THE LIBRARY OF
THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELESUp-Down and All Around CaliforniaOther Books by Marshal( Breeden
Us Golfers and Our California Links Dinamite Gorman, Prize Fighter Pianos and the Woman Every One of the United States
The Story of the Piano, for ChildrenUP-DOWN
AND ALL AROUND CALIFORNIA
By
MARSHALL BREEDEN
INCLUDING
FICTION AND FACTS
ABOUT ITS FIFTY-EIGHT COUNTIES
COAST LINE AND LIGHTHOUSES
Times-Mirror Press Los Angeles 1923Copyright, 1923 Marshall Breeden Los AngelesINDEX TO CHAPTERS
Name of Division	Meaning of Name	Page
Papa Light Houses...........The Coast Line.........................114
Madam California............Hot Furnace............................ 46
Alameda Comity..............A Promenade under Trees................ 92
Alpine County...............Pertaining to the Alps................. 40
Amador County...............Named for Peter Amador................. 41
Butte County................Because of the “Buttes”................ 78
Calaveras County............Skuls.................................. 43
Colusa County...............The Scratchers......................... 80
Contra Costa County.........Opposite Coast......................... 89
Del Norte County............Of the North........................... 69
Eldorado County.............A Place where Gold is	Found............ 49
Fresno County................White Ash............................. 28
Glenn County................For Doctor Glenn....................... 77
Humboldt County.............For Baron von Humboldt................. 70
Imperial County.............Royal ................................. 13
Inyo County.................An Indian Tribe........................ 26
Kern County.................For Lieutenant Kern.................... 20
Kings County................A King................................. 22
Lake County.................Lakes ................................. 81
Lassen County...............For Peter Lassen ...................... 61
Los Angeles County..........The Angeles ...........................110
Madera County...............Timber ................................ 29
Marin County................After an Indian Chief.................. 91
Mariposa County.............Butterfly.............................. 33
Mendocino County............After Cape Mendocino................... 75
Merced......................Lady of Mercy.......................... 35
Modoc.......................Head of a River........................ 65
Mono........................Monkey................................. 32
Monterey....................King of the Forest.....................101
Napa County.................Fish .................................. 84
Nevada Coimty...............Snow-saw............................... 56
Orange County...............Orange ................................. 9
Placer County...............Where Gold is Found.................... 51
Plumas County...............Feather ............................... 59
Riverside County............Riverside ............................. 16
Sacramento County...........Sacrament ............................. 47
San Benito County...........Saint Benedict.........................103
San Bernardino County.......Bold as a Bear......................... 18
San Diego County............Saint James ........................... 11
San Francisco...............Saint Francis ......................... 94
San Joaquin.................For the Father of the Virgin Mary...... 45
San Louis Obispo County.....Saint Luis the Bishop..................105
San Mateo County............Saint Matthew.......................... 96
Santa Barbara County........Patron Saint of Sailors................107
Santa Clara County..........Clear of Light or Bright............... 98
Santa Cruz County...........Holy Cross ............................100
Shasta County...............Stone House............................ 63
Sierra County...............Saw Tooth.............................. 58
Siskiyou County.............Six Large Stones in a River............ 67Name of Division	Meaning of Name	Pao«
Solano County...............East Wind.............................. 87
Stanislaus County...........After an Indian Chief.................. 37
Sonoma County...............Valley of the Moon..................... 83
Sutter County...............After a Pioneer........................ 53
Tehama County...............An Indian Tribe........................ 74
Trinity County..............Trinity Sunday......................... 72
Tulare County...............Tules or Rushes........................ 24
Tuolumne County.............Stone House or Caves................... 38
Ventura County..............Good Fortune...........................109
Yolo County.................Rushes ................................ 86
Yuba County.................Grapes ................................ 55AN INTRODUCTION FOR ANA BELLE
THIS BOOK is an account of the experiences of Ana Belle, as told by herself, after she has completed a journey into the fifty-eight counties of the state of California.
In her narrative Ana Belle is not going to present you with a text-book. It will be a simple story of her visit with various friends and relatives in every part of California.
She will tell you about some of the things she saw in each county, and about some of the things she thinks she saw as well.
She will enliven her yarn with bits of stories gleaned by her from out the clear, cool air. The trick is to tell when facts end and fiction begins.
She does not pretend to be an infallible reporter. She has visited every California county and in telling the story wishes to make the fullest acknowledgment to every source from which she received information and help.
If you will listen attentively to her story, you will know more about California (as it really is today), than you ever knew before.
Earnestly,
MARSHALL BREEDEN.
Los Angeles, California,
February, 1923.
P.S.—Ana Belle is my little automobile, and now she is going to talk to you.AUNT HERMOSA ORANGE OF ORANGE COUNTY
In which I start my trip around California. The route is to take me south, then east, north and west and south again, until I shall have been UP, DOWN AND ALL AROUND CALIFORNIA.
THE FIRST STAGE of the journey was easy. I went to visit my Aunt Hermosa Orange who lives in Santa Ana. Santa Ana is located almost in the exact center of Orange County. It is the middle of a flat parcel of land, bounded on one side, some fifteen miles away, by the Pacific Ocean, and on the other side by rolling hills, the kind that are so universal in Southern California. It had not rained for several months prior to my visit, and these hills were a yellowish brown color, enlivened, however, by the soft green of the miles and miles of orange groves.
Orange County was created in the same year that the states of North and South Dakota, Washington and Montana, were admitted to the Union; the same year also that the land rush occurred in the Territory of Oklahoma.
At Santa Ana I found my dear Aunt Hermosa waiting for me. She had arranged several little trips, which took me all over the broad sweep of Orange County. I will try to tell you a little of the many things I saw.
BEANS
Bean porridge hot! Bean porridge cold! Bean porridge in the pot, nine days old! Beans ! Beans! Beans! Gracious, the immense bean fields! It seems as if we ran for miles and miles beside a solid field of growing beans. This was along the southern part of the county, where it overlooks the placid Pacific Ocean. In front of me, behind me, and beside me, as far as I could see, was this bean field. Orange County has the distinction of being one of two California counties in possession of the largest bean fields in the world. And this was the field. It requires hundreds of men and horses to harvest this crop of little white beans, before they come to the corner grocery where we all buy them.
OIL AND ORANGES
These vines, upon which the little white beans grow, are used for fodder for the Orange County cattle, and for fertilizer. They are spread thickly over the ground and then, when the winter rains come, they decay into the soil and help to make sweet oranges, and big, juicy, sour lemons. And that, you will agree, is exactly what an orange or a lemon should be.10
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Speaking of lemons and oranges somehow reminds me of Oil Wells. Why should oranges and lemons remind me of oil wells? Because so many of the orange and lemon groves in Orange County are growing around and over oil wells. The trees, of course, were there first, and the oil derricks came later; now they are both together.
Oil is always found a great many hundreds of feet below the ground, while orange trees grow above the ground, like any other trees. In Orange County the trees were planted many years before Aunt Hermosa or any one else knew there was oil under the ground. Because of this ignorance of the presence of oil, the raising of oranges was the chief industry of the county. No one ever thought of oil. Then someone in the northwestern part of the county took a chance and found oil. Since then every orange grower has tried to become an oil man.
We circled around and turned back toward Santa Ana. Presently the road took us to the top of a high hill and all at once I saw a most wonderful view: Below stretched a vista of undulating hills and meadows, each hill covered with orange or walnut trees, each flat a beautiful farm or a thriving little city. Away off to the left was the Pacific Ocean, and over it all there floated a cloud of red and purple and fine gold. In front, almost as close as across the street, the orange groves started. They ascended the little hill and disappeared down into the valley below, only to reappear again on the more distant hill tops. Among the trees, especially those to the right, towered the derricks of the oil wells. Here, at last, I saw in all its wonder and glory, the wealth of ages—oranges and oil.
An orange tree is perhaps fifteen to twenty feet high. The branches start from the round smooth trunk at about three or four feet from the ground, and they spread outward and upward in graceful symmetry. The foliage is thick and of a soft green, like the writing boards in the schoolroom, only there is a dim suggestion of silver-grey under the outward green. The oranges grow individually, and cling to the small boughs with a stubborn tenacity, until they are picked, or become over-ripe, when they drop off of their own weight.
The oil derricks tower many feet above the orange trees. A boy can bat a base ball over an orange tree, but it would require the ability of a Babe Ruth to knock the ball over an oil derrick. You cannot actually see an oil well. What you do see is the structure or derrick, which is really the pumping station. Oil is very far under ground. To reach it a sharp steel bit is driven into the ground. It goes slowly, inch by inch, tearing its way through mud and rocks and sand. The hole it makes is only about six inches wide and this hole is carefully protected by strong iron and steel pipe. When the oil is reached it comes out at first with a bang and a roar. This is because, where there is oil, there is also gas. The gas rushing up through the pipe brings the petroleum with it. It acts like a puncture which permits the air to rush out of an automobile tire. That makes a gusher oil well. A gusher sometimes lasts a week, sometimes a year, and sometimes even longer than that, which makes it some gusher, worthy to brag about! Eventually however, the oil mustUp-Down and All Around California
11
be pumped; that is when the. derrick comes into its own. It is the anchor to which the pump is fastened.
But more yet:—
I found that Orange County was the largest shipper of walnuts in the State. This industry is gradually superseding the orange industry in point of dollars earned; but it will have to go a long way yet before it reaches the dollar output in oil.
THE CHIEF SPORT
Orange County, California, is perhaps more widely known for something else than beans, oil, walnuts or oranges. At Santa Ana there is a jail. In the Court House there is a judge. He is a thin man with a bald head, but he is a good judge and a capable one. He has one pet aversion, or hobby. He likes to convince little automobiles, like me, and big ones also, that no reckless, devil-may-care motor car can get away with the speed stuff in Orange County. If they try it they are very apt to end up in jail.
GREAT GRANDMOTHER SAN DIEGO OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY
Now I visit the oldest of all California settlements.
I see some of the first buildings erected in the state, as well as a modern community, and some rather unique things.
SAN DIEGO is directly south of Santa Ana. The smoothly paved
I highway took me now beside the ocean and now back again into the hills. I had heard much about the Torrey Pines. These trees grow on a small promontory abutting the ocean. I found them different than the ordinary pine tree. They do not grow very tall, but rather are comparatively squat with branches which wave around in wild abandon.
LA JOLLA
I lingered at the Torrey Pines until it grew late. There was still some twenty-five miles to go, however, so at last I hurried on, and presently I came to the little town of La Jolla (pronounced La Hoya). The sea was as placid as a mirror, but I knew it had not always been so. During the centuries since the beginning of things, this sea has carved some large, fantastic caves. These caves are now well above the ocean, but they were cut in the solid rock by the water in the ages and ages that have passed since time began for La Jolla.
The Indians once had a story about these caves:
In the early part of the life of the Indian, a maiden, the daughter of a powerful chief, fell in love with the son of an enemy chief. Her dad resented12
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the idea of such a union very much, and called in the medicine man to see what could be done to prevent his daughter, ,‘Light of the Moon,” from marrying her lover.
The medicine man made much pow-wow but the girl just sighed langour-ously and looked off toward where her lover had his wickiup. The medicine man medicined to his nth power, but nothing doing. While he was in a sort of trance, the lover himself hove in sight. It isn’t on record how he came, but he came. When he saw what the medicine man was doing, he cried in a loud voice: “I will marry ‘Light of the Moon,’ ” and to prove his right to the girl he struck the rocky cliffs with his naked fists. His blows were so powerful they drove back the rocks and formed these La Jolla caves. After that, of course, there was nothing to do but let him marry “Light of the Moon.”
WHERE CALIFORNIA STARTED
The next morning, in San Diego, my Great Grandmother, San Diego, took me to the top of a hill. She then told me to imagine I had eyes like telescopes and to look around while she told me things.
California history began in San Diego. Some fifty years after Christopher Columbus discovered America, which he did in 1492, this history began. Columbus, an Italian from the city of Genoa, was sent out by the Queen of Spain to try and discover a water route to the Indies. Instead he found the island of San Salvador, near Cuba. Thus the people of the Old World came to know that there was land on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. In spite of the fact that Columbus had red hair, and therefore must surely have been a ,'go getter,” he never saw California.
Even if this red-haired Italian never saw California, a blackhaired son of Spain did. Don Juan Rodrequez Cabrillo sailed one day into the bay of San Diego. Old Don Cabrillo (which is the Spanish way of saying Mr. Cabrillo) made maps of the bay and the surrounding country, and sailed away again.
Now, a great many years later, came the first Franciscan Monks. These good men founded churches, or Missions. The first Mission built by these Spanish Fathers was in San Diego, just a few miles from where I was standing. I could see in my mind this first Mission. It is still in good repair and surrounded by its own park. However, it is now shorn of its former glory.
THE COUNTRY ROUND
Then we went around the county.
San Diego city is the largest California city south of Los Angeles. It has one of the best harbors in the world. There are two reasons for this: One is because the ocean itself is so placid; and the other because Point Loma extends out into the water, like an arm protecting the inner waters.
San Diego city has no highly developed back country. Immediately to the South is Old Mexico, and to the eastward tower high mountains. These mountains form most of the southeastern part of the county.Up-Down and All Around California
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They are not altogether barren, but as a rule there is nothing grown in large quantities, unless it be the cattle which range over them.
A few miles to the north the mountains become more easy of cultivation and the valleys are broader and well watered. We went to Fallbrook and Escondido, small towns surrounded by fertile valleys. They raise so many luscious grapes around Escondido, that once a year there is a grape festival. Everybody for miles around comes to town, and there is a huge party enjoyed by all. The most interesting is the grape-eating contest.
Big bunches of ripe grapes are hung on a long pole, and young boys and girls, with their hands tied behind them, eat grapes. The one eating the bunch first wins a prize and is the champion grape-eater of the valley. In addition to grapes there are fields of corn, and melons, and strawberries. On the hills are wheat, wild oats, natural grasses and cattle. This part of San Diego County is well favored, and that perhaps is why the Mission of San Luis Rey was built on the western edge of these lands.
THE BIGGEST INDUSTRY
We went next to Old Mexico. It was only a short trip, and soon we were in the little Mexican town of Tia Juana (which, translated, means Aunt Jane). Aunt Jane may be little and dirty and old, but she is some stepper, as the saying is.
Tia Juana is noted for its horse races. Each year for a hundred days or more the fastest running horses in America are brought to Tia Juana. Crowds of Americans go over the line and watch them run. These visitors always cross feeling rich and proud, but a good many of them come back feeling poor and sorrowful.
Horse racing at Tia Juana, Old Mexico, is, I think, the biggest single industry of the district. At any rate there were fully 10,000 Americans there the day I went to the Mexican town of Old Aunt Jane.

