Homestead mailing list

["Don Bowen" <don.bowen AT earthlink.net>]

> Boo-hoo, I'm in a desert and there's no water to farm.  You reckon!?

At one time there was sufficient rain to provide the seasonal food needed by
California plus plenty of grain to export.  A good part of the Los Angles
area was sloughs with readily available water.  San Diego and Riverside
counties have sufficient winter rain to grow most grain crops and some tree
crops.  There was sufficient year round ground water for many truck gardens.
The Owens Valley was lined with farms and the great Tulare lake provided
water for much of the food for the miners.  The area now known as Silicon
Valley had many orchards watered only by annual rainfall and the area south
of there near Gilroy and Hollister provided most of the hay and dairy
products for San Francisco.

What has changed is population growth.  More and more people wanted to live
there and the best places to build were the well watered and mostly flat
farm lands.  The natural harbors of San Francisco and San Diego provided
ready access for commerce and San Francisco provided access to the inland
valleys.  Early politicians knew that more water was needed so various
schemes trapped water and allowed more control

The Owens Valley water was stolen for the greed of the Otis and Chandler
families.  They owned huge swatches of land in the San Fernando Valley that
water suddenly made very valuable.  They also owned the two biggest
newspapers in Los Angles and were bitter rivals in everything but greed.

Tulare lake was dried up when the water was impounded in Lake Isabella for
"Flood Control." Farmers bought worthless lake bottom land for almost
nothing that became very valuable when dried out and irrigated with free
water from the Corps of Engineers.  Fresno Country is now the no 1
agricultural country in the US.

Don Bowen  KI6DIU
http://www.braingarage.com/Dons/Travels/journal/Journal.html