Sandeson, Charles N.

Charles N. Sandeson, born in Colchester County, Nova Scotia, on June 22, 1875, was an early settler and progressive stockman who operated on a large scale in the Coalinga district. After following mill work and lumbering in the East, he arrived in California in 1896 at the age of twenty-one to work for the Southern Pacific Railroad in Bakersfield before transferring to Coalinga in 1897. He served as a section foreman for four years and later became a local agent for the Union National San Joaquin Ice Company. He subsequently entered the butcher trade by opening the Crescent Meat Market, and later transitioned into a ten-year hay and grain business using a custom-built warehouse on E Street. His diverse operations also included a teaming business to the oil fields that utilized sixty head of horses and mules and employed thirteen men.

Mr. Sandeson expanded his agricultural footprint by developing a modern, electrically powered Holstein dairy farm on a seventy-acre ranch at Story in Madera County. His extensive cattle and grain operations grew to include a 640-acre mountain ranch in Warthan Canyon, multiple large rented acreages for ranging cattle, and a partnership farming 4,000 acres of barley near Pleasant Valley. He also held a one-third interest in two warehouses at Story, a quarter interest in a Merced County ranch, an eighty-acre ranch near Lemoore, and a home with six town lots in Coalinga. On September 28, 1899, he married Mary Sandeson in Oakland, with whom he shared his life while serving as a director for the First National Bank and maintaining memberships in the Masons, Elks, and the California Cattle Growers Association.