William Semple Green arrived in San Francisco via the Panama route on Oct. 10, 1849, and reached Colusi County on July 6, 1850. He served as a ferry boat captain, mail carrier, surveyor, editor, writer, legislator, Surveyor General of the United States, California State Treasurer, irrigationist, and friend of man. On Dec. 18, 1880, he posted the first water notice on an oak tree on the west bank of the Sacramento River immediately east of this spot for the diversion of 500,000 miner’s inches of water for the irrigation of lands on the west side of the Sacramento Valley.