Bill Coate

For The Madera TribuneJohn Gordon (far right) continued serving as Madera’s mayor in 1948.The year 1948 proved to be a watershed in Madera’s politics. Earlier city elections had been fairly tranquil. Over the previous 40 years, if an incumbent was challenged, the contest didn’t raise anybody’s blood pressure.City elections in 1948, however, revealed that Madera had grown up. All of a sudden city leaders such Mayor John Gordon, Councilmen Arthur D. Cook, J. Wesley Smith, John McNally, and Irvine

For The Madera TribuneThis old-time Madera saloon was the scene of a bloody stabbing between two card partners in 1901.The donnybrook broke out on Saturday night, Dec. 1, 1901, when four men sat down to play a game of Pedro. Robert Tuggle and Sam Monahan were playing against Jim Robertson, the bartender, and his partner, Frank Littlefield.The contest was going along in a friendly manner until Monahan misplayed his hand and lost the game, which upset Tuggle who could not resist expressing his dis

For The Madera TribuneWilliam Amer and his wife Catherine. He went to prison, and she got him a pardon.It was Saturday night in Madera, and the whole town was buzzing. A rumor was flying around town like a choice piece of gossip at a sewing circle. It spread from street corner to street corner like wildfire. Folks talked about nothing else. Could it be true? What was one to believe? Was the treasurer of Madera County really a thief?William M. Amer had been elected treasurer of Madera County when

For The Madera TribuneIn time the Madera County Courthouse took on this ivy league look.The mood of the crowd was festive. Hundreds had gathered along West Yosemite Avenue to witness the historic occasion and to enjoy a community barbecue. Women in Victorian era dresses and men in suits clustered around the crane, which was setting the cornerstone. The date was Oct. 29, 1900, and in what seemed the quintessential symbol of modernity, Madera celebrated its entrance into the 20th century with two

For The Madera TribuneThis historic courthouse was torn down and replaced with a modern facility in 1953. Before that year was out, there had been three major breakouts at Madera’s new jail.In 1898, Madera did away with its old, wooden jail and replaced it with a brick and granite building. For years this stately structure, with its imposing tower, stood on 6th Street in all of its aesthetic glory. Then in 1937, a granite addition was added to the rear of the jail, and that’s how things remained

For The Madera TribuneClarence Pickett, shown here, was the second Madera lawman to fall in the line of duty.It has become an embedded piece of Madera’s past that Clarence Pickett was Madera’s first lawman to fall in the line of duty. The young officer was gunned down on Nov. 10, 1923 while attempting to arrest a drunk driver. A second look at the record, however, casts doubt on the claim that Pickett was the first to fall, as the following story illustrates.It was one o’clock in the morning, an

For The Madera TribuneDuane Furman, shown here, was MUSD superintendent during the racial unrest of 1974.In the summer of 1974, racial trouble erupted in Madera. A 16 year-old male student at the high school threw a young coed, fully clothed, into the school swimming pool. Two female high school teachers, Rose Harper and Sharon Weldon, tried unsuccessfully to question the perpetrator. Madera High Vice Principal Perry Harper and Learning Director Barry Crow intervened, and before it was all over,

For The Madera TribuneStagecoaches like the one shown here in front of the hotel at Hildreth, not far from Coarsegold, carried passengers from the mountain towns of Madera County to the Valley. Most of the trips were safely conducted, but occasionally disaster struck, like that time in 1901.It seems so far in the distant past, and yet it hasn’t really been all that long since the only method of transportation from Madera to the foothills and back was in buggies and stagecoaches or on horseback.

For The Madera TribuneChief Encouragement Officer Carles Beckett.When Carles Beckett graduated from Fresno State in 1967 and began his career in education, he could look back on his first 22 years and recognize that his life had been a series of miracles. Born in Piggott, Arkansas, he spent his first nine years living in a tent in a Buckeye, Arizona cotton camp and in a chicken coop on a chicken ranch in Petaluma, California. In 1954, his father was killed in a car crash, and his mother and thre

For The Madera TribuneEd Gwartney.The late Ed Gwartney was a self-described product of the “Okie” migration who never earned a high school diploma but became a pathfinder of new trails in the teaching of history. He was the founder of the James Monroe Children’s Museum, and he has left it to others to build on his passion that created the unique educational laboratory for teaching California history on the campus of James Monroe Elementary School. Gwartney and his family were part of the great D