Tulare Township: A History

Beside Kasson Road, ■ about one-quarter mile south of Durham Ferry Road, one can find a lonely brick pylon. At one time, a plaque memorializing California historic landmark number 777 was mounted on the pylon. However, like San Joaquín City, the place the marker commemorates, no trace remains today.

In the spring of 1847, Captain Charles Imus and his family settled on this spot. Here, the West Side’s typography created an ideal site for a homestead. Elsewhere, a seasonal floodplain extended one-half mile or more from the San Joaquín River’s banks. However, where Hospital Creek’s dry arroyo meets the river, the San Joaquín’s west bank stands on higher ground and does not flood.

An ancient game trail once followed Hospital Creek. Lieutenant Gabriel Moraga, on his 1808 Tulare Township exploration, followed this track from the hills. When they reached the river, Moraga’s party camped before they forded the stream to explore the eastern plain. Moraga, with Fray José Viader, returned two years later. Again, they camped on the same dry, high ground.

About one-mile upstream, the San Joaquín River winds north, and turns sharply south again in a hairpin meander. South of Sturgeon Bend, the name trappers gave the meander, the Stanislaus River flows into the San Joaquín from the east. Rich in wildlife, the locale had long hosted a Yokut village.

Over the summer of 1827, Jedediah Smith’s men camped near here, if not on this spot. Impressed by the climate and bountiful wildlife, Smith’s party convinced the Hudson’s Bay Company trappers in the Oregon Country to start trapping farther south each year. From 1832 to 1845, the French Canadian trappers made their seasonal headquarters at what they called Castoria [French Camp] about fifteen miles...

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... amendatory of an Act entitled “An Act to create the County of Stanislaus,” approved April 1, 1854, Passed May 3, 1854). Again, Grayson remained outside San Joaquín County.

In 1860, as Tinkham reports, Stanislaus County did annex a portion of San Joaquín County. In a move known as “Walden’s Steal,” Stanislaus County Assemblyman Miner Walden (1823–1916) engineered the annexation of 110,000 acres of San Joaquín County land, including the town of Knight’s Ferry. The landscape added to Stanislaus County lay east of Escalon and north of the Stanislaus River between Knight’s Ferry and Riverbank (STATUTES OF 1860, Chapter 65, An Act to Annex a Portion of San Joaquín County to Stanislaus County, approved 17 February 1860). Once more, Grayson stayed in Stanislaus County, and the 1860 annexation proved to be the last significant change to the boundaries of San Joaquín County.