Title

A Historical Walking Tour Through Fair Oaks, California
 

Author

Stacey McClure
American River College, Geography 350: Data Acquisition in GIS; Fall 2007
Contact Information: mcclursr@imail.losrios.edu
 

Abstract

Through my husband’s teaching career, I have noticed that Fair Oaks, California is a unique California community. This led to my interest in the history of Fair Oaks, from which I discovered a self guided walking tour created by the Fair Oaks Historical Society. The Fair Oaks I see today really began in 1895 as an agricultural venture in citrus, olives and nuts. A small town village grew out of this venture. This was not accomplished as easily as anticipated despite the ideal geography of the community. However, its footprint remains today. Using a GPS, this tour is a great exercise in collecting GIS data. Waypoints were downloaded to ArcMap and Google Earth using DNR Garmin. Despite some inaccuracies in a few of the waypoints collected, I am pleased with the results of this project. It has resulted in my considering further participation in the Fair Oaks Historical Society.
 

Introduction

My husband is a 3rd year school teacher who currently teaches 2nd grade at an elementary school in Fair Oaks, California. This year is his second year at the Fair Oaks school, Earl Legette Elementary. His school has demonstrated to us that families in Fair Oaks have an amazing sense of community, which we thought was hard to find in the greater Sacramento area these days. The positive experience we've had interacting with community members influenced our decision to move back to Fair Oaks from Antelope, California this last June. We previously lived in Fair Oaks from 2002 to 2005. We were familiar with the Fair Oaks area, but were not directly immersed in the community. Fair Oaks is a unique area of greater Sacramento, on many levels from its diversity to its main street center, and I am interested in learning about the history here to see if it plays a role in the current success of the community today.

In considering topics for my student GIS project, I browsed the web for information about areas close to Sacramento that fall within topics I'm interested in. I am pleased to have found a web site for the Fair Oaks Historical Society, which illustrates how special Fair Oaks residents find their community, and how special Fair Oaks is. The Fair Oaks Historical Society has compiled a great deal of data on their web site, such as the locations of historical sites, businesses, and homes and has even created a self guided walking tour. For my project, I studied the history of Fair Oaks and followed the walking tour to document its sites using a GPS and a digital camera. Having very little experience with GIS and collecting data for it, I explored the methods discussed in class to illustrate historical locations in Fair Oaks using GIS.
 

Background

Fair Oaks was a part of the Mexican Land Grant in 1844 called Rancho San Juan, and Native Americans, the Maidus, lived here for as far back as 10,000 years (Abbott, 2005). However, the sources I referred to for background information on the history of Fair Oaks, focused on Fair Oaks as we know it today. This is the community I can still see remnants of that I am most interested in.

In the mid to late 1890’s, lots in Fair Oaks were advertised on the East Coast as a Sunset Colony, or an agricultural venture where the purchaser could come to a beautiful place with a moderate climate, produce citrus for profit easily, and retire. Excursions were made by rail to Folsom beginning in 1895. The first colonists must have been very impressed when they came through Orangevale, which was successfully producing citrus, to the American River bluffs overlooking the largest vineyard in the U.S., the Natomas Company (Abbott, 2005). It was November and compared to the East Coast, it was quite mild. Mostly hilly and consisting of Oak Forest, it was beautiful but not as easy as advertised.

The colonists started from scratch, homes had to be built, equipment purchased and brought in, the citrus, olive, and nut trees had to be brought in, the forest cleared, and even water had to be shipped to the homes, farms, and orchards. The original company selling the lots, the Howard-Wilson Publishing Company pulled out in 1898 when land sales were poor. The Fair Oaks Development Company, out of Orangevale, gave it a go about a year later. They were successful in getting Sacramento County to build a bridge across the American River and a rail line to the bridge. They also built a water system. Despite their efforts, sales were down and they also moved on in 1902 (Abbott, 2005).

Some of the residents of Fair Oaks were entrepreneurial and hard working. They were able to continue on. A small town was built with a school, a church, a citrus coop, merchants, a bank, etc…The village in Fair Oaks is centrally oriented with a park. A rock crushing plant came from the dredging of the American River for gold. Despite the effect of the Great Depression and a major citrus freeze in 1932, the residents recovered and over the years saw an improvement in transportation and began to commute outside of the community to make a living, such as at the Mather and McClellan Air Force Bases and the aerospace industry (Abbott, 2005).

I watched a Fair Oaks Historical Society video titled, “Fair Oaks, the Way it was.” In the video, elderly residents who grew up in Fair Oaks talked about Fair Oaks success and sense of community. Bill McPhail stated that the sense of community comes from having a village center. He touched on something that led me to learn more about Fair Oaks’ past, you can actually see and relate to the history. Other residents all indicated that their special memories of Fair Oaks came from the open space interspersed here, still seen today, the river, small town feel, the climate, and it’s a great place to retire. Despite the hard work and setbacks, the advertisements for the Sunset Colony were not too far off the mark.

