Abijah McCall was a co-inventor of the Fresno Scraper, a horse-drawn (and later, tractor-drawn) earth-moving machine upon which modern road- and canal-building equipment is based.
Along with his partner Frank Dusy, McCall devised an improvement on the Buck Scraper, invented by James Porteous.
Porteous purchased the patents held by Dusy and McCall and also a patent held by William Deidrick as he perfected the scraper, which Porteous also manufactured at his factory in Fresno, California.
The scraper was widely used in the Western United States and also put into use by U.S. engineers building the Panama Canal.
McCall reputedly used a Fresno Scraper in building the road which runs through Selma and north to Clovis, California.