The Mussel Slough Tragedy was a dispute over land titles

Title (property)

Title is a legal term for a bundle of rights in a piece of property in which a party may own either a legal interest or an equitable interest. The rights in the bundle may be separated and held by different parties. It may also refer to a formal document that serves as evidence of ownership...

 between settler

Settler

A settler is a person who has migrated to an area and established permanent residence there, often to colonize the area. Settlers are generally people who take up residence on land and cultivate it, as opposed to nomads...

s and the Southern Pacific Railroad

Southern Pacific Railroad

The Southern Pacific Transportation Company , earlier Southern Pacific Railroad and Southern Pacific Company, and usually simply called the Southern Pacific or Espee, was an American railroad....

 (SP) that took place on May 11, 1880, on a farm located 5.6 miles (9 km) northwest of Hanford, California

Hanford, California

Hanford is an important commercial and cultural center in the south central San Joaquin Valley and is the county seat of Kings County, California. It is the principal city of the Hanford-Corcoran, California Metropolitan Statistical Area , which encompasses all of Kings County, including the cities...

, in the central San Joaquin Valley

San Joaquin Valley

The San Joaquin Valley is the area of the Central Valley of California that lies south of the Sacramento – San Joaquin River Delta in Stockton...

, leaving seven people dead. Frank Norris

Frank Norris

Benjamin Franklin Norris, Jr. was an American novelist, during the Progressive Era, writing predominantly in the naturalist genre. His notable works include McTeague , The Octopus: A Story of California , and The Pit .-Life:Frank Norris was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1870...

' 1901 novel, The Octopus: A Story of California, was inspired by this incident, as was W. C. Morrow

W. C. Morrow

William Chambers Morrow was an American writer, now noted mainly for his short stories of horror and suspense...

's 1882 novel Blood-Money. The exact history of the incident has been the source of some disagreement, largely because popular anti-railroad sentiment in the 1880s made the incident to be a clear example of corrupt and cold-blooded corporate greed.