Methods

Over the course of three days, November 17th, 18th and the 23rd, I either drove or walked to locations on the Fair Oaks walking tour map. At each location, I used the Garmin GPS borrowed in class to mark a waypoint identified by the number on the tour. I began at the first site listed on the tour, the Fair Oaks Cemetery, which was also the furthest away. The tour ended in the village as I found it easier to work my way from the outlying locations inwards.

It was my intention to use GPS Photo Link, so I used my digital camera to take a photo at each place. I used a notebook to list each waypoint by ID number and to remark on anything special such as why a photo was not taken or whether the site was located or was unclear in position, and why.

Prior to starting the walking tour, beginning in the month of October, I walked from my home to the village and back for exercise a few times a week. This helped me familiarize myself with local streets and locations on the tour map. During the three days of my field work, I also studied several photos on the Fair Oaks Historical Society web site at http://www.fairoakshistory.org/ that were applicable to the locations on the tour, in order to help me identify them while in the field. Many of these photos were saved to file as JPEGS for use in my presentation and web site for this project. I also used the following books for historical images:

• “Images of America, Fair Oaks” by Lee M. A. Simpson and Paul J. P. Sandal
• “Fair Oaks, the Early Years” by the Fair Oaks Historical Society

I used the DNR Garmin software to download my waypoints directly to ArcMap 9.2. In ArcMap, I added fields to the attribute table of my waypoint shape file to name each location and to date them. A text file was made from the attribute table and placed into an Excel spreadsheet to further format the applicable data. I used the TerraServer USA web site at http://terraserver.microsoft.com/ to download aerial and USGS topographic images as backgrounds for my waypoints. I also took advantage of the Export to KML tool made available in class to export my waypoints to Google Earth. In Google Earth, I played around with the symbols and colors of the markers to label the waypoints and validate the accuracy of the GPS compared to the walking tour map. I saved my final Google Earth results as JPEGS. I used many of my images in ArcMap to add titles, and resave as JPEGS.

Results

 
to enlarge

to enlarge

to enlarge

I was successfully able to accomplish my goal for this project. The following maps are my Google Earth and ArcMap results showing all of the waypoints I marked. Please see the following table for a reference of the data I collected, which was made from my attribute table. I have also provided a selection of photos I took along the self-guided tour, in addition to the historical photos of the same location gathered from the Historical Society’s web site.

Analysis

I am happy that I was able to accomplish my overall goal in this project. I did, however, face some difficulties in completing this project, and I have some constructive criticism of the walking tour the Fair Oaks Historical Society provides.

I was hoping to use GPS Photo Link in this project, for practice. On day 1, I planned to take a photo my GPS at waypoint #1 prior to marking my waypoints and taking photos. I failed to do so. I discovered my oversight at waypoint #8 and took a photo of my GPS at that time. The current software demo only allows for 10 photos. I visited 47 locations and have 38 photos. When I was unable to successfully use GPS Photo Link with my first batch of waypoints on day 1, I did a test run while traveling from Fair Oaks to midtown Sacramento at a later time. In that test, I discovered that my camera’s date was one month ahead. Although I could specify the difference in the program, I should have also synchronized my camera in the beginning.

The walking tour does not provide addresses for structures that still stand nor does it provide information on the current status of the site you are directed to. For example, waypoints #9 and #10, the Williamson and Oliver Beauchamp Houses respectively, are close to similar houses at the end of Crestline near Entrance Street. I was unable to determine what I was looking at on either side of the street. Therefore, I estimated my position from the walking tour map, and took photos of the four houses total on that end of the street. Other locations were simply sites. Waypoint #5, Mary Tabor’s boarding house, appears to have been somewhere where two small apartment complexes now sit. It would be useful to have it noted on the tour that the structure no longer exists.

In Figure 1, I have highlighted waypoints (in blue) which were not accurate in their position. For example, waypoints #13, #6, and #20 are shown across the street from their actual location. There are 9 errors out of 47 locations, or a 19.15% error rate.

Figure 1

to enlarge

Conclusions

I feel like I know Fair Oaks much better and I will never walk through, or drive through, the Fair Oaks Village and surrounding area again without thinking about the history here. I even found some neat little businesses that I would like to look at further. My tour and “The Fair Oaks, the Way it was” video really answered for me the sense of community my husband and I are lucky to have experienced at his school. Fair Oaks was and is a nice place to settle and its geography remains appealing to the residents. In my mind, the Fair Oaks we know today is a relatively unchanged area despite the major thoroughfares surrounding it, such as Madison Avenue and Sunrise Avenue.

The Fair Oaks Historical Society encourages membership and participation in its efforts. In order to create an accurate map as possible of our community’s historical locations, I can work with them to learn more about the locations listed on their walking tour. By participating in their forum, I could also eventually share the benefits of using GIS and GPS with them for creating future references for public use.
 

References