The Madera County Historian documents the history of Madera County and was published by the Madera Historical Society beginning in 1961. This is issue 5 and totaled 8 pages. Doris and Clyde Foster, members of the Madera County Historical Society, wrote and submitted two articles on the history of the Foster Hogue Ranch. The first looks at the first hundred years of this famous ranch. The couple share interesting tidbits of factual history interspersed with the names of those pioneers who contributed to the development of the Hogue Ranch, which was actually the Ross Ranch until the Hogue family came to purchase it in 1910. While the Ranch is known as the Hogue Ranch, in actuality they owned it only for a couple of decades before it was purchased by the Fosters. Their second article discusses how the Hogue Ranch evolved in 1954 in it’s hiring methods. Finding itself short of men workers who had found year-long employment elsewhere, they looked through their applications and found another group of employees, Mono Indian women. Lot’s of names of Mono Indians employed by the Ranch are mentioned.
The final article in this issue was by Contributing Editor, Nathan C. Sweet. It’s these types of articles which provide genealogists fodder for narratives about our ancestors. Nathan shares insights on the scarcity of wood in the region as settlements grew and clear cut what trees were present when they arrived. He also discusses the economics facing the pioneers in obtaining a cord of firewood. A great read!
Table of Contents:
- One Hundred Years of History – Foster’s Hogue Ranch, by Doris and Clyde Foster
- Historical Harvest Help – Foster’s Hogue Ranch, by Doris and Clyde Foster
- Wood for Fuel, by Nathan C. Sweet