MR. MUNDO IMPERIAL OF IMPERIAL COUNTY
This county is perhaps better known as Imperial Valley. Twenty years ago it was a desert; today, one of the best farming counties in existence.
I CAME TO THE SUMMIT of Mountain Springs grade, just as the sun was rising. There it lay, the great Imperial Valley,
beneath the crimson canopy of the morning sky. As far as I could see, through the purplish haze, the valley stretched into the horizon right up to the distant Chocolate Mountains. Names are a very useful invention. We could do very little without names. Sometimes14
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they mean exactly the right things. The original Spanish name of this valley is, “La Palma De La Mano De Dios”—a very pretty phrase which means, “The Palm Of The Hand Of God.”
As I stood there in the bright early morning, 4,000 feet and more above the Imperial Valley, the sun drove away the mists of the dawn. Around me was nothing but complete desolation. The mountain tops, the canyons, and hills were a mass of red boulders, small and big, round and flat, and all light red with the eternal colors of nature in them. No water, no trees, nothing! Altogether dead! Beyond, over the bridge at the foot of the grade, the hills undulated to the flats. Beyond the flats the elevations cut again into the horizon. The distant hills were streaked wide with white bands of sand, while directly to the front, some fifty or more miles away, were the shifting sand hills. These hills are like those of the Sahara, and between, on the floor of the valley, rose the dim outlines of cities and farms and canals.
IMPERIAL VALLEY
Impatient to get a close-up of this region I sped onward. I rolled and bumped down the rocky narrow Mountain Springs grade, and came at length to the paved highway. This paved road extends for some forty miles straight into the great heart of the Imperial.
In a few miles vegetation began to appear, and before half the distance was covered I was speeding past fields of cotton and of Kaffir corn.
I came soon to the city of El Centro, where my friend, Mr. Mundo Imperial, awaited me.
This valley, Mundo told me, is a part of the great Colorado desert. It was, not so many years ago, a region of drought and barrenness in which only a few Indians roamed. These Indians found scanty subsistence by a rude kind of agriculture, in spots along the river moistened by the overflow. In January, 1901, no white men lived in the valley. This, however, was an eventful year because in it President William McKinley was assassinated at Buffalo, and the first irrigation was attempted in Imperial. But when I was there it surely was different. Now there are eleven towns worthy of the name, two railroads, one electric line, hotels, electric light and power, theatres, schools, churches, factories, mills, and ten thousand Japs. On every hand, everywhere within the irrigated sections, are gardens and orchards, vineyards, cultivated fields, cattle, pigs, and poultry. The desert has been transformed and is blossoming with crops and dotted with the homes of a prosperous people.
In the summer the sun is hot. It is so hot that a boy or girl can fry an egg, or even a dozen eggs, on the fenders of automobiles standing in the sun! That’s how hot it is and I am glad I was there in the spring.
One of the best summer crops in the Imperial is the cotton.Up-Down and All Around California
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Water did it.
During the year when President McKinley died, many men came with money and horses, plows and shovels, strong backs and big arms. These men built the first irrigation canals. These canals now run far and long and wride over the valley. From Mexico almost as far north as the Salton Sea, they run. Nothing has been lacking in this Valley, except somebody with courage to put water on the land.
THE CANALS
An Imperial Valley irrigation canal is big and very full of water. A hundred boys could go in swimming in one twist of a canal, and there would be room left for another hundred boys. But, as a rule, the boys of Imperial Valley prefer to take their baths at home, because the watei’ in the irrigation canals is colored brickish red, from the soil it travels over and through. These canals water more than 523,600 acres of land, and always they are working on more canals. Some day this valley will be entirely a garden spot.
The hot sun in the summer is a good thing, because with the help of the water, it grows the immense crops of barley, alfalfa, Kaffir corn, and cotton. And this same sun, tempered in the winter months, helps Imperial Valley to ship early lettuce and fat turkeys. This lettuce, growing right in the middle of the “Palm of the Hand of God,” where the summer heat is almost unbearable, is called “Iceberg Lettuce!”
SOUTH AND NORTH
In the town of Brawley I found a thriving business district surrounded by the inevitable rich country-side. From Brawley to Calexico is about twenty miles, almost due south. Calexico is right smack on the Mexican border. If it were not for the barbed wire fence, and the U. S. Government officials, you would hardly know where Calexico ended and the Mexican town of Mexicali began, except for the dirt. Calexico has a population of nearly 7,000. It is the largest city in the valley. This population seems to be about equally divided between Americans, Mexicans and Japanese. The Japs operate the rooming houses, barber shops and restaurants. The Mexicans run the pool halls, music stores and butcher shops. The Americans have the rest.
On one side of the barbed wire fence it is clean and paved and sanitary. On the other side of the same fence it is unpaved, dirty and unsanitary. Mexicali has a population about half the number of Calexico. Over there the Americans (whisper this!) run the saloons and gambling halls; the Chinese have the stores; and the Mexicans take what they can get, including much graft from the Americans and Chinese.
The next day I left, going north to Riverside County.
The road to Riverside is a desert highway. At the town of Calipatria, which is just about at the north end of the irrigated lands,16
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I took to the desert proper. This was formerly a dangerous road. I would never have attempted to make the trip alone before the road was paved, but now that this has been done it is reasonably safe, and for nearly a hundred miles there is as fine a piece of paved highway as you would ever want to travel over in any land. In a few hours I came upon the Salton Sea.
This is an inland body of water, lying partly in Imperial and partly in Riverside Counties. It is dead! Nothing can exist in its brine, and only a few wild birds, such as mud hens, live around it, but they do not stay around it any longer than they can help.
Once upon a time, the Salton Sea, which is now only a few miles around, was a great fresh water lake. It then extended for hundreds of miles all over the valley. Gradually it grew smaller and smaller. Hundreds and thousands of years passed, and eventually it had shrunk to about its present size. It became salty, as any body of water will do if it cannot flow out as well as in. How salty is this water? Well, if a girl were to take a tumbler and pour enough table salt into it to fill it almost half full, and then to fill the glass with fresh water and stir it with a spoon until the salt had all disappeared, she would have a fair sample of the water in the Salton Sea.
As I passed around the end of the Salton Sea two men were harvesting salt from this dead place. Two men digging salt—and nothing more!
COUSIN HEMIT RIVERSIDE OF RIVERSIDE COUNTY
Lord of the orange, the desert and the date palm, thou smilest so bounteously upon this favored land of Riverside. First the desert, suddenly the water, and then—fields of grain and orchards of luscious fruits.
THE DESERT in Riverside County is a fascinating place. It seemed somehow to hold your little Ana Belle to slow progress. This desert of God extends its weed-grown land and rock-strewn hills over most of the eastern portion of the county. As I went on, however, I soon began to notice more life. Now and then a gopher or cotton-tail bounded over the road, and high overhead appeared three vultures, black against the sun, as they circled in the sky. Then flowers came to view, desert blossoms and clusters of cacti, and an occasional palm tree. Then after passing over an exceedingly rough stretch of road, I came suddenly upon the desert winter resort of Palm Springs, the only place, to my knowledge, in California where palm trees grow wild in any quantity.
These trees show the magic influence of water. At the hotel in Palm Springs I met my Cousin Hemit Riverside. He lives in the city of Riverside, and in the morning we started for his home.Up-Down and All Around California
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TO THE ORANGES
The road became smoother, and soon we were in the town of Banning. This city is located on the edge of the desert, and is known for its fruit, and because it is a winter resort. Banning is the city of the Apricot, and the Almond, which the latter is not a fruit at all but a nut.
From a high mountain pass, just beyond the city of Beaumont, we could see for many miles in every direction. To the south my cousin pointed out the towns of Indian Wells, Lakeview, and Winchester. The largest town of all that we could see was San Jacinto. This little place appears prominently in the story of Ramona. Beyond San Jacinto was the smoke of Hemit, which makes two towns and one county named after my cousin.
On the other side of the mountain is Elsinore, with its beautiful inland lake of fresh water, and its training quarters for Big League Baseball teams. Further over is Perris, where the fields are broad and green and the cows give lots of sweet milk. Further south, we knew, were the towns of Temecula and Murrieta. These are both rather famous places, and so I will tell you something about them:
You know something of the sad story of Ramona, the California girl who married an Indian. The Indians lived at Temecula, with their fields and cattle, their sheep and dogs. It was in Temecula that Ramona and Allesandro went immediately after they ran away together. They found the Indian houses and fields burned, and the Indians scattered in the hills. Years later Allesandro was killed by a man for stealing a horse. This was after he and Ramona had been married at San Diego and were again living at Temecula.
Murrieta Hot Springs are known far and wide. They are located four miles north of the town of Murrieta. People find great enjoyment and improved health by bathing in these hot springs. At Murrieta there are cottages and a fine hotel. The traditions of the highwayman Murrieta are not in vogue here—the prices I found were surprisingly reasonable.
NOW THE ORANGES
Presently we left the high pass and started directly for the city of Riverside. It was only about twenty-eight miles, and the road was paved all the way, so we went along in fine style. In a few miles we met the first orange and lemon groves. From that point on we passed through a forest of orange trees, and here and there a grove of lemon or almond or date trees.
The city of Riverside is a lovely place. The streets are lighted at night by electric lights set in a specially copyrighted lamp-post, and the globes are the style and shape of Mission bells. The people walk under big pepper trees and beside orange groves.
The next day we visited around that portion of the county, and in the late afternoon we returned and went to the top of Mt. Rubidoux.18
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The road leading to the top of Robidoux is a marvelous piece of road building and winds for a mile or so before it comes suddenly to the summit. This mountain, right in the very heart of Riverside, towers above the tall spires of the elegant church steeples. It is surmounted by a cross. It is a great cross rough hewn from the trunks of trees, and indeed is a very fitting symbol of California civilization. Beneath the cross we watched the slow gathering of the purple haze of early evening, as it settled over the valley and as we started slowly down Mt. Rubidoux, we could hear the soft chimes of the evening bells at the Glenwood Mission Inn.
When William Howard Taft was president of the United States he visited Riverside. Mr. Taft is a large man, and the reception committee built for him a special chair. This chair was strong and big and wide—it would be easy for three boys to sit side by side in it. Ex-President Taft used this chair at the banquet given in his honor, and it can still be seen (and sat in) if you visit the Glenwood Mission Inn.
On this same visit President Taft planted an orange tree right in the door yard of the Inn, and after doing this he made a nice speech, or maybe two speeches.

