Blackstone Avenue is a major roadway arterial in

Fresno, California Fresno () is a major city in the San Joaquin Valley of California, United States. It is the county seat of Fresno County and the largest city in the greater Central Valley region. It covers about and had a population of 542,107 in 2020, makin ...

, United States, running from Stanislaus and O Streets near Downtown to Highway 41 northeastern part of the city. This street is the location of a number of historic structures and is also the locus of a considerable concentration of retail commercial land usage. The campus of the

Fresno City College Fresno City College (FCC or "Fresno City") is a public community college in Fresno, California. It is part of the State Center Community College District within the California Community Colleges system. Fresno City College operates on a semester ...

straddles Blackstone Avenue in the vicinity of McKinley Avenue.

History

In the late 1880s residents jokingly referred to the street as Blackstone after the English legal scholar

William Blackstone Sir William Blackstone (10 July 1723 – 14 February 1780) was an English jurist, judge and Tory politician of the eighteenth century. He is most noted for writing the ''Commentaries on the Laws of England''. Born into a middle-class family in ...

, due to the number of lawyers living there. The local history may be best recorded by some of the old surviving homes on Blackstone Avenue which are in the Register of National Historic Places, including the Ella Hoxie Home (251 N. Blackstone Avenue); Brix Home (313 N. Blackstone Avenue); Griffen Home (319 N. Blackstone Avenue); Hines Home (333 N. Blackstone Avenue). Earth Metrics Inc. performed an analysis of historic

aerial photograph Aerial photography (or airborne imagery) is the taking of photographs from an aircraft or other airborne platforms. When taking motion pictures, it is also known as aerial videography. Platforms for aerial photography include fixed-wing air ...

s in the Blackstone Avenue vicinity.Earth Metrics Inc., ''Environmental Site Assessment for the North Blackstone Avenue area, Fresno, California'', January 8, 1990 In 1946, the area contained many residences on large lots.1946 USGS-CO Aerial Photograph 3-52, #75 1:20,000 The photographs observed indicate that many of these large lots included row crops. Surrounding lands at that time were predominantly used for agriculture, with orchards lining much of the western side of Blackstone Avenue. A mixture of row crops, vacant fields, orchards, and scattered residences made up much of the landscape on the eastern side of Blackstone Avenue. The aerial photographs taken in 1962 indicate that land use in the subject site vicinity showed significant change between 1946 and 1962. Urbanization occurred in the Blackstone Avenue vicinity during this period. Orchards and row crops had been largely replaced by commercial and residential structures by 1962.

Geology

The elevation of Blackstone Avenue is approximately above mean sea level. The underlying sediments of the Blackstone Avenue area are a heterogeneous mix of generally poorly sorted

clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4). Clays develop plasticity when wet, due to a molecular film of water surrounding the clay parti ...

, silt, sand and

gravel Gravel is a loose aggregation of rock fragments. Gravel occurs naturally throughout the world as a result of sedimentary and erosive geologic processes; it is also produced in large quantities commercially as crushed stone. Gravel is classifi ...

Reference line notes

Roads in Fresno County, California Transportation in Fresno, California Streets in California {{California-road-stub