Bishop

By Pam Vaughan, Brendan Vaughan and Laws Railroad Museum

Located in the stark landscape of Eastern California s Owens Valley, Bishop is situated between two of the highest mountain ranges of the contiguous United States. Native Americans had been in the region since antiquity, and white settlers began to filter in after many battles with the Paiutes and Shoshones. Bishop was named after Sam Bishop, who drove cattle into the area and settled along Bishop Creek. Many more farmers and ranchers followed. To the south, Los Angeles was growing too, tapping the Owens River for a gravity-fed aqueduct for its residents; thus began the Los Angeles Owens Valley Water Conflict.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Feb 28, 2011
• ISBN: 9781439625415

Pam Vaughan

Author Pam Vaughan is a retired history teacher and photo curator of the Laws Railroad Museum, just outside Bishop. Coauthor Brendan Vaughan has recently worked in an educational setting with Native Americans in the San Francisco Bay Area. Using photographs mostly from the extensive archives of the Laws Museum, this volume of early images shows Bishop�s journey from cattle ranching to a modern city that stays true to its Western roots.

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INTRODUCTION

Bishop, California, legally became a city on May 6, 1903, and is still the only incorporated city in Inyo County. It has all the amenities of a miniature metropolis with three bakeries, a gourmet wine outlet, and three outstanding outdoor gear stores. There is even a mural society. Yet the coyotes still howl at night, and eagles and herons are common sights. Mountain lions and other large mammals are spotted at the edge of town. An audacious black bear recently ambled through Bishop; it was last seen heading south.

The history of Bishop sprang out of its distinct north-to-south geography. It is located between two mountain ranges—the White Mountains on the east and the Sierra Nevada to the west. Both spines have peaks that are over 14,000 feet, making Owens Valley the country’s deepest valley. Bishop is at about 4,000 feet. The valley marks the beginning of the vast Basin and Range province, which extends eastward. Since it was formed between two earthquake faults, Owens Valley is considered geologically a graben.

This land gave the Native American people all they needed. The earliest inhabitants came perhaps before the last glacial period. They spent winters in the valley where they dug irrigation canals to water the native plants. These plants provided food and medicine and could also attract game. The people headed into the Sierra Nevada or White Mountains during the summer and fall when they collected their most important food, piñon nuts. In the biography of Viola Martinez, her Aunt Mary Ann tells her, A long time ago all this land belonged to us, and we could leave our baskets and other things as long as we wanted and return to find them undisturbed.

The U.S. army moved into the valley in the 1860s and established Fort Independence about 40 miles south of Bishop. The aim was to make things safe for the settlers. These interlopers were involved in vicious valley clashes with local Paiutes and Shoshones at the time of the American Civil War. There were battles at Division Creek and Black Rock. The last major battle in the Owens Valley was the Battle of the Ditch of 1862, east of the present town of Bishop, but small skirmishes continued. Whenever the army came across Paiute food caches, the military would destroy the baskets of food. At Owens Lake, when over 30 Paiutes tried to swim away unarmed, they were killed. Over 200 Native Americans died during this time. Thus began what could be called the valley’s first colonial era.

One of the early settlers was Samuel Addison Bishop, who came to the creek with his family in 1861. He named his San Frances Ranch for his wife, Frances Ella Young. The Bishops were only on this ranch about 18 months.

The town of Bishop was called Bishop Creek during its early settlement years, and the creek fanned out creating fertile meadows. During the 1860s, more and more settlers began homesteading the valley. These farmers had a ready market—the miners of Aurora and Bodie, 90 miles to the north. One of these 19th-century settlers was Mary Austin; and although she was not a farmer, she had a close relationship with the land, writing Land of Little Rain. This phrase stuck and is still used today when people describe the Owens Valley in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada.

There have been many old western movies filmed around Bishop. They always depict villains and dynamic plots. However, it was not the outlaws who were the important figures in the West, it was the hardworking, law-abiding residents who built the region brick by brick and fence post by fence post. Old-timers still talk about how verdant the Owens Valley was when crops and livestock were being raised for the Los Angeles market. This happened after the narrow gauge railway, the Carson-Colorado, was built from Carson City to Keeler to help the local mines. The depot for Bishop was at Laws and still stands today along with the Agents House and other added buildings at the Laws Railroad Museum and Historic Site.

The valley’s growing agricultural community thrived until the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power decided the south sloping valley would be perfect for a gravity-driven aqueduct. Thus began another conflict and a second colonial phase. Some would say that the European Americans had it coming except the local Paiutes lost jobs during this time as well. By its own estimates in the 1930s, the City of Los Angeles owned 95 percent of the agricultural land in the valley. Many Farmers sold their land to Los Angeles and moved to Oregon, the Central Valley, or, ironically, Los Angeles. Since the merchants were losing farming customers, a local depression ensued and Los Angeles was forced into paying reparations to both white merchants and Native Americans who had lost jobs. Today some of the old farm sites can be located by finding the silos and groves of cottonwoods dotting the landscape. However, there are still several ranches in existence in both the Owens Valley and Round Valley. Most of them are leased from the City of Los Angeles. In 1920, there were 25,453 head of cattle on Inyo County ranches; and in the 2007 California State Agricultural Census, there were 14,253 head. Contrary to other claims, Los Angeles only owns 3.9 percent of Inyo County land, while the federal government owns 92 percent. The City of Los Angeles is trying to be a better partner with the valley. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power recently began to run water in the lower Owens River for the first time in decades.

Whereas the economy had been based on agriculture and mining in the 19th century, tourism was the future. Highway 395 was paved to Los Angeles in the late 1920s. Airports were built. Trails into the backcountry were dug and blasted from rock walls. Outdoor sports became the hallmark of the Eastside economy. In Bishop, Mule Days was added in