Poso de Chane, California
Poso de Chane (Chane Pool) is a former settlement in Fresno County, California situated around the waterhole of that name, northwest just beyond the confluence of the Jacalitos Creek with Los Gatos Creek, 6 miles (9.7 km) east of Coalinga and northwest of the Guijarral Hills.
History
The Poso de Chane, was a pool or waterhole on Los Gatos Creek, originally Arroyo Pasajero or Arroyo Poso de Chane,[1] northwest of the Guijarral Hills.
This pool and a surrounding ciénaga of several acres, was once the site of a village of native Americans called the "Chane" by the Spanish. This location became a Spanish and later a Mexican agricultural settlement of about a dozen families, the only settlement in the area and a way station on El Camino Viejo. The Huiguera brothers became important mesteñeros in vicinity and Juan Huiguera settled in the Poso in 1854 raising cattle between the Poso and Tulare Lake. The Later American settlers came and built stores and houses there also.[2]
The Poso de Chane was a hub of trails, besides the Old Road, that linked those from the Salinas, San Juan and Santa Clara Valleys with those in the wilds of the San Joaquin Valley like Rancho de los Californios and Rio Bravo. The Poso also became an important stop in the middle of the La Vereda del Monte, (The Mountain Path), that ran north through the remote regions of the Coast Ranges, north into Livermore Valley to end at Point of Timber in eastern Contra Coasta County, or southward to Southern California and Mexico. The trail was used by the mesteñeros, to move their herds of mesteños or mustangs. Following the American conquest of California and the California Gold Rush, horse and cattle thieves used the Vereda for herding stolen cattle and horses to markets north and south. The trail was also a favored route of bandits and other outlaws for moving unobserved. The scattered small settlements along the route becoming their refuges, the Poso and Rancho de los Californios being the most important.[3]
The Poso de Chane was destroyed in the Great Flood of 1862, when a deep channel was cut draning the pool and the surrounding land, gardens, vines and trees died turning it into a desolate location, that was supplied with water only by digging wells.[2][4] The settlement lingered, for a time as a center for sheepmen and sheepshearing, into the 1870s and prior to 1874, Gustave Kreyenhagen, came to Poso and started a small store there.
References
- ↑ Erwin G. Gudde, William Bright, California Place Names: The Origin and Etymology of Current Geographical Names, University of California Press, 2004, p. 142
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Frank F. Latta, "EL CAMINO VIEJO á LOS ANGELES" - The Oldest Road of the San Joaquin Valley; Bear State Books, Exeter, 2006, p.18
- ↑ John Boessenecker, Lawman: the life and times of Harry Morse, 1835-1912, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1998, p.26-28
- ↑ William N. Abeloe, Mildred Brooke Hoover, H. E. Rensch, E. G. Rensch, Historic spots in California, 3rd Edition, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1966, p. 89
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