Temple's Ranch, was the ranch and a home of F. P. F. Temple, a wealthy land owner in

Los Angeles County Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles, and sometimes abbreviated as L.A. County, is the most populous county in the United States and in the U.S. state of California, with 9,861,224 residents estimated as of 2022. It is the ...

, with large business and land holdings of thousands of acres in Madera County and Fresno County including this ranch in Fresno County near the

Merced County Merced County ( ), is a county located in the northern San Joaquin Valley section of the Central Valley, in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 281,202. The county seat is Merced. The county is named after ...

border.

Temple's Ranch Station

Temple's Ranch was a swing station in the First Division of the

Butterfield Overland Mail Butterfield Overland Mail (officially the Overland Mail Company)Waterman L. Ormsby, edited by Lyle H. Wright and Josephine M. Bynum, "The Butterfield Overland Mail", The Huntington Library, San Marino, California, 1991. was a stagecoach service i ...

Fresno County, California Fresno County (), officially the County of Fresno, is a county located in the central portion of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 Census, the population was 1,008,654. The county seat is Fresno, the fifth-most populous city in Cali ...

. It was located 13 miles east southeast of Lone Willow Station and 15 miles northwest of Firebaugh's Ferry northwest of what is now

Dos Palos Dos Palos (Spanish for "Two Timbers") is a city in Merced County, California, United States. Dos Palos is located south-southwest of Merced, the county seat, at an elevation of . The population was 5,798 at the 2020 census, up from 4,950 at the ...

. The station at Temple's Ranch was located on the west bank of the

San Joaquin River The San Joaquin River (; es, Río San Joaquín) is the longest river of Central California. The long river starts in the high Sierra Nevada, and flows through the rich agricultural region of the northern San Joaquin Valley before reaching Suis ...

, at the home of F. T. F. Temple, the original owner of the property, who was living there in 1858. Temple sold the ranch in 1866. This section of the mail road along the San Joaquin River and over the plain, west through Lone Willow Station to St. Luis Ranch and

Pacheco Pass Pacheco Pass, elevation , is a low mountain pass located in the Diablo Range in southeastern Santa Clara County, California. It is the main route through the hills separating the Santa Clara Valley and the Central Valley (California), Central Val ...

was described as one of the best for making fast time on the route. The fifteen miles between Firebaugh's Ferry and Temple's Ranch was frequently driven in one hour and twelve minutes.Roscoe Platt Conkling, Margaret Badenoch Conkling, BUTTERFIELD OVERLAND MAIL, 1858-1869, The American Trail Series, Volume 4, Arthur H. Clark, Glendale, 1947, p.294 {{Butterfield1 Ranches in California Fresno County, California Butterfield Overland Mail in California Stagecoach stops in the United States