DAVID A. HURLEY

Sacramento County

Biographies

DAVID A. HURLEY

D. A. HURLEY.--A progressive rancher with much to his credit in the way of scientific accomplishment is D. A. Hurley, of the Elkhorn Road, near Sacramento, who has a trim ranch and orchard of eighty acres. A native Buckeye, he was born in Buffton, Ohio, on July 22, 1861, and left home at the early age of sixteen to drift to the South and West. He learned various trades, and also how to work on a farm; and when he reached Junction City, Kans., he stayed awhile to try himself out in the painting and paper-hanging business. He also spent much of his early life in Nebraska, but it was not until he took up land in Oklahoma by racing for it, that he could say he had any experience out of the ordinary. He was one of those successful in reaching the goal striven for, and he located 160 acres near Perry, Okla., four and one-half miles northeast of the town. He resided there until 1913, and in the meantime added a tract of 160 acres to his first one, and farmed the same to grain and cotton. He served as a county commissioner of Noble County, Oklahoma, from 1907 to 1912, and came to be, as a Republican of liberal views, influential in matters of local government.

Mr. Hurley made his first visit to California in 1912, and while on an extended tour of inspection, bought forty acres of land in the Arden district, eight miles northeast of Sacramento. The following spring he moved his family to California, and in the meantime he developed his ranch, devoting ten acres to an orchard. These ten acres and the home were sold in 1921, and he moved to the Reclamation District No. 1000, where he farmed a tract of land and cleared forty acres. He still owns the remaining thirty acres at Arden. He has done well in the farming of beans and grain in the Natomas district, and was instrumental in organizing the farm bureau in Reclamation District No. 1000. He is now clerk of the board of trustees of Natomas School, and he makes a very popular executive. He has not only done well since coming to the Golden State, but he is first and all the time a “booster” for Sacramento County.

Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.

Source: Reed, G. Walter, History of Sacramento County, California With Biographical Sketches, Pages 991-992. Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, CA. 1923.