Every property service available in Knights Ferry
Each trade carries a Knights Ferry page, written for a community the County designates historical from end to end. Five trades answer at any hour; the others are scheduled once a request is in.
Emergency restoration and mitigation
Debris and hauling
Construction and reconstruction
Building envelope and structure
Site and paving
Maintenance
What Knights Ferry buildings need, and when
Knights Ferry is an 1849 mining town that the County protects as a whole. It was named after Captain William Knight, became the county seat in 1862, and is California Historical Landmark No. 347. The community is predominantly older single-family houses with some older commercial and fraternal structures, two to two and a half storeys, sided in beveled or shiplap wood, with masonry in sandstone or river cobbles.
This corner of the county is wetter than the valley floor, and the maintenance year follows. The gauge just west of town records 18.92 inches a year, with 3.62 in December, 3.47 in January, 3.01 in February and 2.87 in March, against one or two hundredths of an inch in July and August. Roofs, gutters, porch floors and the drainage behind retaining walls are checked before December; painting, siding and paving run through the dry summer. The water supply itself changes with the calendar.
The Stanislaus River supplies the town and sets its limits. From March to October the community services district takes piped surface water from the irrigation district; from November to February a river pump meets demand, installed during a canal rebuild and never removed. The district serves about seventy connections from its own treatment plant, and there is no sanitary sewer system at all.
The dated events here are on the roads into town. On 10 December 2022 the Weather Service logged roadway flooding near the Highway 120/108 and Kennedy Road junction; on 10 January 2023 a thunderstorm wind put a tree across Schell Road; and on 14 March 2023 the Highway Patrol reported water across Highway 108 where the roadway dips down.
Knights Ferry areas served
These eight places are covered separately on every Knights Ferry page, because a river-side lot and a Main Street frontage need different repairs.
Main Street historic core
Buildings sit back a uniform distance, which the standards say creates a close feeling; it is the only street in town that is not narrow.
Sonora Road
Sonora Road bisects the community; the services district board meets at the Miller's Hall Library at 17631, and the state landmark stands along it.
Residential side streets sloping to the river
Large lots with very little cut and fill, held by low walls of sandstone, cobble or concrete, on narrow streets with random setbacks.
Sandstone and river-cobble masonry buildings
The masonry here is sandstone or river cobbles, and the County's checklist warns against high cement repointing, sandblasting and water-repellent coatings.
Covered Bridge Road and the Knights Ferry Recreation Area
The Corps of Engineers runs its Stanislaus River Parks headquarters and information centre at 17968, beside a 330-foot covered bridge.
Stanislaus River frontage and Goodwin Canyon
The town sits north of the river, below a diversion dam built above it in 1913 and four miles of rapids.
Kennedy Road and the Highway 108/120 junction
The access named in the Community Plan: the highway runs south of the river, and the Kennedy and Sonora Roads intersection leads in.
Williamson Act farmland to the north (Frymire Road, Cemetery Road)
Large parcels north of the community are under Williamson Act contracts and designated Agriculture, with Frymire and Cemetery Roads labelled on the plan map.
Questions from Knights Ferry owners and managers
The emergency window here is 120 to 140 minutes, at any hour, over twenty-eight road miles from the Modesto base by way of Oakdale. Highway 108/120 runs south of the river and the Kennedy and Sonora Roads intersection is the way in. December and January fog pushes arrival toward the later end of the window.
Within the historical community, development has to comply with the County's Knights Ferry Historical Standards. Their checklist asks for deteriorated features to be repaired rather than replaced, and for a replacement to match in material, design, colour and texture; roof coverings are to match the old in composition, size, shape, colour and texture. Permits come from the Stanislaus County Building Permits Division in Modesto.
Yes. A property with a house on a side street and a shed or shop on the same slope is entered once per address, and each carries its own photographs, scope and schedule in the client area. A loss that runs from drying into carpentry and repainting stays with a single contact.
Water damage restoration, fire and smoke damage, mold remediation, storm damage and board-up and biohazard cleanup hold the emergency line. Every other trade, from junk and debris hauling through roofing, siding, dry rot, structural work, paving, concrete and the maintenance programmes, is requested through the form and scheduled once the scope is agreed.
Most houses here stand on large lots that slope to the river, with the slope held by low walls of sandstone, stone, river cobbles or concrete. When a burst pipe or a wet December saturates the ground behind one of those walls, the wall carries the load with the water in it, so the drainage behind it and the wall itself are looked at alongside the building.
Property services near Knights Ferry
