History of Stone Land Company
The Early Years
Lawrence Melville (Stoney) Stone
L.M. Stone was born in Michigan in 1888. He moved to Corcoran, CA in the San Joaquin Valley in 1913, as a land developer working for the Kings County Development Company. His role was to develop the land on the west side of the valley for agricultural use. He would drill wells for irrigation, plant an array of crops and set up demonstration farms to see what crops could be grown in the region. The main objective was to prepare the land to be sold as farmsteads. He had two children, Dortha and Jack born in 1913 and 1917, respectively. His son Jack would go on to create J.G. Stone Land Company.
Original Map showing the parcels for Kings County Development Company (red boxes).
Jack Stone-The Early Years
Jack Stone was born on November 11, 1917. He went on to both University of California Davis and University of California Berkeley after high school to study engineering. After he finished his schooling, he began to farm in 1940 near the city of Five Points, CA. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Jack decided to serve his country by joining the army in 1941. After basic training, he went straight into the Engineer’s Officer Training School, eventually joining the Army Corps of Engineers. He was sent to France, where he helped build bridges, prisoner camps and a plethora of other infrastructure that was needed for the war effort in the European theater. He fought with General Patton’s 3rd army in the Battle of the Bulge, as it was all hands-on deck. After World War II ended, he retired from the military as a Major in the Army Corps of Engineers. He moved back to Kings County and recreated the J.G. Stone Land Company.
Stone Land Company is Born
In 1946, Jack began to farm in Kings County and he called it the J.G. Stone Land Company. He married his wife Hilda and had his two sons Bill and John in 1946 and 1947, respectively. He took some advice from his father and found some good ground that needed a lot of work. He was up for the task and took it head on. The early years were far from profitable. The amount of leveling that needed to be done was intense. He farmed mostly grains and cotton at this time, solely off well water. He purchased his home ranch of 400 acres in 1951, all rangeland for cattle. Shortly after, times were tough and he had to sell one of his properties on the west side of the valley in order to make ends meet, he would eventually repurchase that property in 1974. The 1970’s is when the ranch started to turn things around. Due to the restriction on the amount of cotton acres one could farm, he purchased a property along the Kings River in Lemoore, CA to increase his cotton acres.
Central Valley Project-Game Changer
In 1963, the aqueduct was created in the region. Jack was able to lay a pipeline to the aqueduct and start to use some of the surface water, which greatly increased production. After graduating from Cal Poly University, Bill joined his dad on the farm with his brother John following the same path after a year in the National Guard in 1971. He later passed away in 1976 in an aviation accident. By 1970, Westlands Irrigation District was able to put the infrastructure in to allow water from the Central Valley Project to be used across all of his acres out at our current location. It changed how farming was done altogether, now with both good quality water and great soil, it allowed the farm to diversify. It also helped that the grain price greatly improved during this period. Stone Land began to grow crops for seed such as lettuce, eggplant, peppers and watermelons. The addition of his sons to the farm allowed Jack to get involved with a number of different committees. He was president of the Westland’s Water District and president of the National Cotton Council. He was also a president of the Western Cotton Growers Association. He became instrumental in fighting to help farmers. By this time, he was convinced that the ranch was going to be a truly family run operation with longevity, so in 1982, he dropped the J.G. and began to call it Stone Land Company.
Stone Land Company - To Present
Bill Stone married his wife Ann and had four daughters: Amie, Sally, Christy and Jackie. He continually worked besides his father to expand and grow the business. In 2000, Tony Azevedo who is married to Bill’s oldest daughter Amie, began helping out on the farm. He had helped start a spraying business that had expanded into airplane, helicopter and ground rigs: Blair. In 2005, Tony took over as the ranch manager and helped drive it into diversification and advancement in farming technologies such as GPS guided tractors and drip irrigation systems. His wife Amie, and her sister Sally continue to run the office portion of Stone Land. Currently Bill has fourteen grandkids, many of them having remained interested in continuing the family’s farming legacy.
