Selma owes its beginnings to farming and to the Southern Pacific Railroad, which began in the 1870s as a branch line of the Central Pacific Railroad. The route of the Southern Pacific through California's Central Valley gave rise to a string of small towns between Sacramento and Bakersfield. Selma was among them.
In 1880, residents of the rural community that would become Selma established the Valley View School District. A decade later, four farmers--J.D. Whitson, E.H. Tucker, George Otis and Monroe Snyder--formed a partnership and developed a townsite along the railroad. They began auctioning lots and just three years later the city of Selma was formally incorporated.
Along with Fowler to its immediate north and Kingsburg to its south, Selma was a railroad stop where agricultural goods could be loaded for shipping. As in the rest of the United States, the railroad played a lesser role as the 20th century progressed. What was once a handsome passenger terminal in the city's downtown later became Selma's police station.
In the late 19th century, the town also boasted a water-driven mill for grinding wheat to flour. The mill was powered by the C&K Canal, a seasonal irrigation channel that was known in Selma as the Mill Ditch.
Wheat growing was Selma's first economic engine. Wheat fields were quickly displaced by orchards and vineyards, however, as ranchers realized how well fruit--peaches, plums, grapes and more--grew in the sandy soil, irrigated with snow-melt water imported through canals from the nearby Sierra Nevada mountain range. The fruit ripened to marvelous sweetness through the hot San Joaquin Valley summers.
Although raisins (sweet grapes preserved by sun-drying) soon became the major crop, Selma called itself the “Home of the Peach” and was also known as "A Peach of a City." Through the 1960s, a major seasonal employer was the local peach cannery, where Libby's brand fruit was packed. Peaches and other tree fruit are still grown in abundance.
With 90 percent of U.S. raisins produced within eight miles of Selma, the city adopted the slogan "Raisin Capital of the World” in 1963. Area vinyards also produce table grapes. A decline in family farming, the national trend in U.S. agriculture after World War II, and depressed prices for raisins and table grapes, especially in the last decades of the twentieth century, were negative drains on the Selma-area agribusiness economy.
Like many other American cities, Selma suffered a decline in its old downtown in the late decades of the 20th century and into the 21st. Post-World War II development spread the growing city to the north and east, away from its business center. U.S. Highway 99 (also called State Route 99), once a main road north and south through town, running parallel to the railroad, was rebuilt as a freeway in the 1960s. Several blocks to the west of the old road (now Whitson Street and Golden State Boulevard), the freeway bisects the oldest residential neighborhood in Selma. Freeway travel made the new shopping malls of Fresno more accessible. The freeway also made Selma more attractive as a place to live for Fresno workers, who contributed to ever-faster residential growth into the 21st century.
The downtown suffered its most severe blow when Wal-Mart corporation built one of its giant retail stores at the intersection of East Floral Avenue and the freeway--at the northwest edge of town. As the 21st century began, this area became the de facto commercial center of the city. The old downtown, despite vacant storefronts, remained a struggling but viable district of city offices and small businesses.
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