Editing Fresno, California (section)

==History==
{{For timeline}}
The original inhabitants of the [[San Joaquin Valley]] region were the [[Yokuts people]] and [[Miwok people]], who engaged in trading with other Californian tribes of Native Americans including coastal peoples such as the [[Chumash people|Chumash]] of the Central California coast, with whom they are thought to have traded plant and animal products.
[[File:Fresno County Courthouse (1885).jpg|thumb|left|The old [[Fresno County Courthouse]], built in 1875 and demolished in 1966]]
The first European to enter the San Joaquin Valley was [[Pedro Fages]] in 1772.<ref>Capace, Nancy (1999). ''Encyclopedia of California''. North American Book Dist LLC. Page 410. {{ISBN|9780403093182}}.</ref> The county of Fresno was formed in 1856 after the [[California Gold Rush]] and was named for the abundant ash trees (Spanish: fresno) lining the [[San Joaquin River]].

The San Joaquin River flooded on December 24, 1867, inundating [[Millerton, Madera County, California|Millerton]]. Some residents rebuilt, others moved. Flooding also destroyed the town of Scottsburg on the nearby [[Kings River (California)|Kings River]] that winter. Rebuilt on higher ground, Scottsburg was renamed Centerville.<ref name="CGN14">{{California's Geographic Names|1014–1015}}</ref>

In 1867, Anthony Easterby purchased land bounded by the present Chestnut, Belmont, Clovis and California avenues, that today is called the [[Sunnyside, Fresno County, California|Sunnyside district]]. Unable to grow wheat for lack of water, he hired sheep man Moses Church in 1870 to create an irrigation system.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Fresno Irrigation District {{!}} Full History |url=https://www.fresnoirrigation.com/history-old |access-date=March 27, 2023 |website=Fresno Irrigation |language=en}}</ref> Building new canals and purchasing existing ditches, Church then formed the Fresno Canal and Irrigation Company, a predecessor of the Fresno Irrigation District.

In 1872, the [[Central Pacific Railroad]] established a station near Easterby's—by now a hugely productive wheat farm—for its new [[Southern Pacific Railroad|Southern Pacific]] line. Soon there was a store near the station and the store grew into the town of Fresno Station, later called Fresno. At that time, Mariposa street was the main artery, a rough dusty or muddy depression.<ref>{{cite book |last=Vandor |first=Paul E. |date=1919 |title=History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present. | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kBk1AQAAMAAJ |location=Los Angeles, CA |publisher=Historic Record Company |quote=Mariposa Street, the main artery, was a rough depression}}</ref> Many Millerton residents, drawn by the convenience of the railroad and worried about flooding, moved to the new community. Fresno became an incorporated city in 1885. In 1903, the faltering San Joaquin Power Company was renamed the San Joaquin Light and Power Corporation and included the Fresno City Water Company and the Fresno City Railway.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Huntington Boulevard Historic District (Fresno, California) |url=http://historicfresno.org/districts/huntington/index.htm |access-date=March 5, 2023 |website=A Guide to Historic Architecture in Fresno, California |publisher=historicfresno.org}}</ref> By 1931 the railway, now known as the [[Fresno Traction Company]], operated 47 [[streetcar]]s over {{convert|49| miles}} of track.<ref name="hwd">{{cite book | author=Demoro, Harre W.| title=California's Electric Railways| publisher=[[Interurban Press]]|location=Glendale, California| year=1986| page=201| isbn=978-0-916374-74-7}}</ref>
[[File:Old Fresno High School (cropped).jpg|thumb|left|[[Fresno High School]] in 1896]]

Two years after the station was established, county residents voted to move the county seat from Millerton to Fresno. When the [[Friant Dam]] was completed in 1944, the site of Millerton became inundated by the waters of [[Millerton Lake]]. In extreme droughts, when the reservoir shrinks, ruins of the original county seat can still be observed.

In the nineteenth century, with so much wooden construction and in the absence of sophisticated firefighting resources, fires often ravaged American frontier towns. The greatest of Fresno's early-day fires, in 1882, destroyed an entire block of the city. Another devastating blaze struck in 1883.

