The Mussel Slough Tragedy was a dispute over land titles between settlers and the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP) that took place on May 11, 1880, on a farm located northwest of Hanford, California, in the central San Joaquin Valley, leaving seven people dead. The exact history of the incident has been the source of some disagreement, largely because popular anti-railroad sentiment in the 1880s interpreted the incident as a clear example of corrupt and cold-blooded corporate greed. Muckraking journalists and anti-railroad activists glorified the settlers and used the events as evidence and justification for their anti-corporate crusades. Frank Norris' 1901 novel, The Octopus: A Story of California, was inspired by this incident, as was W. C. Morrow's 1882 novel Blood-Money. May Merrill Miller's novel, First the Blade, includes a fictionalized account of the conflict. The site of the episode is now registered as California Historical Landmark #245. A historical marker on the east side of 14th Avenue, 350yards (320m) north of Elder Avenue, memorializes the site. Background The region known in the late 19th century as the Mussel Slough country was mostly in what was then Tulare County, California, with a small portion in what was then Fresno County (later the entire area became part of Kings County after the latter was formed in 1893). The Mussel Slough country took its name from a slough which went from the Kings River to Tulare Lake. This area had remained unsettled as it was a broad, dry plain suitable only for cattle ranching, but could be easily irrigated from the slough. The Southern Pacific Railroad (SP) had originally planned to build its route between San Jose and Southern California along the coast, but in 1866 Congress authorized the railroad companies to build a line through the area, and created numbered lots of one square mile () each. The SP then decided to reroute. It received the odd-numbered sections of land, totaling about worth. The even-numbered sections were given to homesteaders by the government and were not subject to the events which followed. Given the SP's history of encouraging settlement and development along its lines, land prices were expected to appreciate considerably. Furthermore, the SP's standard practice was to allow settlers to move in on its land as long as they agreed to purchase it when the time came. Lobbying by land speculators led Secretary of the Interior Orville Hickman Browning to reject