{"id":211,"date":"2024-09-27T20:22:35","date_gmt":"2024-09-27T20:22:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maderatribustg.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=211"},"modified":"2026-05-13T18:12:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T18:12:08","slug":"bigelow-went-from-stagecoaches-to-telephones-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/bigelow-went-from-stagecoaches-to-telephones-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Bigelow went from stagecoaches to telephones"},"content":{"rendered":"<div data-elementor-type=\"wp-post\" data-elementor-id=\"211\" class=\"elementor elementor-211\" data-elementor-post-type=\"post\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-ce20b0a e-flex e-con-boxed e-con e-parent\" data-id=\"ce20b0a\" data-element_type=\"container\" data-e-type=\"container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"e-con-inner\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-1660e313 elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"1660e313\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-e-type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p>I first met the Bigelows while working at Spring Valley School a long time ago. Jess Bigelow was a major patron of the school\u2019s 4-H club and spent a lot of money buying their animals at the Madera and Chowchilla fairs.<\/p><p>Of course it wasn\u2019t long before I found out about the connection between the Bigelow family and the Ponderosa Telephone Company, and that is a history lesson I love to tell. It started more than a century ago, when Harmon Bigelow, Frank Bigelow\u2019s great grandfather, was driving his wagon from his O\u2019Neals home down the hill toward Madera. He only had 35 cents in his pocket, but he had a dream in his head. He intended to capitalize on the need for transportation in Madera County.<\/p><p>Little did he realize that his efforts would take him in an entirely different direction. Little did he know that his plan to start a staging business would result in the creation of the Ponderosa Telephone Company.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I first met the Bigelows while working at Spring Valley School a long time ago. Jess Bigelow was a major patron of the school\u2019s 4-H club and spent a lot of money buying their animals at the Madera and Chowchilla fairs. Of course it wasn\u2019t long before I found out about the connection between the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":40417,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_angie_page":false,"page_builder":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[26,29,32],"class_list":["post-211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","tag-business","tag-community","tag-culture"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}