A Wowol Yokuts village called Chaw-Lo-Win stood here on an island in Old Tulare Lake, once the largest fresh water lake in California. In 1859 Allen Atwell and Isaac Goldstein claimed the island and ferried hogs to it on rafts to fatten on tule roots, then took them to the north shore and drove them to mines and villages for sale. Known as Hog Island, Root Island, and Atwell's Island, it later became the site of the first ship built on Tulare Lake, the Mose Andross, which Atwell built in 1875 as a 50 foot long by 15 foot wide flat bottomed schooner and changed to a side wheel steamer in 1876. The vessel carried hogs and cattle and was used for fishing until the lake subsided and left it stranded on dry land. The dry lake bed was then used for cattle grazing for many years until 1906, when J.O. Brubaker organized investors into a company that bought 8,861 acres of lake bed land to subdivide into small farms. The town was laid out on high ground and named Alpaugh after John Alpaugh, one of the company's members, with 96 business lots, 708 residential lots, and sites for a church and school. At first, artesian wells supplied both water and natural gas, but after a few years they failed, and drilled wells did not produce enough water. In 1915 an irrigation district was formed and canals were built to bring enough water for crops. The first school and post office opened in 1906, the first church, Lutheran, in 1909, and the first high school in 1913.