Kings County
History
History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California - History by Eugene L. Menefee and Fred A. Dodge - Historic Record Company - Los Angeles, California, 1913
CHAPTER XXI
LUCERNE VALLEY
In the year 1886, Frank L. Dodge, a newspaper man from Iowa, arrived with his family in Hanford, ostensibly on a visit to brothers and sisters who had located near that town in the pioneer days. Mr. Dodge became enamoured of the country and there being at that time no newspaper published in Hanford, with his oldest brother, the late David Dodge, he founded the Hanford Weekly Sentinel. Like many other people from the East he had a distaste for the term "slough" as applied to a country, the name suggesting mire and miasma to one unacquainted with the term as applied to Mussel Slough which, it is known, is the name given to the natural channels which in early days were open and in flood times were flowing streams. Mr. Dodge sought for a more attractive name for this district and in his paper of April 21, 1887, gave Mussel Slough a new christening and called it Lucerne Valley, a name which stuck to it until the formation of Kings county. We quote from the article naming the district the following: "Nestled among the heights of the storied Alps, fanned by the breezes of Switzerland, is a favored spot, the name of which adorns the page of story and gladdens the minstrel's song. 'The Sweet Vale of Lucerne' is a canton containing 474 square miles, a beautiful country noted for its great production of fruit, stock, grain, and lucerne, of alfalfa clover. It has the River Reuss, the placid Lucerne Lake and the never-fading Alps for prominent geographical features. In 1870, 'The Sweet Vale of Lucerne,' Switzerland, contained 132,338 people.
"This beautiful country of ours about Hanford with its Kings river, its Sierra Nevada and Coast Range mountains, and its glittering Tulare Lake, with its superior fruits, stock, grain, alfalfa and climatic advantages is eminently worthy to be a namesake of that old, rich and venerable Lucerne of Europe. This has about the same area and the elements of greater possibilities. Had this, our district, the population of the Lucerne of Europe the spindles of manufacture and the wheels of commerce would thrill the land with active life; the thorough cultivation which would be put upon the land would make it a lovely garden of vegetable luxury; homes would bloom amid floral bowers and fruited branches.
"The Lucerne of California has all the possibilities that fancy may picture for an earthly dwelling place. Let our people awaken and hasten on the march of improvements—work to reach that grand development which should enrich, endear and exalt a country which kind Nature has so richly endowed with the elements of greatness."
The suggestion made by the editor fell on fruitful soil and took root and grew into a sentiment which finally changed the name of the judicial township from Mussel Slough to Lucerne ; and under a euphoneous and attractive name the glories of this productive western country were heralded abroad, doing a share of the good work of development.
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler.