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Today the population of Raymond is less than 1000 people, mainly comprised of ranchers and commuters to Madera and Fresno. Other than ranching the sole industry is the Knowles Granite Quarry, a division of Cold Spring Granite Company.
History: Originally Raymond was the end of a railway line for passengers traveling to Yosemite. The first passenger train arrived in Raymond on March 1886. Teddy Roosevelt slept in a hotel here on his famous trip to Yosemite. The San Joaquin Valley Railroad Co.track ran 21 miles of track between Berenda and Raymond. At this location a turntable allowed the locomotive to be turned around for the return trip. Tourists would ride the train to Raymond then continue to Yosemite by stagecoach. In 1926 Highway 140 to Yosemite was completed. The Raymond train stopped in 1946 when the line from Daulton to Raymond was abandoned. Slowly the town contracted in size with the High School, hotel and other businesses closing. Luke David homesteaded a piece of apparently worthless land, mostly rock, for the spring. Later Frank Dusy, well-known contractor in Fresno County history, saw the possibilities of granite cutting that he later sold to F. E. Knowles, for whom the quarry location is named. Raymond granite is famous-the San Francisco post office and many other public building in various parts of the West are built from it. |
