Madera, Selma, Kingsburg, and Fowler

When the Central Pacific railroad was built through in 1872, stations were created, on paper, every five miles or so. Of these, some developed into villages. Of these, six are today incorporated cities–two in Madera county and four in Fresno County.

In the northern part of Fresno county, in what was in 1893 to be cut off as Madera county, Borden, ten miles northerly from the San Joaquin river, throve for a few years but finally gave way to the city of Madera, two miles farther north, which in 1876 was established as the terminus of a lumber flume; and in due course became the county seat of the new county. The other chief population center of Madera county is Chowchilla, fifteen miles northerly from Madera, two miles from the northern line of Madera county.

The oldest municipality in the present Fresno county, outside of the county seat, is Selma, lying fifteen miles southerly from the City of Fresno. Selma had its beginnings in the opening of farm lands in the southern part of the county in the late Seventies and early Eighties, especially from the settlements in what was called the Mendocino district to the northeast. Selma was incorporated March 6, 1893. Given much publicity as the “Home of the Peach” it has been a center of homes dependant upon general farming, especially of fruit. The population in 1930 was 3047, making it the second city in size of the county.

History of Fresno County, 1933

Transcribed by Liz Brase, 2007