Nexus of the Universe; the Bulter, California ghost town site

Near the far flung eastern expanses of the city of Fresno in a County Island there is a roadside oddity along Butler Avenue. Just west of the junction with Fowler Avenue there is a cross-street signed as Butler/Butler.

If you are a Seinfeld fan you'd might consider a junction where a street intersects with itself to be the "nexus of the universe." Howsoever it appears the Butler/Butler street blade signage is simply the result of Fresno County not often signing; street, place, lane, road, drive, or boulevard for whatever reason. However, the location of Butler/Butler is approximately located a half mile north of the Butler ghost town site. Butler was located on the Southern Pacific Railroad line heading east out of downtown Fresno towards Sanger.

Butler was a rail siding town along the Stockton and Tulare Railroad which was apparently built likely in 1887. The first map reference to Butler I can find is on the 1889 map of the State of California.

1889 Map of California

Butler appears to have been a sizeable settlement as evidenced by this sectional of a large Fresno County Map below from 1891.

1891 Fresno County Sectional Map

Interestingly Butler appears to have been located at the junction of what is now Fowler Avenue and a street called Malvoise Avenue. Malvoise Avenue used to run on the north side of the Stockton and Tulare Railroad tracks. A portion of Malvoise Avenue appears to still exist today as a rail service road west of Clovis Avenue. Bulter appears to have had an organized street grid that appears to have been completely lost to time. Muscatel Avenue is the modern alignment of Butler Avenue but I have no idea when the name may have changed.

The last map reference I can find for Bulter was on the 1935 California Division of Highways Fresno County map. Additional sidings east of Butler can be seen and were called; Locans, Ivesta, and Clotho.

1935 Fresno County Highway Map

Comments

Did Caltrans just kill the G26 cutout US Route shields?

The US Route System was formally created by the American Association of State Highway Officials during November 1926. Through the history of the system the only state to which has elected to maintain cutout US Route shields has been California. The G26 series cutout US Route shields have become a favorite in the road enthusiast hobby and are generally considered to be much more visually pleasing than the standard Federal Highway Administration variant. However, the G26 shield series appears to have been killed off on January 18, 2026, when Caltrans updated their Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices. This blog will examine the history of the US Route shield specifications in California and what is happening with the 2026 changes. The blog cover photo is facing towards the terminus of California State Route 136 and at a G26-2 specification US Route 395 shield. In the background Mount Whitney can be seen in the Sierra Nevada range. ...

May 2023 Ontario Trip (Part 3 of 3)

Over the years, I have made plenty of trips to Ontario, crisscrossing the southern, central and eastern parts of the province. Living in Upstate New York, it's pretty easy to visit our neighbor to the north, or is that our neighbor to the west? Ottawa is one of my favorite cities to visit anywhere in the world, plus I've discovered the charm of Kingston, the waterfalls of Hamilton (which is on the same Niagara Escarpment that brings us Niagara Falls), the sheer beauty of the Bruce Peninsula, and more. But I hadn't explored much of Cottage Country. So I decided to change that, and what better time to go than over Memorial Day weekend, when the daylight is long and I have an extra day to explore. On the third and final day of my trip, I started in Huntsville and made my way through Muskoka District and Haliburton County, passing by many lakes along the way. I stopped in towns such as Dorset, Haliburton and Bancroft before making a beeline down to Belleville and then over th...

Ghost Town Tuesday; Nichols, FL

A couple years ago I spent a lot of spare time exploring phosphate mining ghost towns in the Bone Valley of Polk County, Florida. One ghost town in particular called Nichols on Polk County Route 676 west of Mulberry caught my eye due to a relative lack of documentation on ghosttowns.com. Nichols was created in 1905 during the early phosphate mining boom in the Bone Valley region. For the time Nichols was unusual since it had company housing in the Nichols Mine site and private residences outside the gate. Nichols is only about two miles west of Mulberry which probably made it a somewhat reasonable commute even by the wonky standards of the early 20th Century. Most of the Bone Valley region was relatively remote which made commuting or homesteading impractical which is why there are so many ghost towns in the area. The company housing section of Nichols was phased out and abandoned by 1950. The Nichols town site is largely abandoned and could "possibl...