Watson's Ferry was a former settlement, river
ferry and
steamboat landing on
Fresno Slough Fresno Slough is a distributary of the Kings River that connects the North Fork Kings River to the San Joaquin River in San Joaquin Valley, Kings County, California.
Until 1879 when irrigation diversions prevented it, Fresno Slough was also an ou ...
near its confluence with 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 ...
nearby to the northeast of modern
Mendota in what is now
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 Ca ...
. Watson's Ferry was located 8 miles southeast of
Firebaugh.
[Wallace W. Elliot, History of Fresno County, California: With Illustrations from Original Drawings ... with Biographical Sketches, Wallace W. Elliot & Co., San Francisco, 1882; reprinted by Valley Publishers, Fresno, 1973.] [Paul E. Vandor, History of Fresno County, California: With Biographical Sketches, Volume 1, Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, 1919]
History
Watson's Ferry was the head of steamboat navigation on Fresno Slough, 248 miles up the San Joaquin River from
Stockton, California from the late 1860s to the early 1900s, when irrigation deprived Fresno Slough and the San Joaquin River of water to the point it closed the upper river to navigation.
[Jerry MacMullen, Paddlewheel Days In California, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1970.] It was an important crossing, connecting the west side of Fresno County to the county seat to the east.
[ It became a center for sheep shearing, handling up to 200,000 sheep a year. Wool from this operation was shipped by steamer to San Francisco.][ ][ After the construction of Whites Bridge two miles up the Fresno Slough, Whites Bridge became the new head of navigation.][ ][
]
References
Former settlements in Fresno County, California
Former populated places in California
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