Founding
county seat of Fresno County, California, United States
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
Fresno (; Spanish for 'ash tree') is a city in the San Joaquin Valley of California, United States. It is the county seat of Fresno County and the largest city in the greater Central Valley region, as well as the most populated city in Central California. It covers about 114.7 square miles (297 km2) and had a population of 542,107 as of the 2020 census, making it the fifth-most populous city in California, the most populous inland city in California, and the 33rd-most populous city in the nation.
Named for the abundant ash trees lining the San Joaquin River, Fresno was founded in 1872 as a railway station of the Central Pacific Railroad before it was incorporated in 1885. It has since become an economic hub of Fresno County and the San Joaquin Valley, with much of the surrounding areas in the Metropolitan Fresno region predominantly tied to large-scale agricultural production. Fresno is near the geographic center of California, approximately 220 miles (350 km) north of Los Angeles, 170 miles (270 km) south of the state capital, Sacramento, and 185 miles (300 km) southeast of San Francisco. Yosemite National Park is about 60 miles (100 km) to the north, Kings Canyon National Park 60 miles (100 km) to the east, and Sequoia National Park 75 miles (120 km) to the southeast.
Fresno is also the third-largest majority-Hispanic city in the United States with 50.9% of its population being Hispanic in 2024.
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 of the Central California coast, with whom they are thought to have traded plant and animal products.
The first European to enter the San Joaquin Valley was Pedro Fages in 1772. 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. Some residents rebuilt, others moved. Flooding also destroyed the town of Scottsburg on the nearby Kings River that winter. Rebuilt on higher ground, Scottsburg was renamed Centerville.
In 1867, Anthony Easterby purchased land bounded by the present Chestnut, Belmont, Clovis and California avenues, that today is called the Sunnyside district. Unable to grow wheat for lack of water, he hired sheep man Moses Church in 1870 to create an irrigation system. 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 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. 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. By 1931 the railway, now known as the Fresno Traction Company, operated 47 streetcars over 49 miles (79 km) of track.
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 1915, Kogetsu-Do first opened; as of 2025 it is the second oldest Japanese confectionary store in California. In 1919, Fresno's first and oldest synagogue, Temple Beth Israel, was founded.
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. 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. 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. 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.
The 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.
Before World War II, Fresno had many ethnic neighborhoods, including Little Armenia, German Town, Little Italy, and Chinatown. In 1940, the Census Bureau reported Fresno's population as 94.0% white, 3.3% black and 2.7% Asian. Chinatown was primarily a Japanese neighborhood and today few Japanese-American businesses remain. During 1942, Pinedale, in what is now North Fresno, was the site of the Pinedale Assembly Center, an interim facility for the relocation of Fresno area Japanese Americans to internment camps. The Fresno Fairgrounds were also utilized as an assembly center.
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 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. 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.
In the 1960s, Fresno suffered numerous demolitions of historic buildings, including the old Fresno County Courthouse and the original buildings of 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 evolved in Fresno in the 1970s.
In 1995, the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Operation Rezone sting resulted in several prominent Fresno and Clovis politicians being charged in connection with taking bribes in return for 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.
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 four people.
Fresno has a total area of 116 square miles (300 km2) with 98.96% land covering 114.79 square miles (297.3 km2), and 1.04% water, 1.21 square miles (3.1 km2).
Fresno's location, very near the geographical center of California, places the city a comfortable distance from many of the major recreation areas and urban centers in the state. Just 60 mi (97 km) south of Yosemite National Park, it is the nearest major city to the park. Likewise, Sierra National Forest is 40 mi (64 km), Kings Canyon National Park is 60 mi (97 km) and Sequoia National Park is 75 mi (121 km). The city is located near several Sierra Nevada lakes including Bass Lake, Shaver Lake, and Huntington Lake. Fresno is also only two and a half hours from Monterey, Carmel, Big Sur and the central coast.
Because Fresno sits at the junction of Highways 41 and 99 (SR 41 is Yosemite National Park's southern access road, and SR 99 bypasses Interstate 5 to serve the urban centers of the San Joaquin Valley), the city is a major gateway for Yosemite visitors coming from Los Angeles. The city also serves as an entrance into Sierra National Forest via Highway 168, and Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks via Highway 180.
Fresno has three large public parks, two in the city limits and one in county land to the southwest. Woodward Park, which features the Shinzen Japanese Gardens, boasts numerous picnic areas and several miles of trails. It is in North Fresno and is adjacent to the San Joaquin River Parkway. Roeding Park, near Downtown Fresno, is home to the Fresno Chaffee Zoo, and Rotary Storyland and Playland. Kearney Park is the largest of the Fresno region's park system and is home to historic Kearney Mansion and plays host to the annual Civil War Revisited, the largest reenactment of the Civil War in the west coast of the U.S.
In its 2023 ParkScore ranking, The Trust for Public Land, a national land conservation organization, reported that Fresno had one of the worst park systems among the 100 most populous U.S. cities, with only 5% of city land being used for parks and recreation. The survey measures median park size, park acres as percent of city area, residents' access to parks, spending on parks per resident, and playgrounds per 10,000 residents.
The Central Pacific Railroad built a small wooden depot in 1872. In 1889, the Southern Pacific Railroad, which had acquired Central Pacific, constructed a new depot on the original depot site. The brick Queen Anne style depot was a jewel for the city and is one of Fresno's oldest standing buildings. In 1971, 99 years after it first opened for business on its current site, the Depot closed its rail operations due to the decline in business.
Between the 1880s and World War II, Downtown Fresno flourished, filled with electric streetcars, and contained a number of "lavish" and "opulent" buildings. Among them, the original Fresno County Courthouse (demolished), the Fresno Carnegie Public Library (demolished), the Old Fresno Water Tower, the Bank of Italy Building, the Pacific Southwest Building, the San Joaquin Light and Power Building (currently known as the Grand 1401), and the Hughes Hotel (burned down), to name a few.
Fulton Street in Downtown Fresno was Fresno's main financial and commercial district before being converted into one of the nation's first pedestrian malls in 1964. Renamed the Fulton Mall, the area contains the densest collection of historic buildings in Fresno. While the Fulton Mall corridor has suffered a sharp decline from its heyday, the Mall includes some of the finest public art pieces in the country, including a casting of Pierre-Auguste Renoir's bronze "The Washer Woman", reportedly the only one of the six castings that one can walk up to and touch. In October 2017, the City of Fresno finished and opened Fulton Mall to traffic, becoming Fulton Street. This change was celebrated with a large public parade featuring current mayor Lee Brand and former mayor Ashley Swearengin. The public art pieces will be restored and placed near their current locations and will feature wide sidewalks (up to 28' on the east side of the street) to continue with the pedestrian-friendly environment of the district.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Fresno, California”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.