The Colville examiner. [volume] (Colville, Wash.) 1907-1948, 1922-03-04
John B,SIater Tells
About California
The Overland Trip South
From San Francisco Has
Much Interest

San Diego, Cal.-Dear Examiner:
From Stockton to Bakersfield the
distance is approximately $50 miles
every foot of which is traversed by
concrete roadway from 16 to 20 feet
wide over a country that is level.
This is through the San Joaquin val
lev the width of which is about 4O
miles between foothills, and three
times as wide when the uplands are
included. From Bakersfield south to
the foot of the Tehachapi range is
30 miles farther. The San Joaquin
valley contains an area OF over
10000 square miles. Twenty years
ago most of this was waste--a veri-
table desert-populated in most part
by natives of old Spanish extraction,
and the lands were considered of so
little value that they remained intact
under the original Spanish grant and
were scarcely taxed. 1t was an i'm
mense cattle range. Today there are
over 100000 acres of this land un-
der irrigation and producing. These
lands are valued and selling for 81 900
an acre and up. Where then a popu-
lation of a few thousand pursued
precarious existence, today more than
half a million people live in happy
homes and flourish in opulence.
Really, the starting point at the
north for a trip through the San
Joaquin valley is Lodi, a dozen miles
north of Stockton. Lodi is the home
of the Flame Tokay grape and is
probably the most thickly settled ru-
raj district west of the Rockies. 1t
is also the home of Walter Thomas
Mills whose fame as reformist has
reached into the homes of all men,
bers of the non partisan league
wheresoever they may be dispersed
over the U. S. A. From thence we
ride for miles and miles through an
ever changing panorama OF laden or
chards and vineyards, fiourishing wal
nut and almond groves, and blossom
ing alfalfa fields. Perhaps the most
pleasing and significant feature OF
the region at the outset is the con-
slant recurrence of prosperous and
we'll ordered farm homes in their
fresh garden settings.
Gradually, as the traveller speeds
southwark, the scene changes and we
observe the garden activities dimin-
ishing as we recede from the San
Francisco bay market, and the pre-
dominance of agricultural growth
runs to cereals, melons, sugar beets,
hay and such other products as can
be economically handled in bulk and
are not a care between seed time and
harvest. Large dairies in this part
of the valley are the rule and fed
from local production. An occasional
sugar factory rears it's volume out
of large section of beet land where
it's influence gives rise to consider
able town. In this relation Modesto
is famous for it's butter, Manteka for
it's sugar factories and Lodi for its
grapes.
Agriculture in the San Joaquin
valley is carried on under systems
of irrigation, the water being drawn
from the river by canals which
simply vary the current from the
main sluggish channel to equally
morbid canals. The valley is great
basin which, if the soil were removed,
would be one of the largest fresh
water lakes in America. When the
river dries down to stagnant pools in
the heat of summer, water is pump
ed from the abundant depths of the