If you live in Southeast Fresno, you’re probably familiar with Fancher Creek. This natural waterway, later turned into a canal, runs through Sunnyside and southeast neighborhoods, and even the new Fancher Creek Town Center development. But these waters also have a history dating back to Fresno’s earliest days. The story of the creek that gave birth to Fresno and the man it’s named for, today on KVPR’s Central Valley Roots.
Back in 1871 early irrigation pioneer Moses Church diverted Kings River water into the nearby channel of the normal dry Fancher Creek. It’s this water that fed the wheat fields of the Fresno area rancher Anthony Easterby – you know, the ones that got Leland Stanford’s eye, and made him pick the site for the new Fresno Station on the Central Pacific Railroad.
Over the years the natural course of Fancher Creek was augmented with new levees, and was maintained by the Fresno Irrigation District.
As for the name, the creek was named for early cattle rancher John Fancher, reportedly the first cattle rancher in Tulare County. In the 1850s, Fancher started a ranch along the creek, north of Visalia and east of Fresno, near McKinley and Del Rey Avenues. His younger brother Alexander Fancher was enroute to this ranch when he was killed in 1857 in Utah in the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Around 120 members of the Baker-Fancher wagon train were killed by Mormon settlers during what is known as the Utah War.
