San Diego County CA Archives History - Books .....Production 1888
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Book Title: The City And County Of San Diego

CHAPTER XIII.
PRODUCTION.

   WHILE San Diego County can raise almost anything as well as any other part of
the State there are some things that it can raise much better. It is now
conceded at Los Angeles and Riverside that San Diego County lemons lead their
very best. Over and over again they have taken the highest premiums at the fairs
of Los Angeles and Riverside, a thing that could not be done except by merit so
great as to override at once all possible doubt.

   While very few pears have as yet been grown here they, too lead the coast.
The following list of awards to the Kimball Brothers, of National City, at the
great exposition at New Orleans in 1884-85, is a judgment from which at present
there is no appeal. If San Diego County in its infancy can win such a judgment,
there will be little use in contesting it when she is older.

   No. 2.—Best collection, ten varieties, oranges from ANY STATE OR FOREIGN
COUNTRY IN THE WORLD—First Degree of Merit (Silver Medal and $50).

   No. 3.—Best collection, fifteen varieties, grown in THE STATE OF
CALIFORNIA—First Degree of Merit (Silver Medal and $75).

   No. 4.—Best collection, ten varieties, oranges grown in THE STATE OF
CALIFORNIA—First Degree of Merit (Silver Medal and $50).

   No. 5.—Best collection, five varieties oranges grown in THE STATE OF
CALIFORNIA—First Degree of Merit (Silver Medal and $25).

   No. 6.—Best General Exhibit of Citrus Fruits, other than oranges from THE
STATE OF CALIFORNIA—First Degree of Merit (Silver Medal and $50).

   No. 7.—Best orange, "Acapulco"—First Degree of Merit and $5.

    No. 8.—Best orange, "Creole"—First Degree of Merit and $5.

   No. 9.—Best orange, "Malise Oval," $5.

   No. 10.—Best orange, "Osceola"—First Degree of Merit and $5.

   No. 11.—Best orange, "St. Michael's"—First Degree of Merit and $5.

   No. 12.—Best orange, "St. Michael's Egg"—First Degree of Merit and $5.

   No. 13.—Best lemon, "Eureka "—First Decree of Merit and $5.

   No. 14.—Best lime, "Giant Seedling"—First Degree of Merit and $5.

   No. 15.—Best collection, five varieties, pears grown within the limits of
PACIFIC DISTRICT—First Degree of Merit and $15.

   No. 16.—Best plate of any variety pears grown in Pacific District— First
Degree of Merit and $10.

   No. 18.—Best "Hacheya" Japan Persimmons grown in the United States—First
Degree of Merit and $10.

   The first fourteen First Premiums were awarded to Kimball Brothers. The last
four First Premiums were awarded to Frank A. Kimball. There are fully two
hundred thousand acres in this county upon which lemons and oranges fully equal
to these can be raised, and in many places even better ones are possible, and
even on the National Rancho the best lands are not yet planted.

   Had the apricots or raisin grapes of the county been in season so as to be on
exhibition they too would have walked off with all the prizes. The apricots
especially are so much superior in flavor to those of the North that no locality
now pretends to question their eminence, while the raisins of El Cajon, the
Sweetwater Valley and other places have been pronounced by the best judges the
best in the world. And there are thousands of acres in every direction where
equally good ones can be raised.

   Apples, peaches, and plums fully equal to those of the North are grown along
the lowlands here; but those of the mountains excel those of the coast. The same
is the case with all berries and small fruits. Most of these can be grown nearly
to perfection on the lowlands but in the mountains all that can stand heavy
frosts reach their fullest excellence. Cherries, raspberries, blackberries,
gooseberries, currants, strawberries, etc., can all be seen at Mesa Grande
bearing in abundance large fruit of the finest flavor, and without irrigation.
The same is done at Julian and can be done as low down as Santa Maria and Bear
Valley. The superiority of nearly all deciduous fruits and vegetables grown in
these mountains will in time make them extremely valuable; for the wealthy
Californian is the spoiled child of luxury and will have the best, cost what it
may.

   All sorts of fancy fruits grow in this county to the finest stage of
excellence: the guavas, the Japanese persimmon, the pomegranate, and a score of
others. Some of these, like the guava, will soon have a commercial value for
jelly or canning, while others, like the Japanese persimmons, Japanese plums,
etc., will always be an excellent addition to the list of table fruits. The
almond is not a prolific bearer anywhere in the South, though otherwise a
beautiful tree; but the English walnut has done marvelously well at Agua Tibia,
El Cajon, and other places where it has been tried, while all varieties of fig
trees hang full of excellent fruit and often do so without irrigation,
cultivation, or any care. Like the fig, the olive thrives almost anywhere on the
lowlands without care or water, though like the fig and everything else it will
do better with both. Peaches also do very well, though those of the mountains
are much the best as well as the most prolific.

