Farmers’ anger flared into violence in 1880 at Mussel Slough, a flatland crop-growing area along a fork of the Kings River about five miles northwest of Hanford in Tulare County. A gunfight occurred there that would influence public opinion throughout the state and long be remembered as a tragedy. At issue were allegedly broken promises by the Southern Pacific Railroad, the price of more than 60,000 acres of fertile land, and the monopolistic power of the railroad. While the occupants of Southern Pacific-claimed land emerged as heroes and the railroad as villain in this conflict, according to contemporary and later accounts, the complexity of the event calls into question such one-sided verdicts.
The dramatic battle between local land claimants and the railroad was more than a decade in the making. Beginning in the late 1860s an array of forces leading to a conflict was set in motion. From 1867 to 1870 the Southern Pacific squabbled with a group of land speculators over the legitimacy of the railroad’s claim to a federal land grant to build through Mussel Slough. These land speculators included a small group of homesteaders and squatters, both of whom were farmers who lived there. Homesteaders gained title to their land in accordance with the 1862 Homestead Act, which enabled settlers to own 160-acre tracts of the public domain if they made some improvements and paid nominal closing fees. Squatters, on the other hand, were occupiers who lacked land deeds to the vacant properties they cultivated and on which they resided. In 1870 both Congress and the California legislature confirmed the legality of the Southern Pacific’s Mussel Slough land claim. Nevertheless, squatters remained ignorant of this confirmation, disbelieved it, or regarded it with indifference. For whatever reason or combination of reasons, they moved into the area in growing numbers, and dug an extensive network of irrigation ditches to get needed water to their crops. Many of these people believed John J. Doyle, an admitted squatter arriving in 1871, who assured neighbors that the federal government would void the railroad’s land grant in the area because the carrier had not quite completed the contractually required rail link to Mussel Slough. Based on this flimsy advice, squatters staked out 500-600 claims on land the railroad insisted was part of its grant from the federal government.
As a result of the Southern Pacific completing its line through Mussel Slough in 1876, the federal government issued patents, or land deeds, to the carrier. Afterward, local resistance to the railroad mounted as it sought to assert its land claim by selling parcels. In the early months of 1878 500 local squatter claimants organized the Settlers’ Grand League to resist Southern Pacific’s takeover of Mussel Slough. Under the leadership of Thomas Jefferson McQuiddy, a former Confederate cavalry officer, the resisters formed a secret paramilitary society, donning red robes, masks, and hoods. Paying late-night calls Ku Klux Klan-style, they terrorized settlers willing to buy land parcels from the Southern Pacific. In November, these nightriders evicted a tenant family living on the property of Perry Phillips, who had purchased his land from the railroad. Next, League members torched the family’s house. The following year, at the League’s invitation, San Francisco anti-monopoly and Workingmen’s Party of California leader Denis Kearney delivered an incendiary speech to Mussel Slough settlers. “Murder the red-eyed monsters” (presumably referring to all parties aligned with the railroad), he shouted to the throng.
Opposition to the railroad’s land sales was based mainly on the asking price. The League insisted on a price of no more than $2.50 an acre, the customary government price for public land. Citing recent Southern Pacific pamphlets, League squatters called attention to the railroad’s offer to sell the land at “various figures from $2.50 upward per acre.” In the late 1870s the railroad countered that that price reflected the 1867 market value, not the increased worth of the land at the completion of the roadbed. As a result, most of the parcels were priced at $10 to $20 per acre, while a small number near the railway towns sold for $25 or more per acre.
So went the bickering and League intimidation of the few land purchasers who tried to cultivate their farms. Realizing that prospective buyers were frightened off by this, the railroad began filing lawsuits to evict the masses of squatters occupying company land. A court decision in 1879, Southern Pacific Railroad Company v. Pierpont Orton, upheld the legality of the railroad’s title to the land. Still, militant Leaguers warned against any attempt at their eviction. Amid growing tensions, in March 1880 Leland Stanford went to Hanford, a small town in the disputed area, and negotiated with Doyle and other squatter leaders. According to them, Stanford promised that the railroad would substantially compensate local farmers for their irrigation ditches, which would lower by $5 the price per acre. Briefly, it seemed the price issue had been resolved. Big Four magnate Charles Crocker, however, refused to go along with Stanford’s purported promise, thereby ending any chance of compromise.
The Settler’s Grand League then arranged for a Hanford rally to be held on May 11. By then some land buyers had threatened to sue the Southern Pacific if it did not remove trespassers from their parcels. Three such buyers - Mills Hartt, Walter Crow, and Perry Phillips - met with U. S. Marshal Alonzo Poole at a Mussel Slough field site. Before Poole could read an eviction notice, he was interrupted by angry squatter settlers, who would not let him carry out his court-authorized removal orders. Shouting erupted between the three buyers and angry squatters. When an excited horse lunged, knocking Poole to the ground, Hartt and Crow, sitting in nearby wagons, assumed Poole had been attacked and grabbed their guns. Shots were exchanged, after which Hartt toppled over dead. Another hail of bullets fired by several dozen men killed five more people. Crow escaped only to be hunted down, shot, and killed later that same day at a nearby irrigation ditch.
Assessing responsibility for the tragic incident is complex. That a conflict would arise seems certain due to the initial confusion about ownership of the disputed land, the large number of claimants, and the unpopularity of the Southern Pacific. Neither the railroad nor the Leaguers were blameless. True, the Leaguers were given to violence, as was shown by their terrorizing of settlers willing to pay the railroad for land. Yet the militants showed a willingness to accept what they understood as Stanford’s agreement to reduce significantly the price of land parcels. In annulling Stanford’s supposed offer, Crocker - and by implication the railroad - likely rejected a last, clear chance to reach a peaceful resolution of the conflict.
Despite the complexity of the dispute, the Southern Pacific emerged in the public eye as the sole villain. To author Frank Norris the railroad had grown figuratively into a giant octopus (the title of his 1901 novel), with tentacles reaching into capitals, courts, and boardrooms in California and beyond. The battle of Mussel Slough against this monster may have been lost by California’s yeomanry, according to press accounts, but the political war against the railroad had just begun.
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