Cliff Tutelian
ROOTS OF THE VALLEY: San Joaquin Light & Power
By Joshua Villanueva
Just one hundred years ago, the San Joaquin Light & Power Company finished constructing a monumental building in downtown Fresno—one that still stands tall to this day. Founded by an engineer named John Samuel Eastwood, San Joaquin Light & Power started on April 1, 1895 as the San Joaquin Electric Company. It was along the San Joaquin River where the Company had built Powerhouse No. 1, thirty-seven miles from Fresno. Even in its earliest days, the San Joaquin Light and Power Company saw fierce competition with the local Fresno Gas and Electric Company. Was largely controlled by Fulton G. Berry, who, at the time, owned Fresno's Grand Central Hotel. To subvert the competition, Berry used riparian claims filed on water upstream from San Joaquin Electric Company's intake flume in order to divert water away from his opponent's powerhouse through a mile-long ditch. Berry’s crafty plans, combined with several years of drought, led San Joaquin Electric to go into bankruptcy in 1899.
Despite the Company's bankruptcy, San Joaquin Electric continued to operate. Bondholders, seeking to protect their investment, provided the Company's Powerhouse with a steady source of water. In 1901, these investors financed the construction of what would become the Crane Valley Dam and the reservoir at Bass Lake. The following year, lumber magnate and president of Pacific Light & Power, William C. Kerckhoff, as well as Los Angeles investors A. C. Balch and Henry E. Huntington, came together and purchased the Company and would name Alfred G. Wishon as the General Manager. The year after that, the Company bought out the competing Fresno Gas and Electric Company for $25,000. San Joaquin Light & Power rapidly expanded to serve ever-increasing needs in the region. It was on May 13, 1905, that they adopted the name San Joaquin Power Company.
At this time, the City of Fresno had grown from a small town made from the Southern Pacific Railroad to a major city in the heart of California. This was during the time of a “building boom” through the 1910s and 1920s, the times which brought about the creation of structures like the Hotel Fresno, the Helm Building, the Bank of Italy, and the Radin-Kamp Department Store. Chief designer, Raymond R. Shaw of the R. F. Felchlin Co., designed and constructed the San Joaquin Light & Power building, completed at the end of 1923 and opened in March 1924. The structure that Shaw’s firm created was (and still is) in the Italian Renaissance Revival-style near Fulton and Tuolumne streets. It would be these edifices that still largely make up the skyline of Fresno today.
The San Joaquin Light & Power Company had crafted a symbiotic relationship with the agricultural industry of Fresno, both of which were booming, and provided electricity to seven counties. In addition, they also supplied the electrical current distributed by the Midland County Public Service Corporation throughout Monterey, San Luis Obispo, and Santa Barbara counties. Once incorporated, the Company played a crucial role in the growth of the San Joaquin Valley as the leading agricultural force in California. By 1920, the SJLPC was an established and significant public utility, with eleven Powerhouses and a vast array of transmission lines throughout the Valley. A decade later, the SJLPC merged with the Great Western Power Company, thus becoming part of the Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E). San Joaquin Power would merge completely into the parent PG&E Company in 1939, but the name on the roof sign did not change to PG&E until well after World War II. PG&E left the building in 1987.
To this day, this landmark resides in the heart of downtown Fresno. It reminds us of the past, both long ago and just yesterday. It stands as the fourth-largest building in our City and as a beautiful reminder of our history. Just one of the many ways in which Fresno helped to shape the legacy of the Central Valley.
