The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-07-05

creeks. The smoke of rude cabins lay
misty at daybreak along the footnllIs.
Dark and rich the valleys lay, upturned oy
the pillow and soon, as springtide bright
ened, wheat and barley grew nightly for
the first time as in thousands OF new-con-
quered valleys these thousands OF years,
when the herdsman goes and the husband
man comes.
The squarters left the Sunols the quarter
section Of land they lived on"-that seemed
to the frontier mind ample justice. The cat
tie, however, wandered of snd were snot
or butchered The horses OF the Sunols.
used only to saddle work, were curlousiy
useless for farming purposes After few
years the Spanish settlers, as well as the
newcomers, grew hay and grain, but the
Spaniards never seemed TO get the hang OF
successful American farming. Still they
held to the remaining fragment OF their
ranch.
Now, as it happened, this remnant was
one of the finest parts of the original
tract 1t lay along the door of the valley,
sloping south and east The mountains
sheltered it, and two creeks watered IL
abundantly. Over portion were oaks ana
sycamores; the rest was peculiarly wen
adapted for horticultural uses. 1t was SOIL
for the walnut, almond, olive and grape;
soil for the flower industry of Provence
or the lemon groves of Sicily. But no one
dreamed of any such evolution; 1t had
been pasture land, worthless in the eyes OF
the owner, and when transferred thrown
in" with the cattle it fed. 1t had become,
by change of government and the axes OF
Suffers tiume-builders, acceptable wneat
land worth ten dollars an acre.
Twenty years later it found another use.
There was railroad built, link OF the
transcontinental line, and 1t swung
through the wheat fields. Spectators
followed, bought up the old Don's home
tract, bought other tracts, laid out towns,
made and lost fortunes. Pretty soon men
began to discover that wheat-growlng did
not pay any longer. The soil was worn
out: taxes were too high India and Man
itoba were competitors. The Sunol valley
wheat ralsers were going into bankruptcy
almost as fast as the herdsmen had done
a few decades earlier. The third evolution
of the California ranch was at hand.
Small family orchards were common
enough, but now the commercial orchard
began to appear. in tracts of five acres, In
vast expanses of 100 or 200 acres. The
same thing was going on in other Califor-
mia valleys and the centers OF the most
extensive fruit growing development
seemed to be about the old Spanish ranch
houses. The richest soil, the best climate,
the finest conditions for successful hortl-
culture. are in the places picked out with
unerring judgment by priests and pion-
GERS of the bygone century.
Children of the first American settlers
are now transforming every acre OF grain
land to orchard gardens. whose products
are shipped to distant markets In fresh,
canned and dried forms.
The area of the original grant, In It's
palmy pastoral days, supported one family
in ease, and gave employment to hundred
servitors. Broken up into wheat farms, IL
created two villages, maintained hum
dred families in an increasing comfort, and
gave employment to three or four hundred
laborers Again, subdlvlded, iertiilzed
with all the accumulated capital that can
be obtained for the purpose, 1t begins to
show itself capable of another ten, twenty,
thirty, or fifty-fold multiplication OF Its
productiveness. Its people are building
costly houses, its villages are becoming
larger and more pleasant to live IN, every
acre of land requires more labor than ten
acres of wheat used TO need, and Is able TO
Justify better wages and more permanent
employment.
The story begins to broaden strangely
and almost beyond belief. The California
ranch of a coast range village that L have
endeavored to set forth under the name OF
Sunol, is usually but type and yet not a
complete type, for SO many OF the ola
ranches have gone through similar trans
formation, to suddenly reach period OF
differentiation. As pastoral homes OF the
last century they were very much alike;
as districts devoted to wheat raising and
mixed farming, they were In many re-
spects alike; as tree-gardens, vine-gardens,
rose-gardens, each one of them begins to
shape its own career. In one the punches
of Flame Tokays ripen where of old Span
ish dons sat in the sun; in another the
oranges of Seville, Bahia and Sorrento
CLEAN brilliantly where vaqueros once
branded cattle. / look out every morning
on an olive grove that stands upon Span
Il - -
A Spanish ranch of $1,000 acres In any
part of California, after passing through
the changes briefly outlined IN the fore
going paragraphs, becomes little world
of its own. Somewhere within its limits
all the fruits and flowers of the seml-tropic
lands are produced. and yet the end of the
period-the complete horticultural fulfill
ment of the possibilities of the ranch-is
an end that appears very remote. The
potency of thousands of future orchards
seems to lie in fields yet implanted, and In
these, again, the peasant-gardens, the rose
acres of still more intensive Horticulture,
are folded like germs in the winters bud.
Some of these more typical ranches are
so situated that they can rise, or already
have risen, through fourth change, to
the life suburban. They were orchards
for a few years, now they are chiefly
homes, colonies, places TO which men of
means retire. Orchards and gardens, once
the chief industries, become incidental
attractions, but not primary occupations.
Even here, however the currents iiuctuate,
and horticulture never loses its interest
and value. The home acre is planted and
adds to the income; each town, like Baby
lon, could provision Itself against a siege.
Beyound the suburban nothing lies.
The ranch that is close built upon by some
CITY is no more ranch. The ancient and
honorable pueblos of Los Angeles, San
Jose, Santa Barbara, once marked out in
plots by forgotten governors, have been
translated to another region, where they
deal with problems social and municipal.
The ranches that will always remain
sufficiently rural to keep singing birds in
their orchards, even on the main streets of
their villages. are the ranches that give
California its fame. There are many such
that will be ranches centuries from now,
though change follows change and growth
succeeds to growth, as the sea-green corn
silk is followed by the full corn in the ear.
The story that / have told is only leaf
from the records that lie scattered along
the line of human toll. Men come in, pos
sess a land. make it beautiful, die and
disappear; other races wander over their
ruined dwellings. Mexico. Peru, Arizona,
Yucatan, had after some fashion their
growth in knowledge of the use of land:
Asia is crowded with the desert-buried
wrecks of gardens; in Africa dried-up wells
and stumps of palms tell the same story of
change; for many times, perhaps, in the
elder lands, men planted their successive
orchards on the same piece of ground. IL
was the pasture of a Kettle shepherd ::
conquering Greek coonists set olives
there q Roman brought grated apple
trees from Pliny's estate; one of King
Pepin's noblemen chose the place for his
VINEYARD: a Crusader planted figs and