   Fancy trees, bushes, shrubbery, flowers of all varieties, the camphor tree,
rubber tree, banana, palms, and a thousand other things seen only in
green-houses in the East, grow here with little or no trouble, though such
things as the banana require a place quite free from frost, and also from wind.

   Most kind of vegetables grow in winter and many kinds, such as peas, turnips,
onions, beets, cabbage, carrots and cauliflower then grow the best. The tomato,
if planted above the frost belt, becomes a perennial, growing year after year,
climbing often over a small house and bearing the year round. Melons, beans,
corn, egg plant, and similar tender things must generally be grown in summer;
for though they may live in winter the nights are too cool to allow them to
thrive. But other tender plants like the potato are raised in the dead of winter
if planted on slopes or mesas above the frost line of the valleys. Many products
have not yet been tried and the capabilities of the land are not yet half known.
Nor will they be for many a day, because it by no means follows that if a plant
fails in a certain kind of soil, or at a certain elevation, or at a certain
distance from the coast, it will fail anywhere else.

   Some fruits here bear ripe fruit all the year, like the tomato and lemon.
Others half the year, like the strawberry when well treated, though the
strawberry may bear a little all the year round. But most things have their
regular seasons as in the East, though it is often much longer, as with grapes,
melons, etc.

   There are now growing in the county according to the latest returns of the
assessor: 58,208 lemon trees, 102,013 orange, 51.571 olive, 35,-0S6 apple,
26,849 pear, 30,918 peach, 3,595 quince, 72,719 fig. 3,317 prune, 2,359 cherry,
1,217 nectarine, 4,254 plum, 93,572 apricot.

   San Diego County has shipped in one season the enormous quantity of two
million seventy-five thousand pounds of honey. Immense shipments of wool, wheat,
cattle, hides, etc., have been made in the past; but the day for all such things
is over except as mere accessories to other things. The whole county is being
fast devoted, like the rest of Southern California, to more profitable and
pleasant industries and the making of luxurious homes.

   The reader may be surprised at the small amount of arable land in the county
in proportion to its whole extent. An Eastern State or county having such a
great amount of untillable land would generally be pronounced very poor. Yet San
Bernardino County is, in this respect, far worse than San Diego County. Santa
Barbara and Ventura are no better, and Los Angeles County, with all its wealth,
is almost as bad.

   The name "Southern California," or "South California," is now generally
limited to the three lower counties. These embrace nearly all the choice fruit
belts and finest climates, and all the other advantages which are now drawing
such a stream of wealthy settlers. Vet these three counties, with an acreage of
about twenty-seven million acres, cannot muster much over two million acres
which from present standpoints can be fairly called tillable.

   But what a two million they are! Nowhere else does the sun shine upon their
like; and nothing approaching them lies outside of California. "Fifteen years
ago fully one-half of these was considered almost worthless except for stock
range. To-day that half is far more valuable than the other, and the most
readily saleable at from three to five tunes the price the other half will
bring. A land where such a change of values could be so sudden and so great is
certainly beyond any ordinary standard of value. It erects its own standard, and
compels all old-time political economy and business principles to bow to it.
There is but one South California on earth; a residence there is a luxury. The
amount of its land is limited; people will have it; therefore it commands the
price of a luxury and not of mere farming or garden land. It is quite useless to
quarrel with these prices, to repeat the ancient joke about buying climate with
the land thrown in. It is quite immaterial whether it is the climate or the
land. The prices are nevertheless paid. and the stream of climate-seekers keeps
increasing. The rich refugees have been coming so long in such constantly
increasing force, so many of them are delighted with the land, buy, build, and
do all they can to induce their friends to do the same, that climate now forms a
solid basis of values with the advantage of being quite unchangeable except by
some grand convulsion of nature. Such climate beneath the flag of the United
States is an article whose supply is limited yet with an ever-increasing demand.
Those who are fast building towns on lately bare plains, and perching fine
houses on slopes and mesas that nobody would have a few years ago, have come
here mainly for climate. The soil and its capabilities are of secondary
importance. If a beautiful place under a fine climate can be made profitable, so
much the better; but if it cannot, no matter; the residence and its climate must
be had.