UNCLE SANDY SAN BERNARDINO OF SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY
The largest county in the United States. A desert turned into a garden, of lovely lakes and farms. A cormty of industrial happiness and vast resources.
ON THE SECOND DAY of my visit with Uncle Sandy of San Bernardino, we went into the mountains. This trip, which we took on that blessed day, is called, “101 miles on the Rim of the World.” I’m here to tell you it actually was on the rim of the world.
The San Bernardino mountains are famed for their natural attractions, as well as for the comfort which numerous lodges, camps and taverns, located in sheltered spots along the Rim, afford the traveler. About four hours after leaving the Orange groves, we came to Big Bear. This is a really attractive lake, more than a mile above the sea.
A LIMPID TEAR OR TWO
The story goes:
Many thousands of moons ago an Indian maiden (Smile-in-the-Eyes) and her lover (Dog’s-hind-foot) were strolling beside a steep cliff, leading into a shut-in valley. They were as happy as could be, and were soon to be married. Far down the rocky cliffs, “Smile-in-the-Eyes” spied a beautiful flower. She asked “Dog’s-hind-foot” to get the flower for her and he, eager to make an impression upon her, started to climb down. But, alas! He stepped on aUp-Down and All Around California
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loose rock and plunged down the cliff. That was the end of “Dog’s-hind-foot”! “Smile-in-the-eyes,” grieved because of the loss of her sweetheart (or maybe the flower), started to cry. She proved to be some champion weeper, for to the amazement of her friends and neighbors she kept it up until the deep valley was full of water. After that she dried her tears and I don’t know what happened to her.
The Indians profess to believe the story.
THE EARLY SPANIARDS
After completing the one-hundred-and-one mile drive we returned to Redlands. We visited some friends in that city and the talk went round. From it I learned many interesting things about San Bernardino.
In the year when the Colonial Congress adopted a “bill of rights’’ against England, Juan Batesta de Anza, Captain of the Presidio of Tubos, was directed by the Viceroy to open a road between Sonora in Mexico, and Monterey in California. He was a tough, hardy old soldier so he hustled himself from the Colorado River, to San Gabriel across the desert, traveling from southeast to northwest, by the way of Yuma (Arizona), San Gorgomino pass and through the San Bernardino valley. They entered this valley on the 15th day of March, 1774 (that’s the date you have been wondering about). This old tough and hardy son of Spain opened the road, but that meant little in the lives of the old-time Mexicans and Spaniards. They should worry about this old road so long as their siestas were not disturbed! So nothing much happened for several years, and San Bernardino valley remained about as it was—that is to say—mostly desert and Indians and the beautiful desert Yucca flowers.
In time, however, the Mexicans woke up and began to drift into this valley. By and by quite a few of them came, until all the language you could hear was Mexican-Spanish.
A boy in those days would get up in the morning when he had to, and then likely say: “I am El Tiredo. Whereo is El Feedo? El bread-basketo is emptio. Oh! El Gosho!”
Or if it was a girl you heard speaking she might say: “Whereo is La Lipo Sticko? My La Hairo is La Pretty. Peppo! Peppo!”
COME NOW THE YANKS
The American colonization of the San Bernardino valley began with the coming of the Mormons under a certain Captain Jefferson Hunt. He seems to have been a strong pioneer who braved the desert with great disdain. In the spring of 1850, this Captain made a trip to California from Salt Lake City, coming by way of Southern Utah, and the Mojave Desert. He entered San Bernardino valley by Cajon (chest of drawers) pass. This venturesome hombre was the first white man to enter the valley by this route. It is, however, now the most traveled gateway into all of Southern California.20
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After that trip was broadcasted throughout the land, many American settlers came and the language became Americanized, when a boy might say:
“I’ll tell the bees’ knees your eyes sparkle, kiddo!”
And the girl might answer:
“Can the soap stuff, my Brave. I’m wise to the Blarney!’’ Or something to that effect.
THE BACK COUNTRY
It is in San Bernardino County where you can see the oranges growing almost within shouting distance of the snow-capped mountains. In this county also you will find a part of Death Valley, which is the hottest place there ever was. A good portion of the county is desert, but many thousands of its acres are exceedingly fertile. In traveling around San Bernardino you leave the desert suddenly and come upon farms and orchards of surpassing productiveness. The county produces minerals and millions and millions of oranges, lemons, grapes and a great variety of other products, both horticultural and agricultural. It has, as I was told, the largest single grape vineyard in the world, but I found later that this distinction was claimed by various other counties as well.

UNCLE OILO KERN OF KERN COUNTY
Kern, the land of vast distances. Kern, standing over lakes and pools of petroleum. Kern, the county of much land and some water, and all the essentials for the upbuilding of an Empire. Kern, the glorious!
AFTER A LONG ROUGH TRIP, which took me through a portion of the Mojave Desert, I arrived at Bakersfield. Following a brief rest, my Uncle Oilo Kern decided it was time for me to see his county. Uncle Oilo has lived at the county seat almost all of his well-spent existence. That makes him a hardy bird, accustomed to heat and cold. Bakersfield is an energetic city, and is the chief city of the eastern part of the garden of the sun.
Many years ago, long before the railroad, and even before the gold rush, a man named Baker had a farm near some water. He raised fruits and vegetables, and some pigs, cows and chickens as well. The travelers going* through the surrounding deserts would say to each other: “When we get to Baker’s Field we will have some fresh cabbages, onions, apples, and maybe a fried egg, or a pork chop. Hurrah! Let’s hurry!” So they gradually began to call the place Bakersfield. That, so Uncle Oilo says, is the way the town got its name.Up-Down and All Around California
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THE LAND OF FLOWING GOLD
Oilo took me first to the land of flowing gold.
The Kern oil fields produced in 1921 more than half of all the oil output in California. Even so, the productive areas comprise but a narrow strip along the lower foothills on the eastern and western sides of the valley. These wells of “flowing gold” have been running since Aguinaldo started his private war in the Philippine Islands in 1899. From this petroleum is made gasoline, coal oil, axle grease, machine oil, vasoline, candles and no end of other things, excepting castor oil!
Traversing the county is a wide stream of water known as the Kern River. The Kern River has the distinction of being the place where the following sad incident occurred: General John C. Fremont, with his small army, was marching down the valley, going toward Los Angeles. They camped on the side of the big river in its mighty spring torrent. Since the army was making maps as well as warfare, an officer started to put this river on his map. So as to see the river better in the distance he attempted to cross to some hills on the other side, and, with his pencils and paper he started to ford the stream. The current was swift and the river deeper than he thought, and he was drowned. In memory of this brave officer, General Fremont named the stream “Kern.” It has since borne that name in honor of Lieutenant-Adjutant Kern.
GROWING THINGS
After inspecting the o. I fields we circled around and headed for Bakersfield. The roads were excellently paved and travel was easy.
Suddenly we turned a corner and came smack upon an orchard, the like of which I had never seen. I came to a quick stop: “What kind of an orchard is that?” I asked.
"An olive orchard,” my uncle replied.
He thereupon got out and soon returned with a few of the olives. They were about the size of a pigeon’s egg and the same general shape, and very hard and smooth. I started to eat one, but stopped when my uncle cried quickly:
“Don’t bite it! Green olives just off the tree are very bitter and hard.” He went on to explain that olives must be treated in a solution of various things before you can eat them with relish.
I decided not to eat the olives, and went on.
The next day took us in another direction. Kern County is a land of such magnificent distances that it requires several days to see it all. On this second trip we passed orchards and vineyards and fields of grain and all of them seemed to be interspersed with bits of desert, oil derricks, or just pasturage. In going to and from the extreme outer edges of the county we passed through deserts as dry and desolate as any you ever thought about.
Besides being larger than Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Dela-22
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ware all combined, Kern has the honor of being the home of Mr. Herbert Hoover’s model farm. Mr. Hoover, food administrator daring the war, and at present a distinguished member of the cabinet of President Harding, is developing a model farm of some 1,280 acres. It is twenty-five miles northwest of Bakersfield, between Shafter and Wasco. Half of this tract is being planted in fruit, while the remainder will be utilized for the growing of long-staple cotton.
Before I started to go on to the next county, I saw hogs and cattle, horses and sheep grazing in many places. On almost every hand, except in the very heart of the desert, were smaller fields of corn, potatoes, and other varieties of vegetables, all testifying to the productiveness of Kern County.
There is so much oil in Kern County that the children have learned to say: "I don’t want castor oil, I want gasoline!”

COUSIN FORMO KINGS OF KINGS COUNTY
This county is well named the “Little Kingdom of Kings.” It is the kingdom of pumpkins, cereals, dairy cows and fruits.
THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY and Kings County came to life during the same year. In 1893, after many sad and dry years, the Democratic Party succeeded in electing Mr. Grover Cleveland to the presidency, and the citizens of a section of interior California succeeded in having that section set apart into a county and named “Kings.”
“Kings County,” my Cousin Farmo Kings told me, “is not as large as some nor as small as others. But, in either event it makes up for its own lack of bulk in the things it accomplishes.”
The “Little Kingdom of Kings,” I found, is presided over by the county seat of Hanford. This is a bustling, rustling, hustling little city, surrounded on all sides by the broad stretches of green fields and orchards.
WATER
Time was when Kings County was rather hard pressed for water. True enough, Kings River was there, but it went right along through the county and did not tarry in its going. So to handle the water, the irrigation district was organized and now there are miles and miles of irrigation canals, ditches and flumes. Then someone experimented and discovered water under the soil, so that now there are many artesian wells in the county.
We know what causes the artesian well to flow, but the Indians have a much better reason than we have:
A thousand years ago, when all men were giants, an Indian chief came toUp-Down and All Around California
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visit another Indian chief who lived on the bank of the river which we call Kern. It was summer and the river went dry. There was no water and all the Indian boys and girls were thirsty. The two chiefs held a smokeup over the matter. The visiting giant chief was a mighty man even among mighty men. He said he would help his brother chief out. So he tore a tree up by the roots and thrust it into the ground, and then tore up another tree and thrust it in on top of the first one, but not before he had fastened them together with stout vines. Then he spat on his hands and grabbed hold of the last tree and yanked both of them out. Because he was so brave and strong the Indian god of the day blessed his efforts and so water came up out of the ground in never failing flow.
But let’s be more practical. Farmo told me this particular well flows at the rate of about a million gallons of water every day. That is a whale of an amount of water! A gallon is about four times as much as an average coffee pot will hold, or maybe eight times as much as a little girl can drink at one time. So try to imagine a million (which you cannot, for it is doubtful if you ever saw that many different people in your entire life) little girls all in a row drinking eight glasses of water, and you’ll know how much water this well flows every day.
FARMS AND FIELDS
Kings County has a remarkable system of highways. These are made of concrete and connect with the wheat fields, the dairies, farms and orchards, and with all the main valley highways leading to the points in the state both north and south.
We city folks usually associate pumpkins with Hallowe’en only, or with pumpkin pie. Few of us have ever seen a big field of pumpkins or squashes growing. These two big vegetables are really cousins, and sometimes grow in the same field, in a friendly fashion as cousins should. I am one of those who always considered pumpkins as being good for use on Hallowe’en and never gave a thought to what they looked like in their own field. In Kings County I saw them growing in perfect harmony with squashes. I expressed great admiration for the appearance of the field and so Cousin Farmo went in and brought a pumpkin to me. I’ll say that’s the sort of cousin to have.
Of course you have heard of wheat fields. A wheat field can be either large or small. I have seen many of both sizes. In Kings, over near the town of Stratford, I saw a large wheat field. This particular field must surely have been two or three miles square; in fact, it was so large that it required six combined harvesters to gather in the grain. Farmo says there are others even larger in Kings county.
WILD THINGS
There seems to be a good opportunity for shooting in the very heart of this county, in season. Game and fish are strictly protected by rigidly enforced state laws and this has made a most desirable region from a sportsman’s point of view.24
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On our rounds throughout the county we passed many flocks of doves, geese, ducks, and other varieties of wild and water fowl. These wild birds were exceedingly interesting to me, for I had never seen many of them before this trip to Kings. I was very glad the hunting season was not open because, while I like to eat birds, I don’t like to see them killed.
On our way back to Hanford we passed through several small towns. It appeared to me as we went along that each farm house had also a chicken yard attached to it.
"Oh,” I said to my cousin, "I’ll have my eggs fried if you please, and my chicken, too.”
“All right,” he agreed.
And that night we did have fried chicken, and in the morning some fried eggs.

