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Our Genealogy Helper

Introduction ...

So far, we found very little information about Balance Rock. The little that we've found leads us believe that the community is historic.<1>

We've added Balance Rock to our Gazetteer with the hope that we can develop more information. If you can help us with Balance Rock, please Contact Us.

We have a couple of goals for our Gazetteer:

  • That it be a tool which helps us with planning our trips.
  • We're trying to shape our Gazetteer as a tool to help us understand the community in which our ancestors lived, the community that was part of their daily lives.
  • On our trips, we try to visit those places where our ancestors left their footprints.

By learning about Balance Rock (and the surrounding area) during the time that our ancestors lived, we hope to have a better understanding of both their community and its relationship to their lifes. We hope that this tool helps to give us an insight into their world.

As we add data and organize our Gazetteer to help with our family research, we will be adding to this our Genealogical Helper for Balance Rock. While we don't have information that is specific to any given person or family, we intend to expand our understanding about where and how people lived.

Neighboring Counties ...

When searching for family records, we have frequently made the mistake of not checking the neighboring counties.

For example, we have great-grandparents who lived in the northeast corner of their home county. During their lives, most doctors and hospitals were in the next county to the east. Almost all of the nearby churches and cemeteries were in the county to the north.

So when searching for records, we had our best success by looking in neighboring counties instead of the county in which they lived:  their home county contained property and probate records; the county to the east contained birth and death records; the county to the north contained their burial records. If we hadn't included the neighboring counties, we would have missed many valuable sources of information.

If you're in a similar situation, we hope that the following information helps.

Although our information shows that the community of Balance Rock is historic, it would have been located within present day Tulare County.

To see how the shape of California's counties may have changed over time, we recommend the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries.

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Tulare County: Fresno, Inyo, Kern & Kings.

Below are the counties that are near Balance Rock. For each of these counties, we show a sample of those communities that are closest to Balance Rock:

  • Tulare County     (The home county of Balance Rock)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Balance Rock, with the one closest to Balance Rock listed first.
    • Poso Park
      (Less than 2 miles to the northeast)
      • Poso Park is located in Tulare County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Poso Park
    • Panorama Heights
      (Less than 2 miles to the east)
      • Panorama Heights is located in Tulare County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Panorama Heights
    • Sugarloaf Village
      (Less than 2 miles to the northeast)
      • Sugarloaf Village is located in Tulare County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Sugarloaf Village
    • Posey
      (Less than 2 miles to the west)
    • Pine Flat
      (4 miles [6.4 km] to the north)
      • Pine Flat is located in Tulare County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Pine Flat
    • California Hot Springs
      (5 miles [8 km] to the north)
    • White River ‑ Historic
      (10 miles [16.1 km] to the west)
      • White River is located in Tulare County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for White River
    • Roads End ‑ Historic
      (12 miles [19.3 km] to the northeast)
      • Roads End is located in Tulare County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Roads End
      • Former name for Roads End:
      • Pascoe's Pack Station
      • Roads End has also been known as:
      • Roads End Resort
    • Soda Springs
      (17 miles [27.4 km] to the north)
      • Soda Springs is located in Tulare County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Soda Springs
    • South Lake
      (19 miles [30.6 km] to the southeast)
      • South Lake is located in Tulare County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for South Lake
    • Ponderosa
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the north)
      • Ponderosa is located in Tulare County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Ponderosa
    • Ducor
      (22 miles [35.4 km] to the west)
  • Kern County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Balance Rock, with the one closest to Balance Rock listed first.
    • Glennville
      (6 miles [9.7 km] to the southwest)
    • Alta Sierra
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the southeast)
      • Alta Sierra is located in Kern County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Alta Sierra
    • Shirley Meadows
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the southeast)
      • Shirley Meadows is located in Kern County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Shirley Meadows
    • Rogersville ‑ Historic
      (12 miles [19.3 km] to the east)
      • Rogersville is located in Kern County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Rogersville
    • Wofford Heights
      (12 miles [19.3 km] to the southeast)
    • Woody
      (12 miles [19.3 km] to the southwest)
    • Kernville
      (13 miles [20.9 km] to the east)
    • Petersburg ‑ Historic
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the south)
      • Petersburg is located in Kern County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Petersburg
      • Petersburg has also been known as:
      • Greenhorn
    • Isabella ‑ Historic
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the southeast)
      • Isabella is located in Kern County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Isabella
    • Keyesville ‑ Historic
      (14 miles [22.5 km] to the southeast)
      • Keyesville is located in Kern County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Keyesville
      • Former names for Keyesville:
      • Hogeye
      • Keysville
    • Lake Isabella
      (16 miles [25.7 km] to the southeast)
    • Silver City ‑ Historic
      (16 miles [25.7 km] to the southeast)
      • Silver City is located in Kern County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Silver City

For an expanded list of the communities that are closest to Balance Rock, see our County-by-County Page for Balance Rock.

