Yolo-Sacramento-Los Angeles County CA Archives Biographies.....Beardslee, William E. M. 1865 - 
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Author: Tom Gregory (1913)

WILLIAM E. M. BEARDSLEE

    One of the most interesting as well as one of the most important phases of
the development of our western country relates to the reclamation of arid lands
and the saving of other lands subject to overflow. Few are more closely
associated with the progress of this important work in California than is Mr.
Beardslee, trustee of the Yolo basin drainage district, which was organized by
state enactment to investigate the practicability of reclaiming the lands lying
in the Yolo, Solano and Colusa basins on the Sacramento river.

    A native of New England, in whose make-up are combined all of the
conscientious principles and determination characteristic of his ancestors,
William E. M. Beardslee was born August 15, 1865, in Fall Eiver, Mass. His early
boyhood, however, was passed in Boston, where he attended the public school, and
there also he later attended an academy. He was the son of Edgar A. Beardslee,
who first came to California in 1879 alone, but a few months later he returned
east for his family, coming back to the west the following year by way of
Panama. For the past fifty-two years he has followed telegraphy. For seventeen
years he was assistant superintendent of the Western Union Telegraph Company at
Sacramento, and is now a resident of Los Angeles, still in the service of the
Western Union.

    It was in 1880 that the family located in Sacramento and in that city
William E. M. Beardslee completed his schooling by attending the high school for
one year. He then began to learn telegraphy under his father in the Western
Union telegraph office, and for ten years afterward was employed by the same
company, two years of this time as cashier of the Los Angeles office. In 1890 he
became associated with his brother-in-law, T. B. Lovdal, in fruit and hop
raising in Yolo county, the ranch lying in the rich bottom lands which Mr.
Beardslee has done so much to reclaim. The ranch consists of two hundred and
sixteen acres, of which twenty are in Bartlett pears, prunes and plums, sixty in
hops (which in 1911 ran one ton to the acre) and the remainder in alfalfa, which
yields about six crops annually without irrigation.

    Since coming to California Mr. Beardslee has been intensely interested in
reclamation measures and has been very active in securing legislative assistance
therefor. For eighteen years he served as secretary of reclamation district No.
537, which reclaimed three thousand acres north of Sacramento, this locality
being the first to make use of the famous "Yolo" dredge, which was designed and
built by this district. Mr. Beardslee was a member of the Sacramento drainage
district commission, which secured for congress and the state information
relative to the conditions existing in the delta sections, also suggesting
methods of relief. Through the efforts of the board congress appropriated
$400,000, a like amount being given by the state, for improving the navigability
of the Sacramento river and to investigate flood control. That the funds were
wisely expended is unnecessary to state in noting the conditions of these lands
today. Lands once submerged are now in a high state of cultivation and are
surrounded by fifteen miles of dredge-built levees constructed at a cost of from
$10,000 to $15,000 per mile.

    At the age of twenty-two years Mr. Beardslee was united in marriage with
Miss Emma T. Lovdal, whose father, O. O. Lovdal, was one of the pioneer hop
raisers of the Sacramento valley. They have two children, Beatrice and William E.
L.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from

HISTORY OF YOLO COUNTY CALIFORNIA
WITH
Biographical Sketches
OF
The Leading Men and Women of the County Who Have Been Identified With Its Growth
and Development From the Early Days to the Present

HISTORY BY
TOM GREGORY
AND OTHER WELL KNOWN WRITERS
ILLUSTRATED COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME

HISTORIC RECORD COMPANY
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA [1913]


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