In 1919, Fresno's first and oldest [[synagogue]], [[Temple Beth Israel (Fresno, California)|Temple Beth Israel]], was founded.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20091224212751/http://www.tbifresno.org/aboutus/history/ History], Synagogue Website. Archived from the [http://www.tbifresno.org/aboutus/history/ Original] on December 24, 2009.</ref>

As a result of its remoteness from the great universities of the [[San Francisco Bay Area]] and [[Greater Los Angeles]], Fresno became a statewide leader in educational innovation.  In 1910, [[Fresno High School]] was the first California high school to take advantage of the Upward Extension Act of 1907 to offer lower-division college-level coursework to local high school graduates who wanted to attend college but were reluctant to move hundreds of miles away to do so.<ref name="Boggs_Page_5">{{cite book |last1=Boggs |first1=George R. |editor1-last=Boggs |editor1-first=George R. |editor2-last=Galizio |editor2-first=Lawrence A. |title=A College for All Californians: A History of the California Community Colleges |date=2021 |publisher=Teachers College Press |location=New York |isbn=9780807779873 |pages=1–15 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4j5IEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA5 |chapter=Chapter 1: Beginnings}} (At p. 5.)</ref> The high school's Collegiate Department evolved into [[Fresno City College]], the oldest community college in California and the second oldest in the United States.<ref name="Boggs_Page_5" />  In the 1920s and 1930s, Fresno State Teachers College was at the forefront of the evolution of the state teachers colleges into state colleges offering a broad [[liberal arts education]].<ref name="Gerth7">{{cite book|last1=Gerth|first1=Donald R.|title=The People's University: A History of the California State University|date=2010|publisher=Berkeley Public Policy Press|location=Berkeley|isbn=978-0-87772-435-3|pages=23–24, 33–35|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=v4J-QwAACAAJ&q=liberal%20arts%20mclane}}</ref>  The state colleges later became the [[California State University]] and Fresno State became [[California State University, Fresno]].

Fresno entered the ranks of the 100 most populous cities in the United States in 1960 with a population of 134,000. Thirty years later, in the 1990 census, it moved up to 47th place with 354,000, and in the census of 2000, it achieved 37th place with 428,000.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/tab19.txt |title=U.S. Census Bureau, Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places in the United States: 1790 TO 1990 |access-date=July 2, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170725010358/https://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/tab19.txt |archive-date=July 25, 2017 |url-status=live}}</ref>
[[File:Fresno County, Cal (1904) (14597374327) (cropped).jpg|thumb|left|Downtown Fresno in 1904]]
The [[Fresno Sanitary Landfill|Fresno Municipal Sanitary Landfill]] was the first modern [[landfill]] in the United States, and incorporated several important innovations to waste disposal, including trenching, compacting, and the daily covering of trash with dirt. It was opened in 1937 and closed in 1987. It is a [[National Historic Landmark]] as well as a [[Superfund]] site.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://historicfresno.org/nrhp/landfill.htm | title=Fresno Sanitary Landfill (1937) | publisher=HistoricFresno.org | author1=Kevin Enns-Rempel | author2=John Edward Powell | access-date=April 23, 2007 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050321214528/http://historicfresno.org/nrhp/landfill.htm | archive-date=March 21, 2005 | url-status=live}}</ref>

Before World War II, Fresno had many ethnic neighborhoods, including Little Armenia, German Town, Little Italy, and [[History of Chinese Americans in Fresno#Fresno Chinatown|Chinatown]]. In 1940, the [[United States Census Bureau|Census Bureau]] reported Fresno's population as 94.0% white, 3.3% black and 2.7% Asian.<ref name="census"/> Chinatown was primarily a Japanese neighborhood and today few Japanese-American businesses remain.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.wpr.org/derailed/high-speed-rail-debate-persists-california|title=The High-Speed Rail Debate Persists In California|last1=Bowden|first1=Bridgit|last2=Johnson|first2=Shawn|date=September 18, 2019|work=Wisconsin Public Radio|language=en|url-status=live|access-date=November 14, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191105083718/https://www.wpr.org/derailed/high-speed-rail-debate-persists-california|archive-date=November 5, 2019}}</ref> During 1942, [[Pinedale, California|Pinedale]], in what is now North Fresno, was the site of the [[Pinedale, California|Pinedale Assembly Center]], an interim facility for the relocation of Fresno area [[Japanese Americans]] to [[Japanese American internment|internment camps]].<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/anthropology74/ce16e.htm | title=Pinedale Assembly Center, California | publisher=U.S. National Park Service | access-date=April 23, 2007 | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070407163302/http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/anthropology74/ce16e.htm | archive-date=April 7, 2007}}</ref> The [[Fresno Fairgrounds]] were also utilized as an assembly center.
[[File:The Grand 1401, Fresno, CA (cropped).JPG|thumb|right|The [[San Joaquin Light and Power Corporation Building]], built in 1923]]
Row crops and orchards gave way to urban development particularly in the period after World War II; this transition was particularly vividly demonstrated in locations such as the [[Blackstone Avenue]] corridor.

