Burrough Valley - Human Prehistory and History

Human Prehistory and History

Human habitation of the Burrough Valley area goes back perhaps fifteen thousand years when tribes of paleo-Indians hunted megafauna like the giant short-faced bear (Arctodus simus) in the area and left their distinctive fluted spear-points, called Clovis points. More recently the Yokuts (more specifically the Casson or Gashowu tribes of Yokuts) and Western Mono tribes of Native Americans lived here. Local Monos still live on the Cold Springs Rancheria in neighboring Sycamore Valley. Others live off the reservation in Burrough Valley itself. During the period of white settlement, many white men took Native American women as wives, and many people of mixed blood now live in Burrough Valley and surrounding areas. The Mono began to inhabit the area perhaps six hundred years ago, when their Piute ancestors first began to cross through the passes in the Sierra Nevada to trade with the Yokuts, who lived in the San Joaquin Valley and the western slope of the Sierra Nevada. Among the staple foodstuffs of the Native Americans was the acorn. Holes once used for grinding acorns are commonly found in obtruding granite slabs.

The first whites arrived and settled in the area in the 1850s during the California Gold Rush. Among the first were Colonel Henry Burrough, after whom the valley is named, and Henry Rivercombe. According to local legend, Rivercombe named all his farm animals Jefferson Davis just before he left to join the Confederates and fight in the Civil War. Burrough and Rivercombe came to Burrough Valley from Millerton, California, a rough gold-mining town on the San Joaquin River and the first seat of Fresno County. They may have moved to Burrough Valley prospecting for gold since some gold was found in the area. A few flecks can still be found in local streams. A considerable mining camp of about 2,000, known as Sycamore Diggins, sprang up on Sycamore Creek in Watts Valley, a few miles south in the early 1860s.

In any case, the footloose Burrough and Rivercombe were gone by 1870. Not much is known about Burrough Valley during the 1870s, but its story is surely linked to the history of nearby Tollhouse, California, which sprang up in the late 1860s in connection with a toll road built up the steep slopes of Sarver Peak to Pine Ridge.

The 1870s began a transition from mining to timber cutting. It is a somewhat complicated story which owes a great deal to the financial vision of Leland Stanford and the Central Pacific, Southern Pacific, and Santa Fe Railroads. When Stanford located a station at Fresno in 1872 because of the great agricultural potential of the area, he changed the history of the Sierra Nevada and of Tollhouse and Burrough Valley.

Fresno began to grow very rapidly, and the wood to build it came from Pine Ridge. Until 1894, when the Fresno Flume was completed, all the lumber from the saw mills on Pine Ridge came through Tollhouse. Since Pine Ridge was snowed in during the winter, mill workers often acquired property in the foothills, and many lived in Burrough Valley when not working on Pine Ridge.

Many settlers also came to Burrough Valley because of the Seventh-day Adventist church. During the 1870s SDA visionary Ellen G. White advised adherents to leave cities and move to rural areas to prepare for the second-coming, or advent, of Jesus Christ. Many Adventists came to Burrough Valley. Indeed, White herself bought property in the valley in 1888 so that her consumptive daughter could live there. White lived in Burrough Valley for a short time and, after seeing it for the first time on July 3, 1888, said the following : "We found Burrough Valley to be a delightful place, with a good climate. The scenery is beautiful and the valley is encompassed with hills, as was Jerusalem with mountains." She references her period in Burrough Valley many times.

Since there was a great deal of tuberculosis (then called consumption) in the area around the turn of the twentieth century, it is fair to speculate that sufferers of this disease came to Burrough Valley for the dry climate, believed to be a curative for the terrible disease.

In the early period, when every hamlet boasted a general store and post office, Burrough Valley had two general store-post office combinations, with the post mark “Burrough, CA.” The first of these was owned by Chester C. Burnett. The Burnett store-post office was in business perhaps as early as the 1870s. The Burnetts went out of business in the 1890s, and Harry E. Spence and his wife Lutie set up a store-post office in 1899. The Spence store went out of business in the early teens, and the post office continued until 1917. With the coming of automobiles, postal carriers could travel longer distances and residents could travel farther to buy groceries and supplies.

During the 1890s, many began to leave Burrough Valley to participate in the agricultural boom in the San Joaquin Valley around Fresno; and the area began another transition to cattle ranching. Cattle ranching was the mainstay of the local economy until recently, when land-prices fueled by migration away from big cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco became too high for the ranchers, who began to sell off their holdings to developers.

At the time of this writing, ranchers are still holding on by leasing land from smallholders and the descendents of the early settlers who still possess some large holdings. Burrough Valley has now become a retirement community and a bedroom community for workers with jobs in Fresno or other cities in the San Joaquin Valley. The population is now about 1,000.