1844: Don Juan Pacheco builds an adobe fortress near Los Banos.
1849: Col. Andrew Jackson Grayson, who led a wagon train to California three years earlier, starts the town that bears his name.
1850s: German immigrant Henry Miller begins buying a vast empire of land and cattle stretching over several states, from headquarters in Los Banos.
1864: President Lincoln signs a land grant bought two years later by John D. Patterson, whose descendants eventually found a colony in the family name.
1875: Dick Collins kills a shepherd and becomes the last person executed by hanging in Stanislaus County, at Hills Ferry, east of Newman.
1880s: Railcars begin rumbling through the West Side.
1886: A drowning claims John Westley Van Benschoten, whose second name lives on in the town.
1888: Newman is founded by Simon Newman and incorporates 20 years later.
1907: Los Banos incorporates.
1915: Gustine becomes a city. The Bald Eagle Mine opens in hills to the west and operates until 1944.
1919: Patterson becomes a city.
1929: The landmark Westley Hotel is built.
1933: Highway 33 runs through the West Side, stretching 290 miles through nine counties, from Tracy to Ventura.
1935: Dos Palos becomes a city.
1962: President Kennedy inaugurates San Luis Dam near Santa Nella.
1978: Larry Singleton rapes Mary Vincent and chops off her forearms in hills west of Patterson.
1994: The West Side Community Hospital near Newman closes.
1996: The Crows Landing Naval Air Station closes and is acquired by Stanislaus County eight years later.
1998: Del Puerto Hospital in Patterson closes.
1999: Lightning ignites a pile of about 7million tires that accumulated over four decades in a canyon near Westley, spewing black smoke and toxins for 34days.
2004: Patterson officials discover 400 undeposited checks worth more than $8million in development fees, some dating back five years, in a consultant's file at City Hall.
2006: The Del Puerto Hotel, a Patterson landmark since 1911 that burned in 1996, is rebuilt and becomes City Hall. Trevor Branscum of Gustine kills his four children as they sleep, then himself.
FEBRUARY: Stanislaus County supervisors choose PCCP West Park and owner Gerry Kamilos to develop a 4,560-acre industrial complex on the former naval air base at Crows Landing.
MAY: Anna Walker of Grayson gets a 300-day sentence after admitting she had sex with two teenage boys and gave beer to teens injured later in a car crash.
