times in the history of a town when some things just do not make sense. Every once in a while a city’s leaders take off in a direction that defies logic. Such was the case in 1950, when the Madera City Council wanted to shake up the police department. The councilmen shook it up all right, but in the process, they ended up on the short end of the stick. Walter Thomas was the Chief of Police in Madera