   Two consequences necessarily arise from this kind of settlement: First,
higher prices than the land might seem to justify as mere farming or gardening
land; second, a large amount of production, often experimental, often fancy and
even extravagant, which is of course unprofitable. From this a visitor too often
infers that the prices of land are too much inflated, and that all production is
necessarily expensive.

   The limited amount of land, and the steadily increasing demand for it,
sufficiently settle the question of inflation. If such conditions do nut create
value there is no such thing as intrinsic value, and every value rests only upon
fancy.

   While farming and fruit raising often cost a little more than in some parts
of the East, they cannot be called expensive, and certainly [ire profitable,
where conducted on any business principles. So many experiments have had to be
made, and so much trouble has been had with transportation facilities,
commission merchants, and various other things, that production has not always
been profitable in the past. But a great change has of late taken place. Until
three years ago not an orange from California went east of the Rocky Mountains.
Railroads suddenly concluded that living rates were better than prohibitory
rates, and a reduction started shipments. In 1SS5 twelve hundred car loads found
a ready and paying market from St. Paul to St. Louis, and far to the east of
both. In 1886 the shipment has been far greater, and regular fruit trains are
now run on express time to the East. Before this the only market was San
Francisco, which of course was easily glutted. Moreover, the finer varieties of
oranges had not been long enough planted to produce much, and the proper mode of
cultivating even the old trees had but just been discovered. It was much the
same with lemon growing, with the additional disadvantage of not knowing how to
preserve lemons until the foreign lemons were out of the Eastern market—a thing
just discovered within two years and now a complete success. Raisin-growing has
gone through much the same stages. Growers had to learn how to prune, to
irrigate, to cultivate, to pick, to pack, to label and to market, and had to
learn it all from their own experience. Few people have ever learned so rapidly
as the fruit-growers of Southern California, and although some things remain to
be known, four-fifths of the work is done. Ingrowing, picking, packing, selling,
etc., as well as canning, wine-making, drying, or curing of any kind, the
present now has the experience of the past without the expense of the education;
and the orchards and vineyards of Southern California are now among the most
profitable of the world, the yield of many of the older ones now almost
surpassing belief. Space will permit no tables of estimates of profits. They can
be found in a hundred immigration documents, and if the reader will take the
pains to annex qualifications, which a moderate amount of experience and common
sense will readily suggest, he cannot be misled by them. The most extravagant of
them is generally literally true, but may represent especially favorable
conditions. All of them represent work and sound business principles, to which
they are generally due more than to peculiar conditions. You will find no land
where work is more indispensable to success than here, and none where it will
bring the same heaping measure of results. Where you see unprofitable farming or
fruit-raising you will nearly always find a man who came to California to make
money without work, or who, having means to hire labor, has plunged into some
new thing on too large a scale instead of feeling his wav, or who, loaded with
Eastern conceit, has disregarded the experience of others, or one who has run a
ranch as a baby would run a candy shop.

   Ordinary farming is in such a transition state, so many of the effects of the
old systems still remain, that a new-comer who is not careful in his
observations may get very wrong impressions. The great effort of the old-time
farmer was to make money at farming; not a living with a little money over, as
most successful farmers do the world over, but money, and plenty of it. And this
was, of course, to be done with the least possible amount of work. There can be
but one result of such farming anywhere. This State is no exception to the stern
laws of nature. On the other hand there is no State -where the four first
requisites of successful farming,—diversification of products, hard work, close
economy, and strict attention,—produce more certain or fuller results. Nowhere
else will the same acreage produce such a variety and quantity as on the
irrigated lands of Southern California. Even where the whole tract cannot be
irrigated fine results can be secured. Ten acres of land with the water that an
inch-and-a-half pipe will carry from a stream, spring, or ditch, and the work
that a successful gardener in the East puts upon ten acres will, with thirty
acres of dry land outside, not only support a family, but leave more money over
than the best one-hundred-and-sixty acre farm east of the Rocky Mountains. Three
acres in alfalfa, well irrigated, will keep two milch cows, a dozen hogs, and a
score of chickens the year round, with all their increase. Half an acre more
will raise all the-vegetables a large family can use in a year, while the rest
in raisin grapes, fine oranges, or a dozen other varieties of fruits, will yield
a fair income. On dry lands outside of this, thorough plowing with irrigation
will raise plenty of the best hay, which is made of grain cut in the dough or
milk; also olives, apricots, wine grapes, figs, and many other things that bear
well with cultivation alone. Irrigation will, of course, improve the yield of
all such fruits, especially in some years, but very little water is needed and
fair results may be had without any. Many things that are sure to be profitable
in the future are very easily raised. The olive, for instance, grows on dry land
with very little attention, is a hardy, prolific, and steady bearer, and
outlives its owner's family. As soon as enough are grown in the vicinity to
supply an oil press the profits are large and constant. Pickled when ripe they
form an article of food which the whole family soon learns to like, as
substantial as potatoes, and infinitely better to the taste than the foreign
olives, which are pickled green to preserve a stylish color. It is a tree whose
value is daily becoming more striking; and as a standby for the future, as a [sic]

   The limited amount of land, and the steadily increasing demand for it,
sufficiently settle the question of inflation. If such conditions do not create
value there is no such thing as intrinsic value, and every value rests only upon
fancy.