UNCLE VALLEJO TULARE OF TULARE COUNTY
A priceless gem of the lower San Joaquin, Tulare, in the diversity of its products is worthy of its place in California’s Garden of the Sun.
IT WAS ONLY A SHORT TRIP, just an hour or so, from Hanford to Visalia. By this time I had become accustomed to traveling so when I met Uncle Vallejo Tulare, I was warmed up and ready to go.
Uncle Vallejo lives at Visalia, a typical San Joaquin valley town with overhanging eaves, or rather specially erected shelters protruding from the buildings over the sidewalk. This is to protect the passers-by from the extreme summer heat. Visalia is a center of activities and is a busy and prosperous community. Tulare county has three or four towns about the same size as the county seat. These towns are located in various sections of the county, and each is the dominating factor in its section.
THE COUNTY
In the year 1813 there was a naval battle on Lake Erie. Commodore Perry captured the English fleet and then coined the phrase:
We have met the enemy and they are ours.” In this same year a party of Spanish explorers came to the region around Tulare county and if there had been any phrase coined to commemorate the event, they surely would have said something to this effect: “We have seen El Tulare and El Tulare took us in!” Since that exploration trip Tulare has gone steadily ahead. You cannot make a county or a farm or grow a tree in a day or a year. It requires time and time certainly has dealt kindly with this land of the rushes.Ur-DowN and All Around California
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When we went from Visalia to visit the county we started on a smoothly paved highway, but on turning a sudden corner, were surprised to find that all around was water! I thought we had come upon the scene of a big disaster. Water was flooding a beautiful orchard. It looked as if one of the big irrigation ditches, or a river perhaps, had broken its banks. Uncle, however, soon quieted my fears when he told me that the owner was simply irrigating his orchard! They do things in a big way here.
Presently we came to large fig orchards. I had never seen figs growing before, so I asked Uncle Vallejo to get me some figs.
He did so immediately and handed several to me. “Well,” I cried, “aren’t they the funny things !” The figs were soft and shaped something like a pear, with big, soft, almost velvety leaves. “May I eat them?” I asked cautiously, for I remembered about the olives fresh from the trees.
“Sure thing,” he answered; “figs right off the trees are good to eat.”
The figs were sweet and filled with tiny little seeds which cracked under my teeth. I liked them very much.
At Porterville we had lunch. They served us with fresh fruits and vegetables grown almost within sight of the hotel. We were within easy vision of the snow-covered High Sierra Nevada Mountains, yet here around us were orange trees. The generally accepted idea that oranges grow only in the extreme southern part of California, nearer the ocean, is here knocked higher than a kite! The country around Porterville produces an enormous number of oranges. There is seldom, if ever, any frost in this section of Tulare County despite its view of and close proximity to the snow-capped mountains. They advertise it as “the frostless belt,” and time has proven that advertisement to be correct.
SUPERLATIVES AND STORIES
This is a most remarkable world, and California seems to be a very wonderful part of it, in fact, perhaps the most wonderful place in the world. There, I have used exaggerated superlatives again! You may notice in my story of California that I frequently resort to extravagant remarks. They seem to be necessary to get the true effect of California over. I said that California was a wonderful place. It is. Because within three short hours, after seeing a man picking oranges, we were at the snow line in the high mountains. This snow is perpetual. And from its edges trickle countless little rivulets which merge into each other until they form large streams, which in turn become rivers and the water is then taken and spread over the land of Tulare and other counties and helps to produce the bounteous crops of California’s Garden of the Sun.
Well, we were at the snow line. Here were wood and wild flowers, wild berries and evergreen trees, rushing rivers in gashes of granite, sparkling cascades and (shades of Isaak Walton!) here too was a fisherman’s happy hunting ground!26
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Trout abound in Tulare lakes, rivers and creeks and I suggest that when you wish to see America, go first to the High Sierras with your fishing rod and flies.
We stopped beside a giant tree on a hill and looked around. Away off in the distance cutting into the sky, towered Mount Whitney.
This is the highest mountain in the United States, the last survey giving its height to be some 14,501 feet. Imagine that height if you can!
The Indians once said that Mount Whitney was erected as a monument in memory of the anger of their Big Chief God. It seems, according to the story, that a lesser god, a young one, was walking the earth, to see what he could see.
This earth-walking deity was lonesome, and wished for something to do to help kill the time. Had there been a picture show in those days he would likely have dropped into some dime movie, and thus would not have met a coy Indian maiden. But he just walked around wishing he was some place else—even a pool room would have done. However, presently he saw a maiden by the name of “Snow-of-the-Valley,” and then things started to happen. “Star-Face-in-the-day-time” was not lonesome any more. He fell in love with “Snow-of-the-Valley” and so they were married. But this marriage was a grievous error.
It made the Big Chief of all the gods quite angry. He did not want “Star-Face-in-the-day-time” to marry a mortal, and when he saw “Star-Face-in-the-day-time” and “Snow-of-the-Valley” sitting under a tree and making eyes at each other, he scooped up a handful of earth and dirt and buried the newly-married pair. Thus Mount Whitney became the tomb of little “Snow-of-the-Valley” and brave “Star-Face-in-the-day-time.”
A very sad story.
Not far from the base of Mount Whitney, is Sequoia National Park, which contains the grove of big trees. On the return journey we stopped at the General Sherman Big Tree. This is called the biggest tree in the world and the oldest living thing. Its height is some 279.9 feet; its diameter 36.5 feet. Some tree!

COUSIN DESERTO INYO OF INYO COUNTY
A county of great contrasts. From snow-covered mountains to dry deserts. From eternal heat to ice, and all within easy range of the eye.
OH, WHAT A TRIP ! Desert! More desert—and then the mountains ! The road was in much the same condition as it has been for years—no work, no pavement, scarcely much more than a trail.
But I am a sturdy little car, so I just buckled down to the task and bumped right along. I came in good and fair time to the home of my cousin, Deserto Inyo, who lives at the city of Independence.
Inyo County is the second largest county in the state, but its county seat is only a small city. Cousin Deserto was born in Inyo County before there was enough there to shake a stick at. This happened in the same year as the Atlantic telegraph was successfully
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completed—1866. I noticed as I passed a small town before arriving at the county seat, many bunches of desert cactus. This cactus should perhaps be called the Inyo County mark. I doubt, however, that it has that distinction.
THE EYES OF AN EAGLE
Cousin Deserto took me to the top of a high mountain. It was hard going and I needed to be boosted over a hill or two, but the view from the summit of the high mountain was well worth the effort of the trip.
“Imagine yourself possessed of the eyes of an eagle,” Deserto said to me. “Disabuse your mind of all earthly thoughts and just look!” I looked.
We could see almost the entire stretch of Owens Valley. From the river pouring into this valley the city of Los Angeles gets most of its water. It is carried in great flumes and pipes and aqueducts, for more than two hundred miles. The High Sierras are full of vast forests and mountain streams running down into lakes in the center of level valleys. These valleys and foothills are covered with a luxurious growth of grasses, high ferns, wild roses, laurel and wild sage. Of life there is plenty, from the tiny chipmunk, running up the tree and chattering all the way, to the great Grizzly, eyeing strangers from a distance across the marble basin.
THE VALLEYS
Alfalfa occupies the first place among the industries of the valleys. Inyo alfalfa has never been equaled by any with which it has come into competition; three cuttings, with a yield of seven tons to the acre is the average production.
In Owens Valley there are a great many cattle, hogs, sheep, and goats. The natural grasses and the cultivated alfalfa guarantee perfect food and an abundance of it for all animals. Owens Valley is long on sunshine and short on rain. It has, however, plenty of water, which comes to it from the lakes and streams of the High Sierras, which frame it in completely.
DEATH VALLEY
My eyes, which I imagined were strong like the eagle’s, saw a pack train far below us. It was going into the higher mountains, up into the land of snow and rocks, pine trees, game, and fish. I turned to the south and gazed off into vast space and imagined I could see over the mountains and deserts into Death Valley. This weird desert is not a land of shifting sands like the Sahara, but a succession of rolling or level sage brush lands, cut by bleak rocky ranges of hills and mountains. Death Valley is considerably below sea level. It would be a lake if the heat did not dry up all the water that comes from a scant rainfall. It is appropriately located on the hottest side of the Funeral range of mountains, and the nearest post office is called Furnace.
Countless stories of great wealth have been circulated about Death Valley. Men have even declared they had located rich deposits of28
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gold and precious minerals, but somehow these stories fade away. But Death Valley continues to function in the same old way—heat, dryness, death—that’s all.
COUSIN ASH FRESNO OF FRESNO COUNTY
A county both mountainous and flat; a county that produces with tremendous energy; a county that is growing with leaps and bounds, and rightly so—
That’s Fresno.
ON THE FLOOR OF THE VALLEY, around the city of Fresno, are many thousands of white ash trees. From these trees Fresno County gets its name. Here is a suggestion. The next time you see a big white ash tree, walk boldly up to it and say: “Hello, Fresno.” If the tree answers you it is a Spanish tree. If it does not answer you, then it is an American tree, and therefore does not understand Spanish. You might try that some sunny afternoon.
Cousins are a very useful invention. I could not have seen nearly all of Fresno County except for Cousin Ash Fresno. Ash has lived in Fresno since before the Union Pacific Railroad was completed, and so he knows nearly all there is to know about this county. He was willing and anxious to show me around, and so we visited a good portion of the county.
The city of Fresno is about as big as Chicago was in the early 50’s. It has a dozen or so tall buildings, and perhaps twenty-five street cars, which, together with the stores, make it a fair sized city. It is also a very lively city, and one destined surely to become a large one soon.
RAISINS AND THINGS
Fresno is the center of the greatest grape raising district there ever was. Not even the land of Canaan, in the Holy Land, ever showed a candle to Fresno in the matter of raising grapes. A year or so ago, when the good old ship of state went dry, lots of people in Fresno County set up a loud yell. They said their living was gone because they could not sell their grapes, for the purpose of making wine. But at the last state election (November, 1922) these same people voted strong to keep the county dry. The reason? They found they could sell more raisin grapes than they could grow. The next time you eat at a restaurant order some raisin pie and you’ll see how delicious Fresno raisins are.
The process of curing raisins, according to Cousin Ash, is very simple and requires but little skill. The grapes are cut from the vines and placed on trays made of light boards that are spread on the ground between the rows and left until the sun has dried them sufficiently to make raisins. Three weeks is generally the time required. At the expiration of the first ten days or two weeksUp-Down and All Around California
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the trays are turned so as to expose the grapes that have been lying next to the boards to the sun. When dry, the grapes are dumped into “sweat-boxes” that hold from 150 to 200 pounds of loose raisins, and are then delivered to the packing houses to be packed in merchantable shape, and where, contrary to the belief of many residents of other sections, no sugar, syrup, or other artificial sweetening is added. The raisins furnish their own sugar.
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Fresno County, I think, is worth all of the printers’ ink that has been used to tell about it.
In one day Ash took me to the vast raisin-drying yards, the orchards, and the high mountains as well. As we went into the mountains, toward Huntington Lake, we met two little denizens of the forest, a pair of young bears.
These Fresno County bears live among the big trees in the High Sierras, and they did not seem especially alarmed when they saw me coming along. The Fresno mountains are dotted quite liberally with pleasure camps, this being especially true around Lake Huntington. This lake is a clear and beautiful body of water high in the mountains. It abounds with fish, and in season there is exceptionally good hunting around its shores, for thousands of ducks and geese have their home there.
I found as I journeyed around the county that all of Fresno is not given over to grapes, and bears, and pleasure resorts in the mountains. There are vast stretches of rolling hills covered with great wheat fields. Among other things I saw corn fields, apple orchards, potatoes, sheep, cattle, and a variety of growing things on the numerous small farms.
The sun around, or rather over, Fresno County is hot, and that is an extremely good thing. The heat just naturally takes the young plant and lifts it right out of the ground, and makes it grow and grow and grow, and yield and yield and yield.
Fresno County is amply supplied with water, now that the natural supply is properly handled. This water comes from the high mountains in the eastern part of the county. It is conveyed by natural rivers, by man-made irrigation ditches, and by many artesian wells.
UNCLE MUSCAT MADERA OF MADERA COUNTY
A visit that taught me something about peaches, something about alfalfa, and also something about the workings of an energetic Chamber of Commerce.
'OAK UP A LITTLE SUNSHINE to cheer you on your way; ‘ don’t fuss about tomorrow, but be glad you’re here today. Anyone traveling in Madera County in the blessed “Garden of the Sun,”30
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will soak up all the sunshine there is, and he cannot help being cheerful. Madera, besides having rather a romantic history, is a spot surely favored of the Gods.
I arrived in the city of Madera on one of its big days. There was to be an open meeting of the Chamber of Commerce. This meeting developed into quite an affair. The business men of the community, the farmers, the truck drivers, and the delivery boys were all there; and they brought their wives, children or sweethearts with them. It was just a big family affair. From time to time men would get to their feet and talk. They told about their county and the things it grows and produces. The first speaker said something to this effect:
He was in Chicago attending the Columbian Exposition in 1893, when his father telegraphed him that Madera had been created a county. He was so tickled to think he lived in a regular place that he married a girl he had met in Chicago and returned immediately to Madera County and praises be he has been there ever since!
ALFALFA
My Uncle Muscat Madera was the next speaker. “Alfalfa,” he said, when he stood up, “is the king of field crops of California. It is the backbone of the livestock and dairying industries. Much of Madera County’s soil is adapted to this crop.
“Alfalfa is a very profitable crop, from five to seven cuttings of hay being a Madera season’s product. The average yield is a ton to the acre for each cutting, though this is often exceeded.”
He sat down amid much applause. Of course he was merely telling them what they already knew, but even so, they thought he had made a fine speech.
GRAPES
I learned that last year (1922) Madera produced some 4,800 tons of raisins, more or less, besides a considerable amount of grapes sold as fresh fruit. I will here and now express the thought that 4,800 tons of raisins is certainly a whale of a lot of raisins, as the saying is.
The Thompson Seedless and the Muscat are the leading Madera varieties of grapes. The latter is the most important, producing the large raisins of commerce. This is the raisin you usually get in bread, cake and pie. The Muscats are marketed in different shapes, from the handsome clusters to the berries that are stemmed and seeded by machinery. I think the Thompson is the finest seedless raisin grown, and anyone else who knows anything about them will tell you the same.
PEACHES
Another speaker told about peaches.
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(Muirs are the best) are grown in superabundance in Madera. In fact, it is sometimes called the home of the peach, because there are so many peaches grown here.
Sun-dried peaches can be successfully produced only in a limited area in the state of California. Madera County is fortunately located right smack in the center of this belt. That is why Madera peaches are so much in demand all over the country.
During a short recess that followed I took a run around the city. Madera is a three-street town, that is, there is the main street, one cross street and another paralleling the main stem. From these run other streets of lesser importance.
When the early explorers hove in sight over a low hill south of the town, they saw several large groves of trees. These groves formed a sort of bulwark or shelter against the attacks of any wandering Indians, and so the explorers camped among them. They left a cache of provisions hidden there, and when they met other white men they told them about the grub, and spoke of it as being among the timber. Thus the name Madera became quite generally known. Now if those same explorers should return they would find most of the trees missing and in their stead nicely paved streets and strong buildings.
When the meeting convened the talk went on again.
Olives are interesting things. This is the fruit that figures so prominently in the Bible. I presume it appears so often there because it thrives exceedingly well in hot countries with scant rainfall.
At five years olive trees will produce 1,000 pounds of fruit to the acre; at seven years, 2,000 pounds; and at ten years 4,000 pounds and over. In subsequent years there will be more or less variation from this quantity, depending on the weather conditions when the trees are in bloom. As a rule, olives are not damaged by frost unless it reaches 29°F, and the Mission olive (the most extensive grown) will stand even a lower temperature.
And listen to this:
Even if an olive does freeze it makes little difference, because frosted olives make just as good oil as olives that have not been damaged.
OTHER INDUSTRIES
While Madera County, so the speakers said, is primarily an agricultural county, it has several other large industries. For instance, the Madera Sugar Pine Company’s huge lumbering enterprise. This company operates a large sawmill in the forest belt of the higher mountains back in the county.
The rainless summers and the cool mountain climate and scenic spots make Madera County’s mountain region a camper’s delight.32
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COUSIN BIRD MONO OF MONO COUNTY
Mono County! Land of many mines, mostly gold and silver. Small farms, steep mountain-side pastures. Fishing, hunting, and deserted cabins.
T׳HE CITIZENS OF MONO COUNTY, I found, are hardy folks. Like the few cows that roam the Mono hills these good people are inured to cold and high altitudes.
In the year 1861, Cousin Bird Mono, then a young man, went to the war. He was strong and sturdy, and treked back across the plains in order to help Father Abraham preserve the Union. While he was on his way to join the Union Army the California Legislature created Mono into a county, and when Cousin Bird returned after the war he found his home was a recognized individual part of the State of California. Since then he has lived in Bridgeport, and has confined his traveling to his own county.
The going to Bridgeport was the most difficult I had yet encountered. The road was unpaved, rough, and in places exceedingly steep. It wound in and out of canyons, crossed streams, and went over hills. Rugged peaks standing sentinel high above the clouds, with silvery mountain streams flowing from their caps of perpetual snow—that was Mono as I found it.
I have often wondered why my cousin’s first name was Bird. When I passed near the shores of a lake I found out the reason. Surely he is called Bird because of the great number of fowl I saw hovering around the lakes as well as in the trees and sky.
THE COUNTY
Cousin Bird occupies the same little house he has used for more than sixty years. Mountain folks do not move around very much. Bridgeport is a quaint place, and exceedingly industrious. I found it interesting also. Rough-dressed miners and prospectors, leading their little burros, passed along the unpaved streets. Ponderous wagons with their big and strong wheels, jolted toward the shipping point, with their burdens of unsmelted ores.
Bridgeport is in a valley set in the top of the mountains. It has an average altitude of more than 6,000 feet. This valley is comparatively level, and we went for a short journey through it. Our destination was Mono Lake. It is a beautiful fresh water emerald filled with fish, covered with birds, and surrounded by pasture land. Here and there, close to the lake or back a little into the rolling hills, were farms, where hardy men and women strove with the soil. They are successful because the soil is so fertile and the water so easy to spread over the land.
In the near distance were the foothills, leading rather abruptly into the higher mountains. In these mountains are to be found manyUp-Down and All Around California
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wild animals, as well as herds of domestic goats and cattle. Bird said that the goat and hog and cattle raising industry should be more generally practised than it is. There is good profit in these animals and the surrounding country is fine for them. The wild berries, nuts, and grasses of the slopes and mountain sides afford domesticated animals fairly easy sustenance.
JUST UP IN THE AIR
It is difficult for one to imagine a world of mountains. A great city cannot exist on such mountains as those in Mono. Perhaps they are, like the deserts, safety spots placed here and there by nature. But men will strive, men will fight for a foothold in any climate, or in any land.
It is a high achievement to succeed in the tall mountains. Many men come but few are chosen, and so Mono dwells in its rugged simplicity, much alone. Still in the summer and during the open seasons many adventurous men visit it. They bring their guns or just their kodaks, and like the other visitors spend most of their time hunting over the hills. These visitors come perhaps from Yosemite, or from Lake Tahoe, or maybe from the sage-grown, wind-swept plateau of Nevada.