Cemeteries Near Balance Rock ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Balance Rock.

This is a new section and is likely to have errors. If you find an error, such as a missing cemetery or we have the wrong name, please let us know. If you know of them, we would also appreciate learning about previous or alternate names.

Although we don't have the information ourselves, if you need information about a burial or interment, photos, transcripts, how to contact the cemetery or local authorities, please visit our list of websites on our Genealogy Helper Page for Balance Rock - one of the links might be able to help.

If not found below, our Cemetery List for Balance Rock covers a larger area, with the cemeteries listed in alphabetical order.

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Balance Rock, with the one closest to Balance Rock listed first.

Nearby Communities in 1895 ...

We've built the following list with information that came from an Atlas published by Rand McNally in 1895. The Atlas had details such as the population of the community (which appears to have come from the 1890 Census) and whether there was a post office and/or railroad service available. We also indicate if the community no longer exists and is now historic.

While we didn't find Balance Rock in the Atlas, the following 1895 communities would have been found near the current location of Balance Rock.

These communities are listed based on their distance from Balance Rock, with the one closest to Balance Rock listed first.

  • White River ‑ Historic
    (10 miles [16.1 km] to the west)
    • White River is located in Tulare County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for White River
  • Woody
    (12 miles [19.3 km] to the southwest)
  • Kernville
    (13 miles [20.9 km] to the east)
  • Havilah
    (21 miles [33.8 km] to the south)
    • Havilah is located in Kern County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Havilah
  • Globe
    (22 miles [35.4 km] to the northwest)
    • Globe is located in Tulare County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Globe
  • Weldon
    (23 miles [37 km] to the southeast)
  • Terra Bella
    (24 miles [38.6 km] to the northwest)
  • Onyx
    (25 miles [40.2 km] to the east)
  • Plano
    (25 miles [40.2 km] to the northwest)
    • Plano is located in Tulare County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Plano
  • Porterville
    (28 miles [45.1 km] to the northwest)

We've also created an expanded list of communities that existed in the 1890's and were located in the area around Balance Rock. See our List of 1890's Communities around Balance Rock.

Newspapers Published in Balance Rock ...

An ongoing effort between the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has resulted in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).

To share their results, the partnership has created the Chronicling America website. The goal of this partnership is to assemble a database about the current and historic newspapers of the United States. This includes a growing collection of scanned images from selected papers. All of it available to the public on their website.

Using information that we've taken from the Chronicling America website, we've identified 30 newspapers that have been published in the area around Balance Rock.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Balance Rock, there are papers which were published within 28 miles [45.1 km]<5>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Balance Rock.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we first turn to the websites from Cyndi's List, FamilySearch and Genealogy Trails. These professional and volunteer websites offer the information directly or else point to where you can find it. Their information is open to everyone.

To help you get started, the following links will take you to the pages that are relevant to Balance Rock:

Footnotes ...

<1>We use the term 'Historic' broadly and it generally means that the community no longer exists. However, it can also mean that the community might still exist, but was significantly larger or had a more 'official' existence in the past than it does now. Unfortunately our sources of data have proven to be unreliable. If you can provide us with more specific information about Balance Rock, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.
<2>While we're fans and frequent users of TripAdvisor, you should know that we're also members of the TripAdvisor affiliate program.
<3>The Find-a-Grave website is an excellent research tool with information about a cemetery's location and interments. They also offer a forum for their members which can provide additional help. More information about Find-a-Grave can be found on their website: findagrave.com.
<4>To help visualize the location of the cemetery, we've drawn a straight line between the communities of Wofford Heights and Kernville. The cemetery can be found near that line and roughly halfway between the two communities. Remember that this is just an approximate location.
<5>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'straight-line' (or point-to-point) distance. A straight line distance ignores things like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line drawn from Point A (ie- Balance Rock) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.