Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park

They chose an 800-acre (320 ha) Tulare County site for a new town near the present location of Earlimart, California, and about 45 miles (72 km) north of Bakersfield.Black men and women — craftsmen, artisans, businessmen, farmers, ranchers, retired military — moved their families to the newly purchased land.[3]: 178 The affairs of the town were administered by a council form of government known as the Allensworth Progressive Association, which directed the community through its formative and critical early years.Allensworth's economy depended on agriculture; farmers cultivated alfalfa, wheat, sugar beets, and cotton; and raised dairy cattle, chickens, turkeys, and Belgian hares.The town had several businesses and public buildings: bakery, drugstore, livery stable, barbershop, church, school, library, and a machine shop.The California Eagle newspaper wrote that Allensworth was walking on Myrtle Avenue, "a sixty-foot boulevard," when "he was overtaken and struck down by a motorcycle ridden by two young caucasians.[8] White and Wray claimed they were only going about 12 miles per hour, but many people on at the scene "believed the motorcycle must have been going at high speed, and that Colonel Allensworth had little opportunity to save himself."[7] The coroner's jury quickly returned an "open verdict" exonerating White and Wray from any blame,[7][9] which led Assistant District Attorney Richardson to advise local law enforcement to not arrest the men.The aged Colonel was on his way to preach in a small church of the village and had just stepped from a Pacific Electric street car when these men knocked him down and ran over him, killing him through their careless driving, his death, occurring within twenty-four hours afterwards without his regaining consciousness, it was like a thunderbolt from a clear sky to the people of the State.Widely loved and respected, Allensworth received a military funeral by the Grand Army of the Republic veterans of Los Angeles.Payne accepted a teaching job in El Centro, while Josephine Allensworth returned to Los Angeles to live with her daughter Nella.In 1968 Cornelius "Ed" Pope, a former resident of Allensworth, worked in Sacramento as a draftsman and planner for the California Department of Parks and Recreation.[citation needed] A generally warm, dry climate prevails in the Central Valley; it is hot in the summer, mild in the winter.Environmental activists protested that the operations were likely to have a potentially negative impact (dairy flies and odors) on the adjacent Pixley National Wildlife Refuge, Allensworth Ecological Reserve, and the historic park.California State Parks contracted with the nonprofit museum in mid-2002 to conserve and restore the two railroad boxcar bodies associated with Allensworth.