Madera’s killer fire
As Madera moved into the 1940s, many looked forward to the return of good times. The Great Depression was over, and Prohibition had wilted away. Agriculture had replaced lumber as the town’s economic base, and business downtown was booming. J.C. Penny, located on the corner of E Street and Yosemite Avenue, was offering the latest […]
Madera Democrats celebrated early
In November of 1884, Grover Cleveland was elected to the Presidency of the United States, the first Democrat to be so honored since 1856, and his party was jubilant. Joyous celebrations proliferated throughout the nation, but none like the one thrown in Madera. Most of the nation’s Democrats waited until the votes were counted before […]
Gruber’s saloon bites the dust
In 1907, Madera with a population of just more than 2,000, had 13 saloons within its city limits. The town’s trustees went on record as opposing such a high saloon/citizen ratio, and expressed a determination to reduce it. In this they were supported by a vocal segment of the population, especially the Women’s Christian Temperance […]
Fighting roosters ruled Madera
“Two men arrested in cockfight raid at Madera home.” “Deputies arrest 2 at cockfight.” “Maderan faces cockfighting charges.” These recent headlines in the Madera Tribune give evidence of the persistence of cockfighting in our fair city. This illegal practice of pitting rooster against rooster in a fight to the death seems almost impossible to stamp […]
In praise of an Okie
The late Ed Gwartney was a self-described product of the “Okie” migration who never earned a high school diploma but became a pathfinder of new trails in the teaching of history. He was the founder of the James Monroe Children’s Museum, and he has left it to others to build on his passion that created […]
Carles Beckett; the rest of the story
When Carles Beckett graduated from Fresno State in 1967 and began his career in education, he could look back on his first 22 years and recognize that his life had been a series of miracles. Born in Piggott, Arkansas, he spent his first nine years living in a tent in a Buckeye, Arizona cotton camp […]
Carles Beckett, Madera’s CEO (Chief Encouragement Officer)
It was four in the morning, July 17, 1954, when the woman crumpled to the floor. Her sobbing woke her four children; in an instant they joined her, brokenhearted and weeping uncontrollably. The policeman standing over them watched helplessly. He had just told the Beckett family that their father and husband would not be coming […]
Lu Teaford: Queen of the Mountains
I will never forget that day in 1992, when Bill and Doris Seabury took me to North Fork to meet Lu Bowman Teaford. It was 78 years after she had become the bride of Otis Teaford, Madera County’s king of the mountains, and did she ever have a story to tell! “I would have done […]
Trouble at Madera’s swimming pool
Tension was in the air in Madera in 1947. The long-standing exclusion of African-Americans from the City’s swimming pool was being challenged, and the integration attempts weren’t setting well with some of the town’s power brokers, especially the publisher of the Madera Tribune. Howard Clark, whose father had founded the paper in 1892, took umbrage […]
Stagecoach travel was not for the faint of heart
It seems so far in the distant past, and yet it hasn’t really been all that long since the only method of transportation from Madera to the foothills and back was in buggies and stagecoaches or on horseback. Horse drawn vehicles strained at their harnesses in Madera County well into the 20th century, and today […]