Fresno's geographical remoteness also made it an early pioneer in the field now known as [[fintech]], long before the term was invented.  In September 1958, [[Bank of America]] launched a new product called [[Visa Inc.#History|BankAmericard]] in Fresno. The city was specifically selected in part for its remoteness, to limit damage to the bank's image in case the project failed.<ref name="Nocera_Page_25">{{cite book |last1=Nocera |first1=Joseph |title=A Piece of the Action: How the Middle Class Joined the Money Class |date=1994 |publisher=Simon & Schuster |location=New York |isbn=9781476744896 |page=25 |edition=2013 paperback |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mZ5FAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA25 |access-date=March 20, 2023 |archive-date=March 28, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230328155223/https://books.google.com/books?id=mZ5FAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA25 |url-status=live }}</ref>  After a troubled gestation during which its creator resigned, BankAmericard went on to become the world's first successful [[credit card]]. This financial instrument was usable across a large number of merchants and also allowed cardholders to revolve a balance (earlier financial products could do one or the other but not both). In 1970, BankAmericard was spun off into a separate company, and in 1976, that company became [[Visa Inc.]]
[[File:Downtown Fresno in 1964 (cropped).jpg|thumb|left|Bank of America building in Downtown Fresno, 1964]]
In the 1960s, Fresno suffered numerous demolitions of historic buildings, including the old [[Fresno County Courthouse]] and the original buildings of [[Edison High School (Fresno, California)|Edison High School]]. This was the result of car-centric urban planning focused on making more room for cars and parking lots, a commonplace approach in the United States at that time.

The dance style commonly known as [[popping (dance)|popping]] evolved in Fresno in the 1970s.<ref name="holman">{{cite book | last=Holman | first=Michael | title=Breaking and the New York City Breakers | chapter=History | chapter-url=http://www.msu.edu/~okumurak/styles/pop.html | date=October 1984 | publisher=Freundlich Books | isbn=978-0-88191-016-2 | access-date=May 15, 2007 | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071019042047/http://www.msu.edu/~okumurak/styles/pop.html | archive-date=October 19, 2007 | url=http://www.msu.edu/~okumurak/styles/pop.html}}</ref>

In 1995, the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]]'s [[Operation Rezone]] sting resulted in several prominent Fresno and [[Clovis, California|Clovis]] politicians being charged in connection with taking bribes in return for [[zoning|rezoning]] farmland for housing developments. Before the sting brought a halt to it, housing developers could buy farmland cheaply, pay off council members to have it rezoned, and make a large profit building and selling inexpensive housing. Sixteen people were eventually convicted as a result of the sting.<ref>{{cite news | url=http://www.fresnobee.com/columnists/boren/story/5599730p-6576567c.html | title=Lessons learned from Rezone can't be forgotten | newspaper=The Fresno Bee | author=Jim Boren | date=December 12, 2002 | access-date=April 23, 2007|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20021228095048/http://fresnobee.com/columnists/boren/story/5599730p-6576567c.html |archive-date = December 28, 2002|url-status=dead}}</ref>

In the early 2000s, Fresno's two major venues were built, [[Chukchansi Park]] (2002) and [[Save Mart Center]] (2003). The [[2017 Fresno shootings]] resulted in the death of 4 people.