Before there was a Manteca, Tracy, Ripon, or Escalon in what is now South San Joaquin County there was San Joaquin City.

The river town founded in 1849 is 12 miles from Yosemite Avenue and Main Street where 12 years later in 1861 Joshua Cowell started Manteca.

San Joaquin City was established on high ground on the west bank of the San Joaquin River.

It was just several hundred yards south of where Jimmy’s One Stop across from the San Joaquin River Club private community is located today where Airport Way crosses the river intersects with Kasson Road.

It served as a terminal for riverboats ferrying people and supplies headed to the southern mines.

Given it was near the farthest south navigable stretch of San Joaquin River for riverboats crossing the Delta from San Francisco, it also in subsequent years played a key role in the development of grain farming and cattle ranches in the west side of the valley.

San Joaquin City was where river and land traffic intersected.

As such, at one time it had several stores, a hotel, and restaurants.

In the 1850s, some accounts indicate San Joaquin City was a rival to Stockton.

What did in San Joaquin City wasn’t the end of the Gold Rush per se but the growth of farming.

For the better part of two decades, riverboats would transport wheat and other grain crops to market.

As farming shifted to more irrigated crops, water was diverted upstream for agricultural purposes.

It made the downstream portion of the San Joaquin less navigable.

The advent of the Central Pacific Railroad line running from Martinez to Fresno drastically reduced the use of moving crops by river given steam trains got them to market quicker.

By the 1890s, the settlement was converted back to farmland.

As far as being able to reach the San Joaquin City area by boat, flooding in 1891 carved new channels for the San Joaquin River. It essentially made boat travel to San Joaquin City a hopeless proposition.

San Joaquin City secured the first post office in the area in 1851. It closed in 1852.

It reopened in 1874. It was moved in 1888 some three miles to the south to Vernalis.

As noted previously, San Joaquin City popped up some 12 years before the seeds were planted in 1861 for what would be the Manteca townsite.

John Murphy — a Canadian that was part of the Gold Rush — established Murphy’s Ferry some 10 miles east of San Joaquin City on the Stanislaus River.

There is a City of San Joaquin in Fresno County some 89 miles south of where a historical marker along Kasson Road notes you are passing the old San Joaquin City townsite.

San Joaquin was founded 10 miles southwest of Kerman in 1915. It was incorporated in 1920.

Today, the city has 4,021 residents.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com