When the first settlers arrived in what is now Visalia in the fall of 1852, they found a lush river delta in the midst of an oak forest at the base of the Sierra Nevada. The soil was fertile, just right for farming, enabling Visalia to take root as the oldest town in the southern San Joaquin Valley. For the next 163 years, the town provided important products and services, like David Walker's Saddle Shop that became home to the famous Visalia Stock Saddle and Ben Maddox's Mount Whitney Power Company that harnessed water from the Kaweah River for electricity. Now with a population of almost 130,000, the county seat of Tulare County continues to be surrounded by some of the most productive farmland in the world and is a vibrant business center.
In the 1800s, Tulare County, California, was a hotbed of desperate characters whose deadly gunplay and murderous inclinations left a trail of bodies across the region. Although the Central Valley now makes its name in agriculture, Tulare County was once a bastion of the Wild West with a lineup of hardened criminals that has scarcely been equaled in the annals of crime. Train bandits, coldblooded murderers and callous outlaws armed with shotguns and butcher knives plagued Visalia, Porterville and other sleepy central California towns. Join historian and retired Visalia Police captain Terry Ommen as he relates the transgressions of Tulare County's roughest characters, including thrilling tales of the pistol-packing Mason-Henry Gang, a deadly duel between politically divided journalists and vigilante justice exacted by angry mobs.
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