Have you ever noticed a horse hitching post at a home or business in Fresno?
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Well the City of Fresno Historic Preservation Commission would like your help. They would like to identify the location of these hitching posts and explore developing a “thematic district” of the existing Hitching posts.
Don Simmons, the chair of the commission asked for my help. I guess I was a good starting point, because my family’s home in the Tower District has one of these distinct features of an earlier era. Included is a photo of my family’s home and hitch. And below is a Google Map we started to begin cataloging the hitch locations and descriptions. If you want to help out, you can add info to the map.
View Fresno Hitching Posts in a larger map
Interesting. Do all the hitching posts look like the one in that photo? I’ll try to keep an eye out.
Bryan, no. They were made in a variety of materials and designs. I bet the most common was wood, but those are long gone. I believe you’ll find mostly the cast iron ones now. It seems common that they had different caps. The neighbor of my families house had a much simpler one that is just a iron cap. Concrete hitching posts were also common.
I general look for them to be chest height with rings to attach a horse’s reins.
I’m not sure why but I find this totally awesome!
Because it’s awesomely Fresnish.
I think that there is one at Michigan and Van Ness, but I have always understood that it was more decoration than practicality by the original developer.
i too was gonna mention the one on michigan, it’s actually a bit east of van ness, and i’ve never taken a good look at it to see if it’s for real, but now maybe i will. pass it every day. nice job finding all these for us to see. thanks