Vice President Frank E. Bigelow and President Kristann Silkwood Mattes, holding the awards, celebrate with the Ponderosa family and team after the company won the Family Legacy Award at The Business Journal's Family Owned Business Awards on Aug. 19. Photo by Devon Jacoby/Backstory

The Business Journal’s Family Owned Business Awards (FOBA) honor multigenerational companies across Fresno, Kings, Madera and Tulare counties. Eight companies were named honorees this year, and four took home awards at our program Wednesday evening. Ponderosa won in the Family Legacy category, for firms with three generations or more. Here’s a closer look at the family behind it.

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Ponderosa Telephone Company began with a problem that sounds almost quaint in an era of gigabit fiber and fixed wireless internet: Leota Bigelow wanted to talk to her mother, who lived a mile away. 

The women ordered two telephones from a catalog and had their husbands string a line between their homes using fences and trees. Neighbors soon wanted connections of their own.

“They wanted to talk to each other,” Ponderosa President and Board Director Kristann Silkwood-Mattes said.

The Bigelow family was already operating stagecoaches through the foothills, delivering U.S. mail with horses and a spring wagon. Its telephone network began in 1908, and within four years the California State Railroad Commission had granted the family 650 square miles of territory under the name Bigelow Telephone Co.

Ponderosa name is born

The company became The Ponderosa Telephone Co. in 1957 — a name the O’Neals-based business continues to carry as a five-generation family operation.

“From there it grew to another neighbor to another neighbor to another neighbor,” said Frank E. Bigelow, Ponderosa vice president and board director. “Then that fateful day came when the Forest Services said, ‘will you take over our lines?’”

“We went from this little O’Neals communication hub to [providing service] all over the Sierras.”

With about 80 employees serving more than 10,000 homes and businesses across roughly 4,000 square miles, that longevity earned Ponderosa recognition in the Family Legacy category of The Business Journal’s 2026 Family Owned Business Awards.

“We are thrilled beyond belief,” Silkwood Mattes said after the company was named an honoree. “It’s always nice to be recognized and for people to understand that it took a village for us to get here.” 

 

Keeping pace at 1,300 feet 

The company staffed a 24-hour switchboard at the Bigelow homestead in the 1940s, introduced dial-tone service to North Fork, Friant and Auberry in the 1950s and installed its first fiber-optic route in 1991. It has since expanded to provide fiber, fixed wireless and DSL internet.

Despite the changes in technology, one challenge remains: delivering modern service to customers separated by miles of mountains, forests, ranchland and granite. 

“It has always been our goal, even though we were an independent, family owned, small phone company which covered a very large area, it has been the goal of the company to keep up with current technology and give the customer the best we can possibly give them,” Silkwood Mattes said. 

Ponderosa said its battery-backed network is especially important during emergencies. The 2020 Creek Fire affected nearly two-thirds of its customer base, damaged infrastructure and threatened the company’s O’Neals headquarters.

“Our goal is to be here and be a business for another century to come,” Silkwood Mattes said. “We’re almost 20 years into the second century of our business and I want it to be there for our family.” 

Preparing for the next generation

Silkwood Mattes and Bigelow represent the company’s fourth generation of family leadership. The family remains involved at the board level while employees serve communities including Auberry, Big Creek, Friant, North Fork, O’Neals, Shaver Lake, Wishon and Tesoro Viejo.

Keeping the Ponderosa name in the family remains a key focus for the century-old company.

“I remember coming down as a little girl and playing in the office with my grandmother while she was doing business,” said Ponderosa board member Shyann Mattes Porter. “It’s always been a cultural perspective of being raised ‘in’ Ponderosa and not being raised necessarily ‘with’ Ponderosa, in terms of growing with it and really being immersed in it even as a child.”

For Ponderosa, succession is not simply about keeping the same name on the door. It is about preserving a culture built around employees, customers and places larger providers can find difficult to reach.

“It’s a family company and it’s always been that way, and that’s the way we continue to keep it,” Silkwood Mattes said. She added that Ponderosa tries to treat its customers and employees as part of the family — an approach the company hopes will continue for decades.