Clovis

The Depot from the Tarpey Ranch

The Tarpey Depot was built in 1892 as one of three depots on the San Joaquin Valley Railroad, and it now houses the Clovis Tourism and Information Center.^1,2 It first stood on the Tarpey Ranch, just southeast of what is now the corner of Ashlan and Clovis Avenues, and over the years it has been a freight and passenger depot, the La Paloma Winery office, a post office, and a polling place.²

Clovis lies in the northeast quadrant of the Fresno-Clovis Metropolitan Area in the San Joaquin Valley, and one city page puts its population at close to 129,000 across more than 28 square miles.⁴ Another city page gives the figure as approximately 115,000, more than double the 1990 count.¹ The city lists its economic base as retail sales and services and light manufacturing.⁴

Cole’s Wheat

Padre Martin explored the area in 1806 looking for a mission site, and gold rush miners of 1849 came after him, displacing the Native American tribes who lived in the foothills and along the rivers.¹ When the gold ran out, the miners took up small farms in the foothills, and after the Civil War large cattle grazing lands were developed.¹ Stephen H. Cole’s family arrived in 1872, and two years later he gave his sixteen-year-old son, Clovis, four horses, which the boy used to haul lumber down from the Sierra Nevada.¹ Cole saw that the grazing land on the valley floor would suit dry grain farming, so he bought land to grow grain for feed and seed, and in time he farmed 50,000 acres and became known as the “Wheat King of the United States.”¹ In 1880 he bought the 480 acres that would become the City of Clovis.¹

Pollasky’s Railroad

When the railroad trusts raised their rates, valley farmers looked for another way to ship grain, and the city says that in 1890 Marcus Pollasky, a 26-year-old Chicago railroad developer, and a group of Fresno citizens raised more than $100,000 to build the independent San Joaquin Valley Railroad.¹ The marker E Clampus Vitus put up in 1971 dates Pollasky’s company to 1891 and says he planned for the line to cross the mountains and open the valley to direct traffic with the East.³ The city says Cole sold most of the land the railroad used, including a depot site, while the marker says Pollasky promised Cole a depot in exchange for right-of-way and that Cole donated land for the townsite.^1,3 In 1891, just before the first tracks were laid, Pollasky and his investors founded the town and named it for Clovis M. Cole.¹ The line ran 26 miles from Fresno to Millerton, now Friant, which the San Joaquin Valley Railroad marker calls Hamptonville, and the Tarpey Depot marker says it was sold to Southern Pacific in 1893.^1,2,3

The Shaver Flume and the Mill

While the railroad was being built, a group of Michigan lumbermen began acquiring thousands of acres of timber in the mountains east of Clovis, and in time they dammed a creek to make Shaver Lake and built a 42-mile flume from the foot of the dam to the valley floor.¹ The Tarpey Depot marker credits the flume to the Fresno Flume and Irrigation Company and dates its completion to 1894.² A 40-acre mill and finishing plant grew up in the empty fields of Clovis, with a planing mill, box factory, warehouses, dry kiln, offices, workhorse stables, pastures, and cottages, and the saloons came after.^1,4 In 1894 the first school opened in the waiting room of the Tarpey Depot, and the next year the first permanent schoolhouse went up on the northeast corner of 2nd and Pollasky.¹ The three-story Hoblitt Hotel went up in 1900 on the northwest corner of Fourth and Pollasky, with a bathtub and a lavatory on each floor.¹

Old Town and the Last of the Line

Clovis incorporated in 1912, and under Southern Pacific the old valley line kept running at a profit for decades.¹ Ken Curtis, who played Festus Haggen on “Gunsmoke” from 1962 to 1975, moved to the Clovis area in 1980 and appeared in the 1991 Clovis Rodeo the day before he died.⁵ Local artist Samantha Cowen made a steel and concrete statue of him as he looked in the show and donated it to the City of Clovis in 1992.⁵ The city has announced it will begin work on a Historic Preservation Board and a Historic District.⁶ The city says several structures besides the Clovis Hotel survive from the turn-of-the-century town, and the Tarpey Depot marker calls the depot the last remnant of the San Joaquin Valley Railroad.^1,2