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r ESA Land I Ill Management J Ray Weiss January 2009 Page 5 Historic Setting Lieutenant Gabriel Moraga left the Mission San Jose September 21, 1806 and was the first European to enter the San Joaquin Valley to explore the Californian interior in search of suitable locations for missions. During his exploration Moraga named the San Joaquin River which was later used to designate the county. In 1827,Euro-American trappers,including Jedediah Strong Smith,began to enter to the region in order to hunt the fur bearing animals that inhabited the Central Valley.Settlement of the valley was aided by the issuing of land grants, with Spanish, and later Mexican, governors giving settlers large sections of land to use for farming and raising cattle. Prior to the Gold Rush, the San Joaquin Valley was devoted to grazing and hunting, as immense herds of cattle and some horses roamed the valley(Thompson and West County History). With the resulting influx of population resulting from the discovery of gold in 1848, the production of food was needed to support the mines, and the San Joaquin Valley developed to become an agricultural supplier. Some of the miners, disappointed in the search for gold,turned to farming in the fertile swamp lands in the San Joaquin Valley. The earliest history of Escalon dates to 1852, when John Wheeler Jones became the first recorded homesteader in the area. The community obtained its name from the Jones' son, James. The younger son was reading a book at the Stockton library when he came across the Spanish word"Escalon"meaning stair step.The appeal of the word caused Jones to use it in naming the substantial region of land he had since inherited from his father. In 1867,James Jones constructed a two-story brick house, the"Brick Mansion of the Prairie," which currently stands near the intersection of Park Avenue and Pioneer Street(City of Escalon,2005). Escalon was surveyed and laid out in 1895 by James Jones,due in part to the establishment of the San Francisco and San Joaquin Valley Railroad(which eventually became a part of the Santa Fe Railroad system).The Tidewater Southern Railway, located immediately west of the project area, opened in 1913. The line began as an electric interurban carrying passengers and freight between Stockton and Modesto, eventually extending to Manteca in the 1920s and non-electrically in 1935 from Modesto to Turlock.The Tidewater ceased carrying passengers in 1932,and halted electric freight hauling in 1948. Since then diesel powered freight trains have operated on the line(Corbett and Minor, 1996). The advent of irrigation in the 1910s and 1920s encouraged the flourishing of agricultural production in Escalon, including the production of fruits and vegetables as well as year round pastures for herds of cattle. Escalon served the surrounding farming community, providing schools and markets, throughout the early twentieth century (Corbett and Minor, 1996). Originally known as Farmington Road, McHenry Avenue has been in use since at least the I870s. Farmington was a major town in southeast San Joaquin County prior to the establishment of Escalon, and Farmington Road