Fresno

The County of Fresno was formed in 1856. It was named for Fresno Creek, which in turn was named for the abundant mountain ash trees lining the stream. Fresno is the Spanish word for ash tree. The county was much larger than it is today, comprising its current area plus all of what became Madera County and parts of what are now San Benito, Tulare, Kings, Inyo, and Mono counties.

The center of settlement was not then at what became Fresno, but to the northeast, at Millerton near Fort Miller. Millerton, then on the banks of the free-flowing San Joaquin River, became the county seat. Other early county settlements included Firebaugh's Ferry, Scottsburg, and Elkhorn Springs.

The San Joaquin River flooded on Christmas Eve, 1867, inundating Millerton. Some residents rebuilt, others moved. Flooding also destroyed the town of Scottsburg that winter. Rebuilt on higher ground, Scottsburg was renamed Centerville.

In 1867, Anthony Easterby purchased land bounded by the present Chestnut, Belmont, Clovis and California avenues. Unable to grow wheat for lack of water, he hired Moses J. Church in 1871 to build an irrigation canal. Church then formed the Fresno Canal and Irrigation Company, a predecessor of the Fresno Irrigation District.

In 1872, the Central Pacific Railroad established a station near Easterby's farm for its new Southern Pacific line. Soon there was a store. Around the station and the store grew the town of Fresno Station, later called Fresno. Many Millerton residents, drawn by the convenience of the railroad and worried about flooding, moved to the new community. Fresno became an incorporated city in 1895.

Two years after the station was established, county residents voted to move the county seat from Millerton to Fresno. When the Friant Dam was completed in 1944, the site of Millerton became inundated by the waters of Millerton Lake. In extreme droughts, when the reservoir shrinks, ruins of the original county seat can still be observed.

In the nineteenth century, with so much wooden construction and in the absence of sophisticated firefighting resources, fires often ravaged American frontier towns. The greatest of Fresno's early-day fires, in 1882, destroyed an entire block of the city. Another devastating blaze struck in 1883.

The "Fresno Municipal Sanitary Landfill" was the first modern landfill in the United States, and incorporated several important innovations to waste disposal, including trenching, compacting, and the daily covering of trash with dirt. It was opened in 1937 and closed in 1987. And now has the unusual distinction of being a National Historic Landmark as well as a Superfund Site.

Before World War Two, Fresno had many ethnic neighborhoods, including Little Armenia, German Town, Little Italy, and China Town. During that war, Fresno was a assembly center for the relocation of many Japanese Americans.