FRIEND GRIZZLY MARIPOSA OF MARIPOSA COUNTY
Big trees, tall mountains, Yosemite, minerals, tourists.—Of such is Mariposa.
I AM SOMEWHAT OF A PHILOSOPHER. I think that when a person starts out to do a certain thing, he should go right ahead and do it. That is why your little Ana Belle did not quit because of the steep and rough roads from Bridgeport to Mariposa. Before arriving at the home of my friend, Grizzly Mariposa, I took a look at the Yosemite Valley and its natural wonders. If you wish to know more about this valley the only way is to visit it for yourself, for I do not feel capable of describing it.
However, Yosemite is an Indian word meaning Grizzly bear. California was at one time rather overburdened with these animals. The Grizzly, despite his badness, is a very interesting animal, particularly as regards his strength. Neither the lion, the tiger, nor the elephant can compare in muscular power to the members of the bear tribe, of which the polar and the grizzly are the strongest. A California grizzly weighing about 1,000 pounds has been seen to carry a steer weighing 800 pounds up a steep mountain side for half a mile. Its strength is at least twice that of the lion. Not having any desire to test the strength of any bear, I did not fool around in the Grizzly country.34
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Later I came to the Mariposa grove of big trees. This is one of several groves of big trees in California, and is, I believe, composed of the largest of all the trees, excepting, perhaps, one or two individual trees in other places.
The Indians have a story about these big trees:
In the time of the giants one tribe declared war against another tribe of Giant Indians. Both tribes armed themselves with their spears and the battle took place in a valley barren of trees. They fought all day and all night, and then one tribe of Giants were all killed by the other tribe of Giants. The victors tossed the bodies of their dead enemies aside, which became the mountains round about, and then the victors thrust the spears of the dead giants into the ground, and from these spears grew the Mariposa big trees.
Indian stories, as your Ana Belle tells them, have the merit of interest.
When I arrived at the county seat of Mariposa, I found Mr. Grizzly Mariposa out in his back yard behind the barn. He was discussing an important matter with a genuine Jack. (This animal is otherwise known as the California Nightingale.) It was rather a one-sided conversation with Grizzly doing the swearing and the Jack shaking his head.
“Hello, there, Ana Belle!” cried my friend when he saw me. “Come right in.”
I did.
That night we talked. It seems that Mariposa County is no longer a county of pioneers, nor is it a place for the pioneer. About all of it is a solid footing, that is, civilized. But it was not always so.
In the year 1807, while a small party of men were exploring this section, another man was doing stunts on the Hudson River in New York. Robert Fulton traveled up that river in the first steam-boat, at the same time as the explorers were wading up the Mariposa River. Since then the steam-boat has become rather well known, and Mariposa has herself achieved fame, through her natural wonders, and lately her farms, mines and industries.
OTHER THINGS
We stopped one day for luncheon at a mountain hotel, and from the hill near it we could see part of the broad sweep of the county.
Reaching from the plains of the San Joaquin Valley to the High Sierras, the county has from the west to the east a steady rise. The lowest elevation is some 300 feet; the highest, the top of Mount Dana, 13,629 feet. This high peak stood out clear and cold in the bright sunshine of the summer’s day, and, like Mount Whitney in Inyo County, it was crowned with a white cap of snow.
The next day we visited the floor of the valley. Here the roads are more or less paved, but even the unpaved ones are fairly smooth and easy to roll over.Up-Down and All Around California	35
The soil is very rich in mineral salts. To this factor is due the success of Mariposa with grain, fruits and grapes. The commonest soil is loam, which helps produce such fine grain fields.
In this county I saw a walnut tree. This is a famous tree because of its size. It has a spread of fifty feet and returns $65 to $80 a year to its owner for its annual crop of nuts.
It is certainly a big tree.
It would take about seventeen baseball bats, laid end to end, to reach as far along the ground as the spread of this particular walnut tree.

FRIEND CHAVEZ MERCED OF MERCED COUNTY
Did I see things in the County of Merced? Yes,
I should say I did! Merced is a garden spot, second to no other place I saw in the state. Truly a delightful place. Merced!
THERE ARE, I FOUND after I arrived there, many good reasons why Merced County is extremely prosperous. The San Joaquin
Valley’s soil and sun come first. The excellent paved highways, which extend quite generally throughout the county are perhaps second. These good roads enable the farmer, the grower and the business man to transport their goods and products quickly and cheaply. But, perhaps, the most important of all is the development of the Merced Irrigation district, which now carries water to even the remote parts of the county.
WE TOUR THE COUNTY
The citizens of Merced County are lusty workers. When I found my friend Chavez Merced, he was sorting a pile of sweet potatoes.
Among vegetables, sweet potatoes take first rank in Merced. This lowly tuber has quite a romantic history. Listen to part of it:
The sweet potato was discovered in what is now Argentina, near Santa Fe, and was introduced into England in 1563 by John Hawkins, as stoutly British as the name he bore. Since then its cultivation and use have spread generally through the Americas and Europe. Sweet potatoes, southern style, with syrup or just boiled and eaten with butter and gravy, are the things that will make boys and girls sit up and take notice. The next time you buy “sweet potatoes” be sure and ask for “Merced Sweets,” and maybe you’ll get some of those I saw my friend sorting on his farm.
Merced city shows every sign of municipal progress. It has many miles of well-paved streets, good parks and modern schools. I rested there for a day and then we started on our trip through the county.
We talked as we went along, and I found that Merced was reputed36
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to be the largest producer of alfalfa in California. After seeing so many dozens of alfalfa stacks and fields, I quite believe it.
Alfalfa is a crop which provides the means of starting into the farming business with small capital, and while easily grown, it is a good money maker. Some farmers cut and sell the hay five or six times a year, while others utilize the alfalfa to support dairy cows.
Dairying is an industry in which Merced County ranks fifth in the state. In the western part of the county dairying predominates, with large herds and big alfalfa acreage. Merced produces much butter, milk and cheese.
The alfalfa acreage is frequently interspersed with fruit orchards, or truck farms, with here and there a first-class chicken ranch. Those who are in the poultry business exclusively (and I saw several large poultry farms) are making money, so that it is by no means to be considered merely as a side line. These Merced chickens are good layers and I found them to be excellent eating when fried for supper.
YOUR OWN VINE AND FIG TREE
The little cities of the county, which form the real backbone of any community, have each a thriving district of their own.
Around some of these smaller places are large vineyards and immense groves of figs. In this outlying section I saw the largest Kadota fig grove in the state. The Kadota fig has the advantage of early bearing and is suitable for canning. The Mission fig is the one usually shipped fresh to the east. The Calimyra fig has always been extremely popular as a fancy dried fig.
A man in Merced County, with ten acres planted in figs, can be independent after ten years. Many trees are self-supporting before that time. A fig tree will live and bear indefinitely, and judging from what my friend told me, a Merced fig orchard is just about as good as, well, a garage, or maybe better.
And the Merced Peaches!
This county brags almost as much on the number, quality and taste of its peaches as it does on its sweet potatoes, grapes and figs. On our journey we passed a good many orchards. Merced, so I was informed, has the distinction (which may also be shared by other counties) of possessing the largest peach and apricot orchard you ever saw. It runs for three miles along the Yosemite Highway and back more than a mile. Some orchard!
Merced has another crop—pigs !
In the olden days the pig, hog or swine, whichever name you prefer, was in disrepute. It was said to be the carrier of the devils and therefore not fit to eat. We moderns, however, rather fancy ham and pork chops, to say nothing of spare ribs and brown gravy. Merced has a right to be proud of its pigs, hogs or swine, whichever name you prefer.Up-Down and All Around California
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Three times I was compelled to stop on the highway while a drove of Duroc swine passed by. These pigs were no doubt going to market, which, after all, is a good place for pigs to go to.
4• 4• 4•
UNCLE BILL STANISLAUS OF STANISLAUS COUNTY
Land of the dairy cow, cheese, butter and butter fat. Wheat, cantaloupes, alfalfa and walnuts, and other things, inchiding tobacco.
STANISLAUS COUNTY has at least one celebrated citizen. He I lives near the town of Oakdale. This man is illustrious because on his little ranch Mr. Sallo raises strawberries every month of the year. He had strawberries for his Thanksgiving dinner.
As soon as I heard about this perpetual strawberry patch I turned to my Uncle Bill Stanislaus:
“Uncle Bill,” I said, “tomorrow we’ll have to go over to Oakdale to see that strawberry patch, and maybe we will get a dish of ripe berries.”
The next day we went over to Oakdale, and even in the month of December Mr. Sallo gave us a dish of red ripe strawberries. That makes Stanislaus County some county!
COWS AND HORSES
We who live in the cities are inclined to say that the day of the horse is over. The automobile and tractor, we think, have superseded the horse, and so in large measure they have. But horses, I found, still exist in large numbers in the interior regions of California, for as we traveled around this favored land of Stanislaus I saw many groups of splendid animals.
There are said to be more than 4,500 farms in Stanislaus County. Intensive development of the soil and expansion of the fruit-growing industry have resulted in the cutting up of large tracts into smaller ones. I came to the conclusion that every one of those 4,500 farms had a herd of dairy cows as well. Of course, this is not so, but on every hand, in every locality, were cows and cows and more cows. This great number of cows is what makes this county the banner dairy county of California. And that is exactly what a member of the Chamber of Commerce called it.
CANTALOUPES
We came to the city of Turlock.
This little city is almost entirely surrounded by fields of cantaloupes. There were cantaloupes behind us, cantaloupes in front of us, and cantaloupes inside us before we left the town. The latter were,38	Up-Down and All Around California
in the manner of speaking, ancient ones from the cold storage, but good nevertheless. These Turlock cantaloupes ripen early in the season and are then shipped to all parts of the United States. They are, so Bill told me, the first ones to go on the market each year, although those from Imperial County run a close second.
And I am not through yet, for Stanislaus County produces tons of grapes, peaches, apricots, and other fruits. At one place we saw a vast number of trays filled with peaches drying in the sun. This county seems to be in the proper belt for drying peaches, and this forms one of the prominent industries. Bill secured a double handful of these peaches and we ate them as we continued our trip around the county.
IRRIGATION
Along about 1826, just preceding the building of the first railroad in the United States (which event occurred in Massachusetts!), the Spanish and the Indians had a high old time in this section of the world. They had a grand battle or two and then forgot all about it, as people frequently do after quarreling. While this diversion was going on the surrounding country was mostly dry, and with the exception of the Stanislaus River, there was no water on the miles and miles of rolling hills, or in the broad valleys. This continued until some seventeen years ago, when the Modesto-Turlock district was practically one wheat field of some 97,000 acres. The tourist looked from a car window upon the combined harvesters, great caravans moving in every direction, dropping in regular rows sacks of golden grain and piles of glistening straw.
But water works miracles.
As I went thru the district I saw the results of smaller farms and irrigation. The people of the county poured the water on the land, until now the entire district produces many things beside wheat.
California always has surprises to spring on you.
In Stanislaus County I found some healthy, vigorous fields of tobacco. Compare tobacco with evergreen trees and you will have an idea of the diversity of agricultural products and growing things in Stanislaus.

