Yolo County CA Archives History - Books .....Jerome Davis And Davisville 1913
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Book Title: History Of Yolo County

CHAPTER XVI 
JEROME DAVIS AND DAVISVILLE

    When Jerome C. Davis came to Davisville there was little doing. This was
early in the '50s, but the state agricultural report of 1856 says that he had
eight thousand acres of land, one thousand of which were enclosed. It also
stated that he was irrigating some of his land by pumping water from Puto creek
with a steam engine; that he had a large peach orchard, several thousand bearing
grapevines, one hundred and fifty horses, three thousand head of cattle and
about the same number of sheep, and that four hundred acres of wheat and barley
had produced for him over thirty bushels to the acre that year. In 1858 he had
twenty-one miles of fencing and in 1864 he had thirteen thousand acres, and had
eighty-eight hundred and eleven acres of land, upon which was thirty-three miles
of fencing. In 1867 William Dresbach leased the old Davis homestead and changed
it to .a hotel, calling the place the "Yolo House." Other buildings were added
to the town and Dresbach named it Davisville. When the rails reached the place
it boomed into a small city. It was the only railroad station in the county and
was quickly a great grain shipping point. Building lots sold for a high price
and Davisville—it was Davisville then and long afterwards—grew by leaps and
bounds. William Dresbach was the first merchant, first Wells, Fargo agent, and
that express company did a huge monthly business. The extension of the'
Marysville branch of the Central Pacific Railroad northward in 1868 and the
building of the Vaca Valley road to Madison in 1875 naturally withdrew much of
the shipping business from Davisville, but the development of the surrounding
productive agricultural country largely made up for such loss.

FARMERS BY SCIENCE

    The location of the State University Farm, College of Agriculture, at this
point is a grand testimonial to the soil value of Yolo. The entire seven hundred
and eighty acres of this classic ranch is of the rich winter wash from the upper
lands. For countless ages Putah creek has been spreading its sediment over the
Davis plain and the alluvial crust of from fourteen to twenty feet resting over
a water level is of wondrous fertility. This soil characteristic is found in the
Cache creek delta and other hill streams that sink their floods in the rich
plains between the range and the river. When the state legislature in 1905
appropriated the preliminary $150,000 and started a commission to select a farm
for the agricultural department of the University of California almost one
hundred tracts of land in different portions of the state were examined, and
this site was chosen as best adapted for the various purposes for which such a
farm must be used. The land cost about $103,000, and the legislature of 1907
made a further appropriation of $132,000 for the necessary buildings and
equipment of the institution. The farm was opened for instruction in October,
1908, with five separate short courses for farmers, and the School of
Agriculture, consisting of a three years' course for boys who have finished the
common schools, was opened in January, 1909.

THE RICH ALLUVIUM FROM THE HILLS

    As time goes on the remarkable and unlimited productive possibilities of
California's soil become better known. Ages before the agriculturist with the
white skin walked over these plains the elements in the earth and air were
storing chemicals among the grass roots for the coming centuries. In no portion
of the state is this more apparent than in the great central valley of this
territory. The day cannot be set when the Sacramento river broke its way through
the middle plains, rolling down to its meeting with the sea, but year after year
it has gathered fertility from the higher lands to sow it in moisture and
sediment on the lower. There were wide floodings in those prehistoric winters
when the spreading tides followed the Indians and animals to the safety of the
hills, but the deposit-covered land surface grew richer from the inundation and
every little tributary stream swollen from the mountain showers adds its part to
the deluge below, also adds its contribution to the accumulations of richness
annually stored in the soil. Yolo as well as its upper and lower neighbor—Colusa
and Solano—appears to have been favored by the builders of the hemisphere, and
this strip of country between the Coast range and the Sacramento river seems to
have been receiving seasonal benefits from such arrangements ever since the
cornerstone of the continent was laid. These great Yolo reservations of
fertility are to be found in the "made lands" at the sinks of Cache and Putah
creeks as well as in Cottonwood, Dry and Buckeye creeks or sloughs. Willow
slough in summer appears from a large cold spring, and its course toward the
marshes is marked by a succession of ponds or springs. In winter Cache creek
drives a large volume of water into Cottonwood creek and into the plain which
finds outlet into the tules through Willow slough. So navigable has been this
winter system of valley streams that frequently in the past boatmen have easily
floated from Sutter's Fort in Sacramento to Gordon ranch on Cache creek in Yolo
county.

