Bowdish, Percival

Percival Bowdish, born in San Francisco and raised in New York State, returned to California as a young man of twenty to become an early settler of Central Colony in Fresno. He recognized the vast opportunities in the San Joaquin Valley, which featured an early irrigation system partially completed by M. J. Church. In 1886, his family purchased an eighty-acre tract at Malaga and planted a vineyard of the muscat raisin variety, navigating a difficult market that required shipping and selling products directly to San Francisco grocers and housewives. Beyond farming, he engaged in grain-farming and actively participated in the social advancement of the area by joining the vigilante committee to rid Fresno of its undesirable elements. He married Miss May Kimball of Oakland in 1889, whose father Henry Kimball was a fellow California pioneer who built the first mining water ditch in Sierra County, helped build the first Fresno warehouse, and planted the first Temperance Colony vineyard.

As the local fruit industry expanded in 1892, Mr. Bowdish witnessed its infancy firsthand while working to ice railroad cars for eastern market shipments. He briefly moved to San Francisco and participated in the Alaska gold rush, but he returned to Fresno in 1903 after a fruitless year up north. Back in Fresno, he engaged in the fruit business once again by planting a Thompson vineyard at Kerman and bringing that raisin variety to perfection in both quality and quantity. Over his lifetime, he witnessed Fresno transform from a few straggling houses with a street pump and an open mill ditch into a prosperous city surrounded by rich vineyards. Mr. Bowdish remained proud to be a promoter of this vast enterprise and maintained great confidence in the future growth of the region.