One day in early July I visited Sanger, Calif., 10 miles east of Fresno, a peaceful city of 24,270, where I had the pleasure of meeting James Walton, a descendent of one of Sanger’s early families and president of the Sanger Historical Society.
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| James Walton |
Mr. Walton, whose family came to Sanger in 1875 from Arkansas, was kind enough to show me the Sanger Depot Museum and give me a lot of fascinating information on the Sanger area. Sanger has close ties to agriculture – orange groves proliferate in the area – but what I found most interesting was its logging history. Today we think of loggers cutting down massive Giant Sequoia trees and cringe, but in the late 1800s it was a thriving business that provided a living to many families.
Hiram Smith and Austin Moore originally bought 30,000 acres in the mountains for harvesting the redwoods. To transport the massive redwood logs from the mountain forests to the lumber yard in Sanger, the Kings River Lumber Co. in 1890 built a 62-mile-long flume that diverted water from the Kings River to float the wood down. A railroad line was thought to be less feasible. According to the Sanger Depot Museum’s website, 191 million board feet of redwood was cut during the years the flume was in operation.
Thomas Hume of Michigan bought the lumber operation in 1905 and renamed it the Hume Bennett Lumber Co. A new reservoir was built along with a new mill and an extension of the Kings River flume an additional 17 miles to reach the lake, which is now known as Hume Lake. After a number of setbacks, including a fire that destroyed seven miles of the flume in 1926, Hume’s son sold the equipment and eventually sold 20,000 acres to the National Forest Service. The area is now part of Sequoia National Forest. It’s said that none of the lumber barons ever actually made a profit.
The Sanger Depot Museum, in the civic center area of downtown Sanger, displays a beautifully constructed model of the flume as it once existed. While I was examining this model, Mr. Walton told me that the flume was periodically used as a boat ride when not in use for logging. Riders were allowed to float down the flume at speeds up to 60 miles per hour. What a ride that must have been.
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| Logging flume exhibit |
Another stunning room in the museum displays one of the finest collections of Native American baskets I’ve ever come across. The dozens of baskets, some valued at thousands of dollars each, were collected by Oscar Brehler, a Sanger pharmacist in the early 20th century, who bought them from local Yokut Indians. Brehler died in 1962 and left them to the museum. Half of his collection ended up in Fresno, and those baskets are not on display. But Sanger’s baskets are fine examples.
Other displays in the nicely maintained museum include the Brehler Block, a replica of a Sanger’s Seventh Street from the 1890s, a replica of the front and interior of a typical Victorian home of the period, and a room dedicated to pioneer families. Outside you can see a scale model of one section of the logging flume – no part of the original flume still exists. Also, if you visit, don’t miss the fascinating video about the logging operations inside the museum. You can also see this video on the museum’s website.
The Sanger Depot Museum, originally the town’s railroad depot, was moved from its original location and opened in 1977. It’s well work a visit.