COUSIN TRONE TUOLUMNE OF TUOLUMNE COUNTY
One of the older counties, but as yet not exploited, partly because of its mountainous topography. A land of wonderful xvater, utilized as you shall see.
THERE THEY STAND—the old mountains—as they have stood for centuries. While Rameses ruled his domain along the banks of the River Nile, and while other Pharaohs succeeded him, and theUp-Down and All Around California
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Egyptian nation died away to be succeeded by other peoples, these Tuolumne mountains thrust their heads serenely into the California sky.
When I visited this county I found that man had made his mark upon the mountains. Here and there were small towns and settlements, semblances of roads, and many summer resorts. It was a hard uphill trip to the home of Cousin Trona Tuolumne, in the city of Sonora. However, the many opportunities for rest and refreshment afforded by the mountain camps made it possible for your little Ana Belle to travel in various directions over the county.
MANY THINGS
After I had inspected the city of Sonora, with its lumber mills, dwellings, stores and factories, Trona took me around the county.
One would get the impression from the mountainous condition of the county that it would be a big producer of minerals, but this, Trona told me, is not so. The mountains, however, do produce wealth for the county. This wealth comes from the many campers who flock to the resorts in the summer, and it comes also from the white gold.
This Tuolumne white gold is clear, cold and pure. Indeed, it is so fine and abundant that the far off city of San Francisco uses much of it. At a place called Hetch Hetchy, San Francisco has built a great dam and water project. The water is piped, flumed and canaled to the Bay district. In the city by the Golden Gate boys and girls use it to take their regular Saturday night baths in. The bathing is done after this white gold is heated for it is far too cold for comfort otherwise.
GROWING THINGS
There is much farm land in this county despite the mountains. The foothills and small valleys seemed to be exceedingly fertile. At first I rather favored traveling in the highlands. Here I saw great lumbering camps. Men with saws and axes were felling the trees, which in turn were conveyed to various mills, there to become boxes, and shingles and lumber.
FRUIT
Tuolumne produces a lot of fruit. Apples and pears seemed to predominate, with a liberal sprinkling of the ever-present grape, peach and other fruits. Many of the orchards were young and when they grow up will be big producers.
The fertile land produces the usual varieties of vegetables. There were also large fields of waving grain and alfalfa. This alfalfa, together with the natural wild grasses, feeds the domestic stock, while a large portion of the herd cattle find delicious sustenance in the mountains. There is a thick growth of underbrush and sweet weeds and upon this the hardy Tuolumne cattle thrive in sleek contentment, until it is time for them to go to the butcher shop.40
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I was struck with the number of flowers. There is a great profusion of wild sage and other blossoms. These attract many bees which have their habitat in the lowlands of the county.
We saw a young boy with a net over his head. He was attempting to gather in a swarm of bees.
I spoke to him and asked him how it was going.
“First rate,’ he said; “I have chased this swarm all over the valley and have not yet lost a bee!”

FRIEND ARNOLD ALPINE OF ALPINE COUNTY
The first impression is one of nothing but mountains. Yet Alpine has some other things, as you shall see presently.
I NEARLY DIED ! It was terrible! But I made it!
The road from Sonora to Marklesville, in Alpine County,
is scarcely any road at all. I puffed and I wheezed, I boiled, I stopped and I started, and finally I made it.
The month of March, in the year 1864, was a noteworthy month. In this month and year Alpine County was created and while the California Legislature was debating the question, two terrible battles of the Civil War occurred; one at Fort De Russey, and the other at Henderson’s Hill. The county’s birth occurred at the time of these two battles, and since then the citizens of Alpine have been in a continual battle with the forces of nature. But they have conquered, for after I arrived I found that Alpine, despite its location, was a remarkable county. “Remarkable” is here used advisedly, as you shall see.
Here is the story:
When the earth was young a mighty tribe of Indians dwelt in these mountains. These brave Red Men scrambled up hill and down hill in pursuit of the wild cattle or buffaloes. Centuries passed and these wild cattle or buffaloes lost some of their wildness. They gradually became domesticated and by the time the first white men arrived in the mountains they found the Indians had acquired the knack of milking these wild cattle or buffaloes, turned tame. The Indians were an unusually healthy lot, and this caused considerable comment among the first whites. Upon investigation they found that the Indians and their ancestors had been living largely upon a diet of clabber, cottage cheese and buttermilk. Ask any doctor and he will tell you such stuff is a healthy diet. The reason, according to the tribal story, is that the wild cattle or buffaloes turned tame, had to run up and down so many steep hills and mountains that their milk was partly churned in the process and so these wild cattle or buffaloes turned tame, became buttermilk cattle or buffaloes!
To prove this story, Friend Arnold Alpine showed me an Alpine County buttermilk cow. To verify this story you are at liberty to write to Chief “Wam-op-Wamp,” of the “Shee-Cow-and-Buffalo-Tribe,” address Alpine County, California.
Friend Alpine, I found, was a lover of nature, as well as being aUp-Down and All Around California
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mountain climber of county-wide reputation. From him I learned about Alpine.
Not far from the mountain city of Marklesville was a grove of lovely trees. Trees! One really must go to the mountains of California to find real trees. In this near-by grove we saw two fawns. They were not overly timid, because they seemed to know that men of Alpine are kindly men and will not kill fawns out of season. The laws are too severe!
MULES AND WAGONS
Instead of going around the county on my own power, most of my traveling was done by mule power. Indeed, the only really dependable transportation in the county is by wagon or mule pack.
Alpine produces fruits, vegetables, grain and live-stock. I saw apples, plums, cherries, and berries of almost every kind. For the most part they grow in the small valleys and bottoms, and are watered by the numerous rivulets.
There are several good producing mines in this county: gold, silver and lead, with here and there a stone quarry. If the transportation facilities were better the mines would be more active; as it is, all the ore is necessarily carried in wagons.
One especially good thing about Alpine is that at Christmas time everyone has at least two Christmas trees!
All a body need do is to go out in the back yard, or the front yard, and chop down a Christmas tree. This, of course, should mean that Santa Claus comes regularly to Alpine—or maybe he lives up there. I don’t know for sure.

