Lemoore

By Cynthia J. Wright and Judy Cox-Finney

The Tachi-Yokut Indians made a subsistence living around the great inland sea known as Tulare Lake, near present-day Lemoore, long before Dr. Laverne Lee Moore came to town in 1871. Still before Moore came other Anglo settlers. The Rhoads family settled and built an adobe house, which remains today, where Daniel and Sarah Rhoads raised a family, ranched, and did business in 1856. Rhoads was part of the group that rescued the ill-fated Donner party. The U.S. Post Office saw fit to name the town after its founder. During World War II, Lemoore was the site of a U.S. Army Air Force training camp. Since 1963, it has been home to one of the largest inland U.S. air bases: Naval Air Station Lemoore.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Sep 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781439625316

Cynthia J. Wright

Authors Cynthia J. Wright and Judy Cox-Finney, long associated with the Lemoore Advance newspaper, have teamed with the Sarah A. Mooney Museum and Lemoore�s pioneering families to acquire cherished photographs and memories. They bring to life a foggy, agriculturally rich piece of the South San Joaquin Valley in this photographic history of a small American city.

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contributed.

INTRODUCTION

It was land that could be both hospitable and tough. Though it was desert most of the year, there were rivers and sloughs crisscrossing the land. Artesian wells also bubbled up at various points in the area. A large, shallow lake—the largest lake west of the Mississippi, if measured by surface area—provided food and shelter. The lake would be named Tulare Lake by early Spanish visitors, after the tule reeds (bulrushes) that flourished in its warm, shallow waters. It was located at the base of California’s Coastal Mountains and in the southwestern part of what would become Kings County. In 1862, it was described as extending for 60 miles north and south and 36 miles at its widest point.

Several Native American groups lived along Tulare Lake. Before the current Native Americans lived along the shores, Paleo-Indians lived on the bounty of the lake and the surrounding land up until 8,000 years ago, disappearing for some reason 1,000 to 2,000 years before the next group of people came to live there.

Long before Spanish clerics and soldiers crossed the rolling foothills from their missions near the Pacific Ocean, groups of Native Americans, Yokuts, were making their living following herds of tule elk and some deer. They subsisted on many small animals and harvested acorns, berries, and other vegetation. The group in Kings County near what is now Lemoore was the Tachi-Yokuts.

Archeologists working for the University of California have found evidence of this group dating back at least 1,000 to 2,000 years. Never large in numbers, the Tachi-Yokuts lived along the western edge of the valley and even called parts of the Kettlemen Hills home when the heat of the valley forced them to seek cooler climes during the summer months. Although they had no written language, they left amazing baskets, stone artifacts, and rock art in the Kettlemen Hills to remind later generations of their life as

Reviews for Lemoore

[Tom · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I spent a total of four days onboard the naval air station in the Summer of 1977. This book provides a quick and rich historical summary of the area and its people.