*** Source: Thompson, Robert A., Historical and descriptive sketch of Sonoma County, California. Philadelphia: L.H. Everts & Co., 1877, 122 pgs. Notice: This data is donated to the Public Domain by TAG, 2004, and may be copied freely by anyone to anywhere. *** ---page 102--- trail forked, and the one which led up the valley was the route traveled from Bodega rancho to Saucelito. It was the custom among the Indians in the back country to take two or three journeys each year to the coast for the purpose of feasting on shell-fish, and gathering shells for the manufacture of Indian money. Tomales bay and the coast to the east of the Estero, was the most frequented sea-side resort of the Indians. The trail which crossed the Estero where Valley Ford stands, was on the main route. After 1857 they ceased their annual pilgrimages. Often previous to that time their bands might be seen filing along the way, embracing all sorts and conditions of Digger Indian life, from "El Capitan," who usually rode a lean, half-tamed mustang, to old crones with hugh baskets hung to their backs by a band across their foreheads, loaded with a promiscuous assortment of rags, old blankets, attole, pinole, papooses, cooking utensils, etc. The fording of the Estero was their usual halting place. S. L. Fowler and J. E. Fowler arrived in San Francisco in May, 1849. After many hardships, chance brought them to Big valley, better known as the valley of the Estero Americano, then an unfenced wilderness. Not a furrow had been plowed, and a wealth of grass clothed the hills. They settled where the trail crossed the Estero, and purchased of F. G. Blume six hundred and forty acres of land lying between the Ebabias creek and the Estero. In July follow- ing they built a house two hundred yards from the ford. Thomas Smith, who had been engaged running a saw-mill with Messrs. Hendy & Duncan, near where John Vanderleith now lives, built a cabin on the point between Ebabias creek and the Estero, which tract they had pur- chased of F. G. Blume, and, with his partner, R. Gahen, prepared to put in a crop of potatoes. Sanford & Stone located across the creek on the place now owned by Roach & Webber. They received a portable grist-mill from the east, and in the winter of 1852 and 1853 they ground the grain raised in the neighborhood. The mill was small and the flour coarse and unbolted, but they were kept busy by the settlers, who waited their turn at the mill. Whitehead Fowler came to the country in 1852. The same year E. Thurber settled upon the tract east of town, now owned by A. P. Garver. These were the first settlers at Valley Ford and the adjoining ranches. In May, 1854, Stephen C. Fowler and his wife, the parents of S. L., James E., and W. Fowler, with their three sons, John H., Benjamin, and Nathaniel, arrived at Valley Ford. Mrs. Fowler was the first female resident of the town, and both she and her husband have resided continuously in the latter place from that day to this, having now attained the ripe age of eighty years--re- cently celebrating the fifty-fifth anniversary of their marriage in their resi- dence on the Estero. What had been formerly but an Indian trail had now become a well trav- eled road. Several other persons took up claims, among them were some hav- ing families, but by far the greater number "bached it." A crop of oats yield- ing one hundred bushels to the acre was raised in the summer of 1854 upon what is now the town site. *** end ***