UNCLE PETER AMADOR OF AMADOR COUNTY
Land of queer mixtures—asbestos and wheat, gold and fine clays, fruit and fish, mountains and meadows —Amador.
 TWO THINGS having to do with the development of Amador County occurred in the year 1848. First, a man named Dennison, back east, invented the first match-making machine. This is im portant, for what would any county today be without matches, also a considerable part of Amador’s timber eventually becomes matches. In the same year a prospecting party, under the direction of a Captain Webber, was organized in Stockton (then known as Tulesburg). They explored the county southeast of Stockton, beginning at the Stanislaus River and working north. Gold was first discovered in Amador on the Mokelumne River in March of that same year, and search for further rich fields was made in every direction up streams, and gulches as far as the American River.42
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From the venerable appearance of my Uncle Peter Amador I was led to suspect he had been in the Webber party. He told me, however, that he had not come to Amador until 1869, after he had done his bit at Antietam, the Wilderness and Gettysburg.
In spite of his years Uncle Peter was a live one. Indeed, I found all the men and women of Amador to be live ones. This is, I think, quite natural and proper, considering the invigorating atmosphere of the county.
MINES AND THINGS
There are several rich gold mines close to the city of Jackson. We visited the Plymouth Consolidated Gold Mine, Ltd.
According to its name this is a limited mine. It is, however, not limited in its wealth of gold ore, but has for many years been a steady producer of the rich red metal. Writing folks always seem to speak of gold as being “red” when, as a matter of fact, it is yellow. But perhaps red is more stimulating than yellow!
LAKES AND MEADOWS
The soil of the foothills of Amador is rich, and is especially adapted to the cultivation of grapes, apples, peaches, and pears, which attain a most pleasing flavor and growth. Your little Ana Belle can truthfully testify to this because Uncle Peter saw to it that I had all the fresh fruit I wanted.
Many years ago, before the building of the railroad, Kit Carson looked upon a body of water in Amador and called it Silver Lake. This beautiful body of water, at an elevation of 7,200 feet, is the only lake in this part of California which amounts to anything. When Kit explored around Silver Lake he left some signs for anyone who might follow him, and thus Silver Lake became a sort of resting place for the overland emigrants who came to California with the discovery of gold.
The Indians once believed that an Indian god of great kindness was strolling around these mountains. He wanted to do something for his earthly children, but did not know exactly what. In his meanderings he came upon a young buck. This youngster brave was spent with running and was so thirsty he could hardly talk at all. He finally explained to the god that the Indians lacked water, because they lived in the dry mountains, whereupon the god reached out his hand and took a handful from the ocean. He cast this handful of ocean water into a canyon, and immediately there appeared this lake. After that the Indians had all the fresh water they needed on Saturday nights.
MARBLE AND FRUIT
In the valleys of Amador there are big and flourishing orchards of prunes and figs, fields of grain, berries and vegetables. Back in the mountains, in summer, are many cattle and sheep, which are driven to the valleys in winter. You have all seen marble. Drinking fountains, table tops, statues, and other things are made from marble. It is oneUp-Down and All Around California
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of the easiest stones to carve and chisel. We saw a marble deposit. Uncle Peter led me to a quantity of white rocks, set snugly among the trees on a mountain side.
“That,” said he, “is one of the world’s largest deposits of undeveloped marble. Some day it will be quarried, polished and sold.”
COUSIN ARGONAUT CALAUERAS OF CALAUERAS COUNTY
The land of romance! Of gold, of quick words, and swift blows. The mother lode. Land also of cultivated fields and domesticated people—Calaveras!
JUST TWO HOURS’ traveling over good roads brought me to San Andreas. This is a small town given over to mining, stock raising, and to recounting the glories of the past.
Cousin Argonaut Calaveras had plenty of leisure and proved to be a good talker, so I learned considerable about this county. Our first trip took us to the old town of Angels Camp. This is a good name for a town, but it is doubtful if angels ever lived there—judging from its history.
Calaveras was organized in the same year that the first American machine-made watches were produced in the New England states. While those industrious artisans back east were developing the machine-made watch, the hardy birds of Calaveras were digging for gold and finding it, and no doubt spending it for those machine-made watches. When first created this county included, besides its present territory, the counties of Amador, Mono and Alpine. The seat of justice was Pleasant Valley. In two months after its birth the county seat was moved to Double Springs, and in two years more it again moved, this time to Mokelumne Hill. It remained here amid the early mines for eleven years.
But the county did not remain the same size. In 1854, the people by vote set off Amador County, containing the town of Jackson, from Calaveras.
The folks at Mokelumne Hill watched that proceeding with jealous eyes. They were up-and-coming politicians and wanted all the political swag they could get before the county was entirely dismembered. Result! The separation of Mono and Alpine counties, and the removal of the county seat to San Andreas. There was a good jail at San Andreas and that may have had something to do with the move.
THE JUMPING FROG
In those early days a thin young man with a prominent nose was living in Calaveras. Sometimes he mined, but usually he fooled around printing presses and helped publish the local newspapers. He had several friends, and44
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one of them began to brag about a very fine frog he owned. This frog, according to this man, could outjump any other frog in the world. He was so sure his frog was the champion jumper that he was willing to bet money on it.
The thin young man, whose name was Mark Twain, deserted his printing press long enough to go out and do a bit of hunting. He returned with a frog and loudly declared that his frog could outjump the other man’s frog.
That led from one thing to another until they rigged up a contest. There was great excitement around the town when the day for the big jumping contest came along. Everyone sized up the two frogs and made bets this way or that, according to their own fancies.
A few minutes before the hour of the jump, the other man parked his frog in a box in a quiet place, while he went some place or other to do something or other. Then Mark Twain went over to have a look at the so-called champion jumping frog. While looking him over, Mark casually let a small buck shot drop near the box. Out popped the champion frog’s long tongue; the buck shot was gone. Thereupon Mark fed him a handful, more or less, of buck shot. He then went back to his room, where he had an extra pair of trousers with some money in them. He took his money and started to bet, at almost any odds, on his frog.
Mark’s frog outjumped the other frog without half trying.
TODAY
Agriculture has largely taken the place of mining, that is to say, the average man you meet in Calaveras nowadays is a farmer or grower and not a prospector.
Fifty years ago a man of Calaveras would likely have been a miner. Today, however, he is a farmer, and perhaps that is better than mining.
Most counties in California claim to have certain distinctive features or things. Some of them have, and some of them have not. Calaveras, however, has two distinctive features: They are the big trees, and Murphy’s Cave.
On September 25, 1885, a Mr. Mercer was out prospecting in the hills north of a place called Murphy’s. He came to a mound of rocks, and being tired sat down. He was resting easy and having a smoke when he felt a cool breeze coming through the crevices of the rocks and fanning the seat of his breeches.
He took a look around and soon discovered an enormous cave. This cave is one of nature’s wonders, rivaling even the beauties and wonders of the Cave of the Winds, and the Grand Caverns of Colorado. It has been explored and cleaned up and whenever you go to Calaveras be sure and see this cave. It will repay you well for the trip.
The big trees!
The Calaveras grove of Redwoods, containing trees large enough to drive an automobile truck through. Indeed, the road has actually been cut squarely through one of the trees, and I went right through it and had plenty of room left over.Up-Down and All Around California
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COUSIN PEDRO SAN JOAQUIN OF SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY
First in barley; first in table grapes; first in potatoes; first large city southwest of the Bay District — that’s San Joaquin County.
IT MAY BE that when you have gone wandering on the high roads in California you went to San Joaquin County. If so, you can thank your lucky stars that the road turned in that direction. San Joaquin, I found, was more than worth the trip.
Cousin Pedro San Joaquin was talking about potatoes when I first met him. Potatoes are a good subject in this county, for within its borders are grown more potatoes than in any other section of California.
SPUDS« OTHERWISE REFERRED TO AS TUBERS
Bread is the staff of life, but potatoes are a very good crutch. If you ask anyone who knows about potatoes they will tell you the same. Notwithstanding its common name, the spud, or “Irish potato” did not originate in Ireland, but in the South American country of Peru. In the neighborhood of the city of Quito the Spaniards first found the natives cultivating the potato, in the year 1550. From there a monk named Hieronymus Carden took it to Spain, and thence it passed to Italy and Belgium. Nearly 150 years later the potato was transplanted from Virginia and North Carolina to Ireland, on the return of the colonists sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh. It was first cultivated in the Emerald Isle on Sir Walter’s estate near Cork. In San Joaquin County in the State of California, in the United States of North America, I was informed that most of the potatoes, originally brought from South America, were being cultivated by Japanese farmers!
AND NOW THE COUNTY
First in the production of table grapes. These grapes grow in great quantities and are deliciously sweet and juicy.
Cousin Pedro described this county as a cross section of California. That is a big statement, for California stretches over a territory nearly as vast as that included between Chicago and New Orleans.
“In San Joaquin County,” he said, “are thriving cities, vigorous towns, and productive acres. Here are valleys and low lands, here are oranges and beets, asparagus and cherries, strawberries and Egyptian corn, almonds and onions, potatoes and grapes, celery and pears, wheat and walnuts, beans and watermelons. In San Joaquin County irrigation water comes through the ditch, the pump, or the syphon and flood gate. Here rail and water meet, here the sun shines and here the death rate is low.”
Cousin Pedro should get a job with the Chamber of Commerce.46
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San Joaquin County, I found, also grows quantities of alfalfa, and is possessed of a good many fine herds of dairy cows. It is a big producer of milk, butter and cheese.
San Joaquin is situated in the northern end of the “Valley of the Sun,” the great San Joaquin Valley, which we have together traveled over. Five hundred thousand people live in this valley. Given the same density of population as Belgium this valley of opportunity will support 20,000,000 inhabitants. Stockton, the county seat of San Joaquin County, is nearly ninety miles easterly from the Golden Gate, which makes it the natural commercial outlet for this part of the San Joaquin Valley.

MADAM CALIFORNIA
The name of California was given by Cortez, who discovered the peninsula in 1535. Various meanings have been given for the word “California.” It is, however, well established that the word means “Hot Furnace.” Cala and Fornix—half Spanish and half Latin.
I HAVE NOW just about arrived midway in my journey, although in point of counties I will visit more as I go along than I have in the past, but in point of latitude and longtitude, San Joaquin is about as nearly the geographical center as it could be.
Madam California becomes more fascinating the more you see of her.
With the exception of a county or two in the extreme south, up to this point the main products of all the counties are similar. But, from here on, there appears a change. It is gradual, and the same old familiar crops and topography appear, but the change is there just the same.
Watch for this difference and you will discover it.
It appears desirable now to tell you a few general facts about Madam California. You will perhaps understand them better since we have journeyed together for this distance, with Madam.
In the south, you will remember, are the deserts of sage, cactus and greasewood, vast stores of petroleum, comparatively little water, Death Valley, the Mojave Desert, Imperial Valley, and the Sand Hills near Arizona.
The placid Pacific swishing gently against the comparatively low-lying shore. There are few light houses in the extreme south, because there is no need of them. All is serene, and just a wee bit lazy.
North and east, beyond Tehachapi, are General Grant and the Sequoia National Forests, Mount Whitney, Yosemite National Park, Mariposa, and Calaveras big trees; the gold mines, and the marble and the granite quarries; Feather and American River Canyons, theUp-Down and All Around California
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Sacramento Valley, petrified trees (which you will meet in certain counties as we come to them) ; Hot Mineral Springs, glaciers, the Pinnacles National Monuments, Devil’s Post Pile, Muir Woods, Mount Tamalpais and Lake Tahoe. On every hand in this great central part of the Madam are the groves of oak trees. These live and white oaks do not end abruptly, for they are found in scattered valleys clear to the Oregon line.
Northward Ho! and we will find Mounts Lassen and Shasta, the one an active volcano, the other a snow-capped summit on solitary guard over its valley; forests of pine and fir, and the start of the glorious march of the triumphant redwoods.
Madam also displays a chain around her girdle composed of twenty-four missions, linked together with thousands of miles of paved highways, and perfectly constructed irrigation canals; and the Los Angeles and San Francisco water supply systems—remarkable feats of engineering and labor.
I admonish you to watch for the changes from now on until we return to the Santa Clara Valley. From that point south the familiar aspect again appears.
Everywhere in California, for sinner and saint, preacher and fiddling doll, Protestant, Jew and New Though ter, the lowly, energetic, devout and industrious Spanish Fathers have left the mark of God on many a California hill top.
UNCLE CAPITOLO SACRAMENTO OF
SACRAMENTO COUNTY
In spite of the assistance of countless would-be politicians, Sacramento has become a great county. In this county the laws are made, there is a state prison, and there the big state fair is held.
N THE YEAR 1855 there were many bloody riots and fights in the then Territory of Kansas. Sacramento County at that time was five years old. It was a very husky five-year-old. The blood spilled in Kansas was met almost drop by drop by the blood of the miners and gamblers who fought and worked and died in and around this county. When I was there, however, I found it to be a quiet, industrious and thrifty place.
I found Uncle Capitolo Sacramento in his office in the State Capitol building. After the deliberation, due to his exalted political job’s dignity, he concluded it would be a good thing to show me around the county. Since that was the only object of my visit, I said: “Come along and let’s go.” So after considering the matter a little longer he agreed and off we went.48
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THE STATE CAPITAL
The capital of the State of California is a large city, and like the capital city of numerous other states it is not the largest city in the state. But Sacramento is a real city, and I am told the fourth city in point of size in the state. This estimate of its population must be nearly accurate, because it has:
One Governor (who visits there occasionally).
One Legislature (which assembles occasionally).
Forty-three churches, sixty-one miles of street paving, twenty-four school buildings, twenty hotels, one hundred and ten lodges, three fire stations, one thousand four hundred fire alarm boxes, three democrats, one habitual socialist, and seven would-be I. W. W.’s. And if you don’t believe your little Ana Belle then go there and count these things for yourself.
All of these things surely make Sacramento a big city.
The population is variously given at from seventy to one hundred
and fifty thousand. This depends largely on whether or not the speaker is a resident of Sacramento, Stockton or Fresno. You know how it is with neighboring cities.
It was easy to go around Sacramento County. The roads are mostly paved, and so far as I saw there were no steep mountain grades. However, in the extreme eastern part the mountains do start to shoot toward the sky. I was content to look at these from a distance, and so did not penetrate into them.
On our journey we started going north and east, with the result that soon we came upon the Penitentiary, near the town of Folsom. This is one of the two state prisons in California. This is a big state and all people are not so well behaved as is your little Ana Belle, so perhaps the state does need two penitentiaries.
From Folsom we traveled in a broad circle. Sacramento County produces some of the earliest and best oranges in California. In the delta lands along the river I saw great asparagus gardens. The average yield of asparagus per acre is four tons. We saw also a number of large buildings which were devoted almost exclusively to the canning of asparagus. You can be reasonably certain that the canned asparagus you have on your table tonight came from the Sacramento Delta.
Not far from the city of Sacramento were large fields of hops. Hops grow on sticks, nearly thirty feet in the air, and a hop field makes a very attractive spectacle and a different one.
Poultry raising is another prominent industry.
It came about rather as a surprise. Gradually the people of the county began to grow chickens. Then more people came and brought more chickens, until when I saw the county almost every farm house had a small chicken yard beside it. Several large places are also devoted exclusively to poultry.
So many chickens certainly mean a lot of scrambled eggs!Up-Down and All Around California
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But no matter how many scrambled eggs there are in the county, they are as nothing to the scramble of job hunters!
I can’t say that I blame the Governor very much for remaining in his office any more than he must. And neither would you if you had seen the flock of job hunters storming the State Capitol building, in January, 1923, upon the advent of a new Governor.
UNCLE DAN EL DORADO OF EL DORADO COUNTY
The land of rich yellow gold, the one spot in California where the romance of the early days started; romance of the miner, the gambler, and the worker; that culminated in the gold rush of 1849-50.
FOR MILES as I rolled along I had been contemplating the millions of little flowers that grew on every hand, in every meadow, and ran up the nearby hill sides. Now I will tell you about them, for they are the state flower of California, and appear in wild abundance throughout this portion of the state.
The war of 1812 had been blunderingly but successfully waged. Napoleon had made his illustrous return from the Island of Elba
and was again exiled to the Island of St. Helena, before this flower— the Golden Poppy, received any particular recognition.
In 1820 a man by the name of De Chamisso published drawings and a description of a flower he called Eschocholtzia. Thus the waiting world first received authentic news of the Poppy.
This State flower of California has anything but an agreeable perfume, but its wonderful coloring and its incomparable satin-like sheen have been the wonder, delight and admiration of all lovers of nature. Growing as it does throughout all this section of the State and hardly anywhere else, it is peculiarly typical of the State, and in 1903 the Legislature made it the State flower, a recognition it should have received years ago.
Oh, Golden Poppy, Eschocholtzia, Flame Flower, La Amapola, Copa de Oro (Cut of Gold), you are all one and the same! Born under cloudless sky; child of the summer sun and earth’s unminted gold; inimitable; without story, art, poetry, perfume, without anything save thy glory—we love you!
THE COUNTY
I am romancing, dreaming, wandering from my story.
Still passing fields gorgeous with these poppies, I came soon to Placerville, where I easily found my Uncle Dan El Dorado.
In 1850, Hangtown, which is now Placerville, was a thriving camp. I found it to be the county seat, and a law-abiding community, with not even one public gallows. Uncle Dan has lived in Placerville for fifty years, and has never helped hang anyone yet, although the fiery old boy still “has hopes” along that line.
A branch of the Southern Pacific system, with two passenger trains


