Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1903-10-20
IMPRESSIONS OF CENTRAL
CALIFORNIA.
FRIEND THAYER /;

| 1dA
Last winter | wrote to you giving i'm
pressions of Southern California, ano
as to the small area, of that state which
is so situated geographically that il
can be successfully farmed. For gen
eral farming is not profitable in most
parts of California without irrigation
and successful irrigation requires land
with an even surface and nearly level,
"a gentle slope, sufficient to carry the
water over the surface is best, and
usually the valleys slope gently from
the foot hills. In Southern California
this question of irrigation must be fur
ther complicated by the meager rain
fall in that section which, though suffi-
cient for the present sparse farming
population, will seriously handicap at
tempts to store a sufficiency of water in
the irrigating ponds and reservoirs, by
and by, when increased population
shall greatly increase the present de-
mand for irrigating water. When
wrote to you about Southern California
| promised that | would write later
about the central part of the state,
which | had not then seen. This is a
pretty late fulfillment of my promise,
but may be it is better late that never,
and maybe not
North of the mountains which divide
| Southern California, so called, from the
remainder of the state the rain fall is
greater and gradually increases until
in the Northern counties of the state
the annual precipitation is as large as
in Wisconsin and much larger upon the
coast. North of the latitude of Santa
Cous Bay,-a region comprising nearly
two thirds of the state the rainfall is
sufficient to supply all the needs for irri-
cation, no matter how largely the pres
ent population is augmented by future
immigration. This region of California
has another great advantage over
Southern California in the fact that
farming in many lines can be profitablY
undertaken without irrigation. Wheat
and all the grass crops will grow there
during the rainy season, ,-Septembe to
April, eight months during which rain
falls, about as it does in our Wisconsin
summers. The remaining months
May to August-four months constitute
practically, the winter of this part of
California, in other words the unpro-
ductive season of Nature, when vegeta-
ton dies, and remains dead until the
rains fall again. But there is this differ
ence in favor of California, that where
land can be irrigated, vegetation grows
luxuriantly every month in the year.
Where irrigation is impracticable vege-
tation lives, as IN Wisconsin, only in the
rainy season, but in Wisconsin it can not
live after the rainy season, because the
season that is without rain in Wiscon-
sin is too cold. In California on the
contrary that is the warmest part of the
year Another thing that makes this
part OF California more desirable as a
dwelling place than Southern California
| is the people who live there. Southern
California is a vast Sanitarium, to which
the afflicted in health have flocked and
where they have made their homes.
| This fact has made its impress upon the
population. 1t is lauded as healthy
climate, and no doubt it is healthy
climate. But the average dweller there
does not look healthy. He or she is
alive, however, and probably there are
few other regions in the United States
where they could have lived. Never
theless the impression | received from
seeing such large number of frail look
ing and old people, and so few who
looked young and vigorous, was un-
pleasant.
In Central and Northern California,
however, we find different people,
about the same as-+n Wisconsin or any
where else,-people who in the average
look healthy and vigorous. This part
of California has not been doomed as
health resort, hence those who live
there are there for business of some
sort. They are good looking lot OF
people, mostly native Americans.
While the winter climate of this part
of California is less mild than that OF
Southern California it would not be con-
sidered as winter in Wisconsin. A kill
ing frost seldom comes to any part OF
California, and. except in the noun
tains, there is never snow. There are
no electric storms, no wind storms, no
sudden changes of temperature The
summer temperature is often what Wis
eonsin people would call high, but Cali
fornians claim that there is no recorded
case of sun stroke having occurred
there, and this is because of the small
amount of humidity in the summer
months.
There is about the same difference
between trees in Southern and North
ern Californis, as that which / have re-
ferred to as existing between the peo,
pie. Ihave never seen grapder or nobleI
trees than those that grow wild around
San Francisco bay. The difference in
rain fall accounts for this. In Southern
California there are seven to eight
months of absolute drouth, and four tc
FIVE months during which more or less
rain falls In Northern California
the conditions are reversed, the drough
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