Butte County
Biographies
CHESTER BROYLES
CHESTER BROYLES.--One of Butte County’s enterprising sons, and the descendant of a forty-niner, Chester Broyles is making a name and place for himself in the agricultural annals of his home county. Born on the Broyles homestead, near Cana, September 4, 1887, he is a son of Washington and Mary B. Broyles, a sketch of whose lives may be found in another part of this history. Chester, the second youngest of the family of six children, was reared on the home ranch, and received his education in the public schools of the district, the Mission High School in San Francisco, and the Chico State Normal. On completing his education, together with his brothers, he assisted his father in his large ranching operations until the latter’s death, in 1911.
His father’s will appointed Chester Broyles as administrator without bonds. During the year required to settle the estate, the brothers continued to operate the home ranch together. Chester Broyles became owner of three hundred thirty-five acres of the home ranch, and in 1912 he purchased his present home place of eighty acres from the estate, which he has improved with a modern and comfortable residence, and the necessary ranch buildings. Afterwards he purchased three hundred twenty acres of the John Rhoades estate, lying across the county road from his place, which made him the owner of seven hundred thirty-five acres in one body. Mr. Boyles is raising grain on most of his land, though he has forty acres in alfalfa, and raises Durham cattle, sheep and hogs, his brand being the monogram L and A combined. He was the first man to develop deep wells for irrigating purposes in this section. He started by putting down three wells, going to a depth less than one hundred fifty feet; but after an expenditure of $3000 this was not a success. Not discouraged, he resolved, the next year, to go deeper, and at an additional expense of two thousand dollars succeeded in getting big wells, finding water in an inexhaustible quantity, which rose to within ten feet of the surface. He now has one well three hundred twenty-seven feet deep, and two wells two hundred eight feet in depth. The three wells are joined together and are pumped direct, by the use of a four-cycle forty-horse-power engine with a capacity of sixteen hundred gallons a minute. By perseverance, Mr. Broyles succeeded in demonstrating the practicability of pumping for irrigation in this section; and as a consequence several of the neighboring ranchers have followed his example and put in wells and pumping plants, thus adding materially to the output of the district, and encouraging its further development. A progressive and wide-awake young man, he is proving to be a factor for advancement in his section of the county, keeping in touch with new methods and conditions, as they appear, and doing his share toward upbuilding the community where he was born and his since made his home.
Chester Broyles was married, in Butte County, to Miss Alma Grein, also a native of the county, born at Biggs; and one child, Chester, Jr., has been born to them. Fraternally, Mr. Broyles is a member of Chico lodge, B. P. O. Elks.
Transcribed
by Joyce Rugeroni.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 1266-1267, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2009 Joyce Rugeroni.
Golden Nugget Library's Butte County
Biographies