   While farming and fruit raising often cost a little more than in some parts
of the East, they cannot be called expensive, and certainly are profitable,
where conducted on any business principles. So many experiments have had to be
made, and so much trouble has been had with transportation facilities,
commission merchants, and various other things, that production has not always
been profitable in the past. But a great change has of late taken place. Until
three years ago not an orange from California went east of the Rocky Mountains.
Railroads suddenly concluded that living rates were better than prohibitory
rates, and a reduction started shipments. In 1885 twelve hundred car loads found
a ready and paying market from St. Paul to St. Louis, and far to the east of
both. In 1886 the shipment has been far greater, and regular fruit trains are
now run on express time to the East. Before this the only market was San
Francisco, which of course was easily glutted. Moreover, the finer varieties of
oranges had not been long enough planted to produce much, and the proper mode of
cultivating even the old trees had but just been discovered. It was much the
same with lemon growing, with the additional disadvantage of not knowing how to
preserve lemons until the foreign lemons were out of the Eastern market—a thing
just discovered within two years and now a complete success. Raisin-growing has
gone through much the same stages. Growers had to learn how to prune, to
irrigate, to cultivate, to pick, to pack, to label and to market, and had to
learn it all from their own experience. Few people have ever learned so rapidly
as the fruit-growers of Southern California, and although some things remain to
be known, four-fifths of the work is done. Ingrowing, picking, packing, selling,
etc., as well as canning, wine-making, drying, or curing of any kind, the
present now has the experience of the past without the expense of the education;
and the orchards and vineyards of Southern California are now among the most
profitable of the world, the yield of many of the older ones now almost
surpassing belief. Space will permit no tables of estimates of profits. They can
be found in a hundred immigration documents, and if the reader will take the
pains to annex qualifications, which a moderate amount of experience and common
sense will readily suggest, he cannot be misled by them. The most extravagant of
them is generally literally true, but may represent especially favorable
conditions. All of them represent work and sound business principles, to which
they are generally due more than to peculiar conditions. You will find no land
where work is more indispensable to success than here, and none where it will
bring the same heaping measure of results. Where you see unprofitable farming or
fruit-raising you will nearly always find a man who came to California to make
money without work, or who, having means to hire labor, has plunged into some
new thing on too large a scale instead of feeling his way, or who, loaded with
Eastern conceit, has disregarded the experience of others, or one who has run a
ranch as a baby would run a candy shop.

   Ordinary farming is in such a transition state, so many of the effects of the
old systems still remain, that a new-comer who is not careful in his
observations may get very wrong impressions. The great effort of the old-time
farmer was to make money at farming; not a living with a little money over, as
most successful farmers do the world over, but money, and plenty of it. And this
was, of course, to be done with the least possible amount of work. There can be
but one result of such farming anywhere. This State is no exception to the stern
laws of nature. On the other hand there is no State where the four first
requisites of successful farming,—diversification of products, hard work, close
economy, and strict attention,—produce more certain or fuller results. Nowhere
else will the same acreage produce such a variety and quantity as on the
irrigated lands of Southern California. Even where the whole tract cannot be
irrigated fine results can be secured. Ten acres of land with the water that an
inch-and-a-half pipe will carry from a stream, spring, or ditch, and the work
that a successful gardener in the East puts upon ten acres will, with thirty
acres of dry land outside, not only support a family, but leave more money over
than the best one-hundred-and-sixty acre farm east of the Rocky Mountains. Three
acres in alfalfa, well irrigated, will keep two milch cows, a dozen hogs, and a
score of chickens the year round, with all their increase. Half an acre more
will raise all the vegetables a large family can use in a year, while the rest
in raisin grapes, fine oranges, or a dozen other varieties of fruits, will yield
a fair income. On dry lands outside of this, thorough plowing with irrigation
will raise plenty of the best hay, which is made of grain cut in the dough or
milk; also olives, apricots, wine grapes, figs, and many other things that bear
well with cultivation alone. Irrigation will, of course, improve the yield of
all such fruits, especially in some years, but very little water is needed and
fair results may be had without any. Many things that are sure to be profitable
in the future are very easily raised. The olive, for instance, grows on dry land
with very little attention, is a hardy, prolific, and steady bearer, and
outlives its owner's family. As soon as enough are grown in the vicinity to
supply an oil press the profits are large and constant. Pickled when ripe they
form an article of food which the whole family soon learns to like, as
substantial as potatoes, and infinitely better to the taste than the foreign
olives, which are pickled green to preserve a stylish color. It is a tree whose
value is daily becoming more striking; and as a standby for the future, as a
thing to work in with other products with scarcely any tremble, and to use
unirrigable lands, its value in the future can scarcely be estimated.