THE WARM GRAPE LOAM

    In the region bordering the western mountains and among these chains are the
grain, grape and apple lands, the warm sandy or clayey loam being especially
fitted for this thermal-loving vegetation. And here the irrigating ditches have
their uses, and here is seen the need of the great natural reservoir hanging
amid the Lake mountains above the Yolo plains which will one day be tapped for
the thirsty farms and gardens below. Though the late years have seen the immense
wheat fields of this section shrink in acreage as the fruit market of the world
increased in volume, the great traction plows yet furrow the warm loam, and the
same steamers reap and thresh the full harvests. More to the east and bordering
the tule belt are the ideal fruit lands of the Sacramento valley, and no soil in
the crust of the planet is more productive for the uses of mankind. It is twenty
or thirty feet of sedimentary deposit, entirely without hardpan, the long-ago
dead vegetation and the hill-erosion of ages washed from the western ranges and
pressed into a stratum as fertile as the mudbeds of the Nile.

THE BUSIEST PLANT ON EARTH

    Here amid the tree and vine tracts grows the alfalfa, king of the forage
plants, the busiest vegetable in the green kingdom. It is always growing. Mow it
and before the hay is cured for baling another crop is under way to maturity. It
is the evergreen, the semperviren of the lower plant-life. Its rootlets will
find moisture in the driest soil, but in the rich alluvium of the Woodland
plains and especially where the irrigating waters flow the three or four crops a
year are enormous. Twelve or fourteen thousand acres is probably the area
devoted to this exceedingly prolific clover— the luscious lucerne of the Swiss
meadows transplanted in the rich soil of the far west. Five-sixths of the hay
crop (value about $600,000) of this county is alfalfa.

    The chief cereal of the Yolo plains is barley and its annual crop now
reaches a value of $1,500,000. Being of the export variety, it finds a ready
European market. In the latest reports of the State Agricultural Society the
acreage of barley is about 100,000; wheat, 16,000; alfalfa, 15,000.

THE SUGAR BEETS AND GRAPES

    Another plant that is showing up Yolo as a garden spot is the sugar beet.
This industry is a new one in the county, but the valuable vegetable has found
in this warm, rich loam just the fertility it requires, and the eight or ten
thousand acres yearly produce for the mills probably 60,000 tons of beets. Along
the river bottoms grow the hop crops which add yearly to the income of the
county. One of the great divisions of horticulture in Yolo is the culture of
raisin grapes and the varieties most grown are the Alexandria muscat, the
seedless Sultana and the Thompson seedless.

The Sultana is the choice, bearing in some years as high as fifteen tons to the
acre. It is a small berry, seedless, and of a yellowish tint when ripe, and five
pounds of fresh grapes will make one pound of raisins. The present yearly output
is about 4,000,000 pounds. About 165,000 gallons of sweet wine are annually made
in this county. Probably $550,000 worth of butter each year is the showing of
the dairies. Yolo has ninety miles of Sacramento river-front and something like
4,500,000 pounds of marketable fish, representing a value of about $250,000, are
caught in the waters that belong to this county. A total present annual fruit
output of Yolo county may be estimated as: Green fruit and vegetables (6),
40,000,000 pounds, value $650,000; dried fruit, 25,000,000 pounds, value,
$1,400,000; canned apples, 16,000 cases; cherries, 700 cases; peaches, 33,000
cases; plums, 900 cases. Total value, $124,000.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from

HISTORY OF YOLO COUNTY CALIFORNIA
WITH
Biographical Sketches
OF
The Leading Men and Women of the County Who Have Been Identified With Its Growth
and Development From the Early Days to the Present

HISTORY BY
TOM GREGORY
AND OTHER WELL KNOWN WRITERS
ILLUSTRATED COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME

HISTORIC RECORD COMPANY
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA [1913]


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