In 1908, retired Army office and ex-slave Lt. Col. Allen Allensworth set out with former slaves to build one of California’s first all-black communities on 800 acres in Tulare County. Allensworth was the U.S. Army’s highest-ranking black officer in 1906. Even though the community only thrived for less than ten years, in 1974, supporters rallied the state to purchase the town’s historic core and convert it to a 240-acre park. At its height, Allensworth had a couple hundred residents, several stores, a school, a church, a hotel and a broad swath of alfalfa and cotton fields, and the first branch of the county’s library system. Since 1995, the state has remodeled and rebuilt nearly two dozen of the park’s historic buildings. About 150 people still live on the town’s outskirts.

Information from Visalia Times-Delta, 8 October 2008, page 1A-3A