John and Peter Roth came to Tulare County in 1878 and acquired and dry-farmed thousands of acres along the Tule River, with holdings extending north through the present Strathmore area. In 1888 they built a grain-loading platform on the west side of the Southern Pacific tracks just north of the site, and the place became known as Roth's Spur. In 1906 the Balfour Guthrie Company of London, which operated the Roth Ranch, laid out a townsite and subdivided the surrounding acreage into small farms. The town was known as Roth, Balfour, and Filo before it finally became Strathmore.