   To run through the list of trees, vegetables, grains, and berries that can be
grown here with their special modes of cultivation and their profits would take
a volume. Suffice it to say that about everything can be raised in San Diego
County that can be grown in the temperate zone at all, with many of the best
products of the tropics. The profits will depend upon the industry, attention,
and business capacity of the producer.

   Many things outside of common farming and fruit-growing have been raised at
great profit in San Diego County, and many of them may still be raised to
advantage in connection with other things. In nearly all parts of the county
there is an abundance of bee pasture. Apiaries need little or no care except
during working time, and in most years are very productive. Abundance of stock
range, generally public land, lies outside of most of the arable tracts, and is
used by many to keep a few-head of stock, which can be done with very little
trouble. Abundance of goat pasture lies on the hills, which are easily fenced
in, and a cross of the Angora with the common goat makes excellent meat. Large
numbers of sheep have been raised at a good profit, but raising them on a small
scale, as in the East, has not yet been attempted. It can, however, be done much
better here, as it is never necessary to protect sheep from the weather, and
they thrive well upon the native grasses and are easily fenced in. There is no
better country for raising hogs and chickens, none where they pay any better
when half cared for, and none where they can find more feed for themselves. Hogs
can be raised well upon alfalfa hay and will harvest a stubble-field until the
last head of grain is gleaned.

   The farmer here has many advantages over the Eastern farmer. He needs no
out-buildings except a roof for his horses and cover for his wagon and
machinery, more to protect it from the sun than from the rains. Grain stands
ripe for months with no danger of sprouting, moulding, falling, or shelling,
safe from, rain, hail, wind-storms or lightning. The farmer needs little fire
wood except for cooking, has no "fall work" to do, no winter to get ready for,
except to plow and sow. He has twice the amount of fair weather in which to work
that the Eastern farmer has, and need never work from daylight to dark in hot
weather to get his hay or other crops out of danger of rain. If he will only
work well and work steadily, and not put off things for days because there is
plenty of fine weather ahead, he will have more and better food to eat, a better
home, and more money to spend in luxuries, with much less actual work and less
worry than the farmer in any other country.

   The great and overwhelming advantage, however, that San Diego County now has
for one who is determined to live in South California, is the very low price of
land compared with prices farther north. Especially is this true of irritable
lands. Thousands of acres of land exactly like that which at Riverside brings,
with a water right, $600 an acre, unimproved, and at Pasadena $1,500 an acre,
may be had here for one-third of those sums. The mountain lands too, and the
moist valley lands that need little or no irrigation, are far cheaper than
elsewhere. This difference in price is a necessary consequence of the late
opening of the lands to settlement, and of course it is a difference that cannot
last long.

   Prices of land in this county vary so with locality, rainfall, and irrigation
facilities, that it is quite useless to attempt to give any scales. Plenty of
fine land may yet be had at $50, and in the mountains the surest land in the
world for crops may be had for $20 to $40, and even as low as $10 in remote places.

   The experience of the last ten years shows that there is no such thing as a
fall in prices of good, irrigable land in Southern California. Town lots may
possibly shrink even in a growing city as they do elsewhere in growing cities,
but the price of good fruit land and fine residence property is steadily upward.
This results necessarily from the steadily increasing demand and the limited
supply. Town lots in abundance can be laid out for years to come, but the acres
that make beautiful places, surrounded with varied and luxuriant vegetation, and
the acres that yield the enormous crops of the world's finest fruits, are
rapidly going and cannot be replaced.


Additional Comments:
From:

THE
CITY AND COUNTY
OF
SAN DIEGO.
ILLUSTRATED,
AND CONTAINING
BI0GRAPHICAL SKETCHES
OF
PROMINENT MEN AND PIONEERS.

SAN DIEGO, CAL.
LEBERTHON & TAYLOR
1888


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