Fairmead

Source: Fairmead Specific Plan (2006?) prepared by Madera County Planning Department.

George Fowler Morell, a native of Massachusetts, came to Palo Alto in 1904. During the greater part of his first years in the West, he was employed variously as a rider on the Miller and Lux ranch at Gilroy, as a swamper and teamster for a freighting and stage line running between Redding and Weaverville, as a placer miner on the Trinity River, a a lumber jack in southwestern Oregon and as a roustabout aboard the Pacif Mail steamer, San Jose, calling at all banana and coffee ports on the San Francisco to Panama run. He went on to attend Stanford University, a remined to become an influential newspaper publisher on the San Francisco peninsula. He was active in ranching and land development in Santa Clara, Merced and Madera Counties, taking a leading part in many civic enterprises in these and adjoining areas. In 1910, he went to work for the Cooperative Land Trust Company, which was then subdividing the greater grain ranches of Merced and Madera Counties, bringing in settlers, and developing necessary irrigation, utilities and towns to serve them. He was successively advertising manager, salesman and field manager for this company until his enlistment as an infantryman in 1917 for the duration of World War I. (Source: History of the Greater San Francisco Bay Region, vol. 3, New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1966.)

Source: Walker's Manual of California Securities and Directory of Directors. San Francisco: H.D. Walker, 1920, p. 282.

See also:
A History of Fairmead Grammar School District
Fairmead fossil discovery site
The Mammoth Orange
The Mammoth Orange moves to Chowchilla (video)