Times Past

This photo, from the Amyx family collection, was probably taken around 1920, and the details handed down by family members say that it depicts a Ford touring car and a Fordson tractor, both stuck in Lick Creek. Although we don’t know what happened or who is pictured in the photograph, we can guess that the tractor came to rescue the flooded-out or stuck touring car, only to get stuck itself. Whatever happened, the kids on the horses seemed to think it was all very interesting.

Bakersfield School, pre-1914 fire An Oct. 2, 1914, item in this week's Times Past reports the fire that destroyed this stately Bakersfield school building, which an earlier, unidentified newspaper clipping had described as "the pride of the community." The building, which housed the first high school classes to be held in Bakersfield, burned just after the school year began. A few months after the wooden building burned, a concrete-block schoolhouse was constructed. That building, which opened in 1915, was destroyed by a tornado in June 1928. A bond issue to rebuild the school was brought to the voters 10 different times but failed to get the required two-thirds majority before the issue finally passed and a new school was built two years later. That building was replaced by the school that was eventually demolished in 2015 after Bakersfield voters approved a $1.9 million bond issue to build the district's current school building.

Claude Kirkland

This photo of the Gainesville Livestock Auction is taken from an ad in a mid-1960s Bulldogger yearbook published by Gainesville High School. The advertisement said the sale barn, owned by T. D. Crawford, held sales every Wednesday. The building was located next to Lick Creek on the east side of Highway 160 in Gainesville, roughly across from what is now the MFA Oil building on Third Street. It closed in March 1971 after the state bought the land for right of way to build the current Highway 160. A Times article reported, as the building was being demolished, that its arena had seating for 250 buyers, and its stock pens could hold 1,500 head of cattle or livestock. The sale barn’s yearly total sale averaged 30,000 head, the article reported. The 1949 Times Past item below reports Ray Wallace's plans to build and operate the sale barn.