In the beginning…

For The Madera Tribune

“Captain” Russell Perry Mace, Madera’s first resident.

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The United States was celebrating its one hundredth birthday. Custer had just made his last stand, and Ulysses S. Grant was in the last year of his presidency. The year was 1876 — a watershed not only in the history of America but in that of the San Joaquin Valley as well, for that was the year Madera, California, was founded.

The appearance of civilization between the Chowchilla and Kings Rivers had been given a jump start four years earlier when in 1872, the Central Pacific Railroad laid its tracks up the Valley. As the rails moved inexorably southward, in their wake towns sprang to life. Modesto, Merced, Berenda, Borden, and Fresno all owed their existence to the railroad. Freight and passenger service made the central San Joaquin Valley come alive and the Big Four of the Central Pacific settled back in self-satisfaction, content with the hegemony they exercised through the center of the state. Little did they know that four years later, their economic monopoly would be threatened by the appearance of an unwanted upstart called Madera. 

In August 1873, just one year after the railroad invaded the plains of what is now Madera County, a group of investors from Merced met to determine the practicality of harvesting something besides gold from the Sierra Nevada. They organized under the name of the California Lumber Company and set their sights on the timberline in the mountains near Fresno Flats (present day Oakhurst. They wanted to fell the Sugar Pine trees in the mountains and transport them over 50 miles to the railroad on the Valley floor.