page_title: Stockton, California
section_title: 20th century
hierarchical_section_title: Stockton, California / History / 20th century
caption_attribution_description: English: Stockton Gurudwara.
context_page_description: Stockton is the county seat of San Joaquin County in the Central Valley of the U.S. state of California. Stockton was founded by Captain Charles Maria Weber in 1849 after he acquired Rancho Campo de los Franceses. The city is named after Robert F. Stockton, and it was the first community in California to have a name not of Spanish or Native American origin. The city is located on the San Joaquin River in the northern San Joaquin Valley and had an estimated population of 312,697 by the California Department of Finance for 2019. Stockton is the 13th largest city in California and the 62nd largest city in the United States. It was named an All-America City in 1999, 2004, 2015 and again in 2017.
  Built during the California Gold Rush, Stockton's seaport serves as a gateway to the Central Valley and beyond. It provided easy access for trade and transportation to the southern gold mines. The University of the Pacific, chartered in 1851, is the oldest university in California, and has been located in Stockton since 1923.
context_section_description: On Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 24, 1904, Holt successfully tested the first workable track-laying machine, plowing soggy San Joaquin Valley Delta farmland. Company photographer Charles Clements was reported to have observed that the tractor crawled like a caterpillar, and Holt seized on the metaphor. "Caterpillar it is. That's the name for it."
  On April 22, 1918, British Army Col. Ernest Dunlop Swinton visited Stockton while on a tour of the United States. The British and French armies were using many hundreds of Holt tractors to haul heavy guns and supplies during World War I, and Swinton publicly thanked Holt and his workforce for their contribution to the war effort. During 1914 and 1915, Swinton had advocated basing some sort of armored fighting vehicle on Holt's caterpillar tractors, but without success (although Britain did develop tanks, they came from a separate source and were not directly derived from Holt machines). After the appearance of tanks on the battlefield, Holt built a prototype, the gas-electric tank, but it did not enter production.
  On January 10, 1920, a major fire on Main Street threatened an entire city block. A blaze was discovered in the basement of the Yost-Dohrmann store about 2 a.m., which was gutted, and adjacent businesses were damaged by flames and water. Damage was estimated at $150,000.
   By 1931 the Stockton Electric Railroad Co.. operated 40 streetcars over 28 miles of track.
  Stockton is the site of the first Sikh temple in the United States; Gurdwara Sahib Stockton opened on October 24, 1912. It was founded by Baba Jawala Singh and Baba Wasakha Singh, successful Punjabi immigrants who farmed and owned 500 acres (202 ha) on the Holt River.
  In 1933 the port was modernized, and the Stockton Deepwater Channel, which improved water passage to San Francisco Bay, was deepened and completed. This created commercial opportunities that fueled the city's growth. Ruff and Ready Island Naval Supply Depot was established, placing Stockton in a strategic position during the Cold War. During the Great Depression the town's canning industry became the battleground of a labor dispute resulting in the Spinach Riot of 1937.
  During World War II, the Stockton Assembly Center was built on the San Joaquin County Fairgrounds, a few blocks from what was then the city center. One of 15 temporary detention sites run by the Wartime Civilian Control Administration, the center held some 4,200 Japanese-Americans removed from their West Coast homes under Executive Order 9066, while they waited for transfer to more permanent and isolated camps in the interior of the country. The center opened on May 10, 1942, and operated until October 17, when the majority of its population was sent to Rohwer, Arkansas. The former incarceration site was named a California Historical Landmark in 1980, and in 1984 a marker was erected at the entrance to the fairgrounds.
  In September 1996 the Base Realignment and Closure Commission announced the final closure of Stockton's Naval Reserve Center on Rough and Ready Island. Formerly known as Ruff and Ready Island Naval Supply Depot, the island's facilities had served as a major communications outpost for submarine activities in the Pacific during the Cold War. The site is slowly being redeveloped as commercial property.
caption: First Sikh temple in the United States, Stockton, California, 1912.
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