The
College Campus: Site of the Historic T. L. Reed Ranch
Reedley College was established in 1926 by the Reedley Joint Union
High School District. 
For
its first thirty years, the college shared facilities with
the high school.
In
1954, voters of the high school district overwhelmingly passed
a bond issue to purchase the site of the historic T. L. Reed Ranch
for a permanent campus.
Two years later, in 1956, the new campus opened.
(Photograph: T. L. Reed home and ranch, on what is now the
site of Reedley College, circa 1891. Photograph by C. C.
Curtis)
The
Establishment of the T. L. Reed Ranch
Thomas
Law Reed came to California in the summer of 1876. His apparent motivation in coming west was to investigate the
prospects for farming. Interestingly,
Reed's father, George, had also come west twenty-seven years earlier
in a search for gold. For
reasons still unknown today, George Reed never returned home. We may never know whether the elder Reed ever found his gold.
But Thomas found his. T. L. Reed was born in
Ohio in 1847. With
his father missing, times were difficult for Reed's mother and
his five siblings. Necessity
dictated that the Reed children learn about hard work at an early
age.
During
the Civil War, Reed's two older brothers joined the Union Army.
As the oldest son remaining at home, the fourteen-year-old
Reed bore many family responsibilities.
But T. L. yearned to join the army like his brothers.
Brother John tried to persuade T. L. not to enlist by telling
him that his mother needed him at home and that the horrors of
war were something he prayed his younger brother would never have
to experience. Reed was unconvinced.
In 1864, at age seventeen, he volunteered to be drafted
as a substitute for another man.
Reed hoped that the extra money that he got for being a
substitute would help make life a bit easier for his mother.
T.
L. sustained a shoulder wound nine months later.
Before his wound could completely heal, the war ended and
he was discharged from the army.
The veteran of Sherman's march to the sea and other battles
was able to return home.
His brother, Daniel, wasn't so lucky.
He died of wounds at Bentonville.
Reed
married Amantha Ann Smith in 1868.
They made their first home in Chester Cross Roads, Ohio,
and engaged in farming.
Later, the Reeds lived in Michigan while T. L. was in the
cheese making business.
The
trip to California in 1876 had revealed opportunities for farming
in the Woodland area of Yolo County.
It was here that Reed's family joined him in late 1876. By then the family included three children, Horace, Nina, and
Edmund. The Reeds'
first-born son, Daniel, had died at age three.
While
in Yolo County, the Reeds rented land and grew wheat and barley.
Among those from whom he rented land were officers of the
76 Land and Water Company, the entity that was selling land and
building an irrigation system for some 30,000 acres in southern
Fresno County and northern Tulare County, east of the Kings River. Reed's landlords encouraged him to consider moving to the "76
Country" to farm. In
1883, Reed traveled south to get a first-hand look at what this
new area had to offer. What
he saw made him enthusiastic.
In
March of 1884, Reed made his move to what was then known as Smith's
Ferry, Fresno County, to begin farming.
Popular accounts say that he came with "eleven head
of horses and mules, and $1,000 of borrowed money."
With these few resources, Reed immediately went to work
plowing and planting wheat seed on 200 acres of land.
He returned to Yolo County in the summer to harvest his
last crop there. Then,
in the fall of 1884, the Reeds moved permanently to Fresno County.
The
Reed family--now one member larger with the birth of daughter
Jessie (another daughter, Sarah, had died soon after birth)--established
their residence in the old Smith's Ferry Hotel building, near
the present Olson Avenue bridge over the Kings River. The
ferry and hotel had ceased operating in about 1874. The
deserted property was acquired by the 76 Company in 1882. 
T.
L. Reed began a steady expansion of his farming operation.
In 1886, he purchased over 1,200 acres, including the parcel that
is now the college campus. The Reeds built a home on this property in the same year, and
thus established what was to be their "Home Ranch."
Two more children were born to the Reeds, Imogene and Dollie.
In
1888, the Southern Pacific Railroad was building a branch line
through the area heading south to Porterville.
Reed deeded a half-interest in a 360-acre town site to
the Pacific Improvement Company, a Southern Pacific subsidiary,
and in return they established a depot. ( Photograph:
T.
L. Reed family, circa 1892.)
This new town needed a name, and the railroad determined that
it should be "Reedley."
Soon, buildings and streets grew amid the wheat fields
that paralleled the railroad tracks.
Reed
built and owned the town's first hotel, livery stable and blacksmith
shop. He established
the first warehouse using a 500-foot long building hauled in from
Traver. He donated
land and helped establish the area's first school.
He helped build the first church, and helped furnish a
second. Reed was
a founding director of the Alta Irrigation District (which assumed
control of the canal system of the 76 Company), and was among
the first to lobby for the building of a dam on the Kings River.
Reed
farmed 15,000 acres in the 76 Country and another 14,000 acres
in the Chowchilla area at the peak of his farming activities.
Pioneer historian, John McCubbin, who knew and worked with
Reed, wrote that Reed "was known as one of the wheat barons
of California."
Unfortunately,
financial security was never a sure thing for pioneers.
The Reeds suffered great losses when the wheat market began
to collapse in the early 1890s. An interest in the new-found oil fields of the Bakersfield
area helped the Reeds recoup some of those losses, as did diversification
into the farming of grapes and tree fruit.
The
prosperity that the Reeds enjoyed did not seem to alter their
life style or character.
Hard work was the rule and neighborliness the practice.
McCubbin wrote that when fellow settlers "needed seed,
feed, or provisions, they would go to T. L. Reed, who never refused
them. He never made
a book account of such loans, but trusted to their honesty and
never dunned them. He
would never take a cent of interest.
There was nothing in the way of arrogance or egotism in
the nature of Reed. He
would stop to chat . . . with the most humble man in a group."
Amantha Reed was known as always ready to spend days or
nights with neighbors in childbirth or suffering illnesses.
T.
L. Reed died in 1911 at the age of sixty-four.
Amantha died five years later.
Both are buried in the Reedley District Cemetery.
Site
is Commemorated
Photograph: Reedley College
campus under construction, 1956.
Photograph by John Nurmi