■>50
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each way daily, gives Placerville rail communication with the State Capitol I had just left, Sacramento.
El Dorado is very like a similar area of territory which might be carved from the Swiss-Italian border: high mountains with warm, fertile valleys between. There are many streams and more than fifty lakes in the county, including a part of Lake Tahoe. I went fishing, and even your little Ana Belle was easily able to land some beautiful trout. California Speckled (which have more freckles than any red-haired boy you ever saw), Eastern Brook, Cut-Throat, Loch Lomond, Salmon, Tahoe, Silver and Echo Trout abound in these streams and lakes.
The county is famous for its wild game. I did not happen to see any, but Uncle Dan said that in his time he had hunted and killed many wild animals and birds. Brown and Cinnamon bears, mountain lions, lynx, wildcat, fox, deer, grouse, mountain and valley quail, ducks, doves, grey squirrels, cottontail, brush and jack rabbits are more or less plentiful.
IT MADE CALIFORNIA FAMOUS
El Dorado is one of the counties that made California famous. To prove it my uncle took me to a place called Coloma, on the south fork of the American River. This is perhaps the most hallowed spot in all California. It was here there came the dawn of a new era in California. The quiet uneventful life of the Mission settlements was rudely disturbed by the rush of immigrants lured by the magic word “gold!”
This seems to be one of the several places which have the distinction of being the exact spot where gold was first discovered. Sacramento claims it, so does El Dorado, but I guess the truth is that gold was discovered at Coloma, which at the time was considered as being within the natural sphere of what is now Sacramento County. However, gold was discovered.
In 1848 a farm or mill hand named James W. Marshall, went out to build a mill for the purpose of grinding grain and sawing lumber. He looked around until he found a suitable place and one that pleased his boss. This place was on the banks of the American River. He started to dig with a shovel, to prepare the mill race, or something, and turned up a bit of gold. They tried to keep it a secret, but the story of gold always leaks out, and within a year or so the entire country was swarming with gold hunters. These newcomers were not exactly careful. They dug for gold wherever they happened to land, they overran the lands owned by Mr. Marshall’s boss, and eventually made him a bankrupt, which perhaps made him wish gold had never been found.
Lumbering is another El Dorado industry. The cutting of pine, spruce and fir predominates over the other woods. Agriculture, horti-Up-Down and All Around California
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culture and stock raising also have a large share in the general prosperity of the county.
I was much interested in one point of my trip, when I saw an old miner laboriously panning gold, by the side of a stream. It seemed as if the old man was typical of the county as it formerly was in all its past grandeur of high romance, superseded now by practical business and industry.

UNCLE MINER PLACER OF PLACER COUNTY
County of the tourist, the miner, the farmer. Land of history, forests, and wide fields of grain and heavily laden orchards—Placer.
NATURE HAS PROVIDED lookout points from which we can see all things. Again I ask you to stop for a moment with me on top of a high mountain. It is the serrated landscape of Placer County around us. Imagine you are on a train and looking from the car window.
It is from the window of a moving train that most of those who come to the Golden State for the first time get their initial glimpse of the enchanting wonders of California. Fortunate, indeed, are the modern pioneers in comparison to those brave men and braver women of the fifties. It is one thing to sit in a warm, comfortable car and view the mountains, and quite another thing to toil over them on foot.
Women are women, but those early-day women crossed these Placer County mountains in long skirts and fluffy things, while nowadays a girl must have an expensive sport jacket and trousers to even walk around a golf links.
THE GATEWAY COUNTY
Why bother with fiction when history and nature are so much more interesting? That tree you see as the train rounds the bend has likely been there since George Washington crossed the Delaware River; that big rock was towering out of the hill when John the Baptist was preaching in the Holy Land; and that rivulet has been running since before the fall of Rome. Placer County is rich in historical lore as well as in practically all of those splendid natural resources that man requires in his myriad tasks of industry.
The earliest achievements of man in the far west were largely centered in this land we are in fancy viewing now. The pioneers found here a country possessing every natural resource necessary for their requirements. A kindly climate, fertile soil, abundant water, splendid feed for their stock, lumber in quantities and a wide range of minerals.52
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Now look at a cultivated hillside as the train cuts across the valley. Contrast it in your mind with the green, but uncultivated, hills the early travelers saw, as they labored down the trail behind their creaking wagons. We have traversed the county and the train stops, for now we have arrived at the city of Auburn, and Uncle Miner Placer is waiting for me. Now I leave you, for from here on I will continue the trip on my own power.
AROUND AND OVER
Uncle Miner lives in a city that almost rests upon seven hills. It is at an elevation of 1,400 feet, with clear, invigorating air, magnificent scenery and a setting of supreme beauty. Miner reminded me of a citizen of Los Angeles. He was forever excusing the weather. It chanced to be raining in Auburn and this seemed to have a most distressing effect upon poor dear Uncle. He stoutly declared that rain at this season of the year was something he had never before seen in all his fifty years of residence.
Maybe he was right for the next day the sun was out in all its glory.
Fruit and wealth go hand in hand in Placer County. Not only are the orchards and vineyards that follow the slopes and crests of the rolling hills beautifully fair to look upon, but they also represent a monetary wealth that runs into many millions of dollars.
THE PLAY GROUND
Eastward from Auburn we went over an excellent dirt road that took us over the summit of the mountains to Lake Tahoe. This is again part of the country we are supposed to have seen through the car windows. This route is one of the most picturesque mountain routes to be found anywhere, no matter where you may look. It passes through a summer resort district that is without a parallel and one that is rapidly becoming recognized as the playground of the Pacific Coast. Lake Tahoe is accepted as the most beautiful lake in the world. Ask anyone who has seen all the lakes in the world and they will tell you the same. A considerable part of Tahoe is located in Placer County, as are the chief resorts that cluster around its shores.
The ancient Indians thought a great deal about Tahoe. Listen to the story as it came to your Ana Belle from out the clear cool air.
Once upon a time, in the valley of the Mountain Top, there lived a chief called “Tahoe-the-Crystal.”
He was a good chief who taught his people how to hunt and fish, and who was a just and fair judge. But he had a brother who was a tough guy. This brother’s name was “Blue-under-the-eye.”
Now “Blue-under-the-eye” envied “Tahoe-the-Crystal,” because he was so decent, and one day he invited him to dinner in his tent, and afterwards he said that he would like to show him something. Curious “Tahoe-the-Crystal” asked what it was and “Blue-under-the-eye” said that it was a funny shaped log with a lid on it, and it was the same size as a man. “Tahoe-the-Crystal”Up-Down and All Around California
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said he would like to see if he could lie down in it, so he did, but no sooner was he inside when slam! “Blue-under-the-eye” shut the lid. Then he called for his gang of bad Indians and ordered them to throw the funny tree trunk into a lake nearby.
When “Tahoe-the-Crystal” failed to show up for supper, his wife, “Smile-a-mile-wide,” went gunning for him, because she did not intend to let her nice warm supper grow cold. By and by she found out what “Blue-under-the-eye” had done to “Tahoe-the-Crystal,” and she set up a holler. Thereupon all the good Indians came running, and what they did to “Blue-under-the-eye” was more than a mere pleasantry.
Ever since then the Indians have claimed that this body of water into which “Blue-under-the-eye” had cast “Tahoe-the-Crystal” was the resting place of all good souls.
Thus endeth the story of the Indian version of why Lake Tahoe is so placidly beautiful.
WE RETURN
As we traveled back down the county we encountered mines, quarries, sawmills and large deposits of commercial clays.
The mining industry is confined principally to the production of gold, silver, copper, lead and stone, while sand and clay suitable for brick, terra-cotta and tile seem to underlie a considerable part of Placer County.
In the hills and valleys are numerous herds of cattle, some droves of Angora goats, many hogs and sheep. The county also produces large quantities of wheat, oats, barley and alfalfa, as well as wild grasses and hay.
Berries ! Grapes ! Cherries !
Need I say more about Placer County?

UNCLE HENRY SUTTER OF SUTTER COUNTY
One of the smaller counties, but Sutter is a great producer of growing things. A worth-while place is Sutter.

IN THE YEAR OF 1841, Mr. William Henry Harrison was elected president of the United States, and only a month or so after he took office he died, and John Tyler became president. At the same time these events were occurring, Uncle Henry Sutter’s grandfather was a settler in what is now Sutter County. When the California Legislature created this parcel of land into a county, it honored the Sutter family by calling the county Sutter. Whether that reflects any glory on your little Ana Belle or not I do not know; I do know, however, that Uncle Henry Sutter is a live wire.
Even if this county, named after my uncle’s grandfather, is only an alluvial plain some forty miles long and twenty miles wide, except at the base where it expands to a width of about thirty miles, it never-54
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theless has some of the largest grain fields I had yet seen. When J observed some of them being cultivated it looked almost as if a small army was at work. One noticeable thing to me in Sutter County was the excellent irrigation canals. These extend quite generally over the county, where the rivers do not reach, and account for the extreme fertility of the soil.
BOYS-GIRLS
Henry was compelled to go away for a day or so, and therefore I visited a woman who lives in Sheffield. This woman is one of much experience, and she has entertained all kinds of visitors in her day. She says the only easy visitor to entertain is the city boy guest on the farm. She once had a guest for three months and it didn’t cost her any expense or worry. But when I visited her for a week it cost her three parties, two teas and five friendships! The boy on the farm was turned loose, and nature, the best friend a boy has, and sometimes his only friend, entertained him. I? Well, I’m a lady, and you know how that is.
AROUND ABOUT
When Uncle Henry returned we went first of all to see the only waste land in the county. The Sutter Buttes is an isolated mass of rocks and earth 2,000 feet high, which starts nearly in the center of the wide valley and covers about 14,000 acres.
The Indians have it that one of their gods got into a fight with the gods of another tribe and these buttes are the result of the turmoil. The gods, being, of course, all powerful, raised these high rocks and earth in an effort to cover each other. Then when the battle was over they left the earth as they finished with it, and went about their business.
The story may be true and may not be true, but I do know that a very wonderful golf course has been spoiled by some of these buttes.
The prune, because of its long life, is a good paying proposition. Conditions for growth and drying in Sutter County are of the first order. Prune trees bear at four or five years, and it is one of the cheapest fruits to cultivate, and one of the easiest to sell. Ask anyone who lives in a boarding house whether prunes are served frequently or not.
The orchardists of Sutter County raise, in addition to prunes, pears, apples, apricots, figs and olives. These crops seem to be scattered around on almost every farm and ranch, but not as liberally as the prune. There are also many oranges and lemons—this in spite of the county’s northern location.
Grapes ? Surely you would not expect a Central California county not to raise grapes. In Sutter County I found large vineyards of Thompson seedless grapes. I was there during the picking season and so I saw hundreds of men and women picking grapes. I think mostUp-Down and All Around California	55
of the pickers were Portuguese or Mexicans; at any rate they were swarthy in appearance.
Toward the northern boundary timber begins to appear, although not in quantities sufficient for it to enter into the economic life of the county. Indian and Egyptian corn are grown, and hogs are fed in the old-fashioned way, with the corn of Egypt and the alfalfa of Chile for a mixed diet.

AUNT GOLDINA YUBA OF YUBA COUNTY
Gold dredges sucking up the gravel, sunshine drawing the growing things out of the ground toward the sky—Yuba.
I HAD TO STOP at an automobile hospital and heard this story:
Several years ago a man working on his ranch in the foothills of Yuba County came upon a small deposit of mercury. He did not know how to handle mercury, so he plunged right in and worked with his bare hands among the rocks containing the deposit. He crushed them and breathed in the dust that naturally arose. He thought he was rich and was figuring on buying a new farm and a new suit and maybe getting married, so he worked like a slave to get all the mercury. It was hard work because he was six feet four inches tall, and it was difficult to stoop so much. But he stuck to the job. By and by when he had two or three sacks full of mercury, he decided to take it to San Francisco and sell it.
He started out in his automobile. The climate of Yuba is nice and warm, but as he went toward the coast it grew cooler. He hurried on and wondered why the steering wheel of his auto seemed so close to his face. When he got out of his machine at San Francisco it was quite cold.
He then discovered why the steering wheel had seemed so close to his face. When he had entered the auto he was six feet four inches tall; when he got out of it he was only four feet six inches tall! He had worked so long with the mercury that he was nothing but a human thermometer.
Right away I went away from the automobile hospital!
My Aunt Goldina Yuba lives in the city of Marysville. Years ago Marysville was a rip snorter of a place—pistol shots and fire water! But no longer. I saw clearly that the modern Marysville would not appeal to Diamond Johnny at all, it is altogether domesticated and subdued.
IRRIGATION AND FARMS
In traveling around Yuba we came to Brown’s Valley. Here is an irrigation system comprising a hundred miles of flumes and canals, where water from the Yuba River irrigates over 40,000 acres. On the south side of the Yuba are several canals, beginning in the Sierras, taking their supply from the melted snow, emptying into lateral distributing ditches, with a capacity for irrigating many thousands of acres.56
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It is mostly this irrigation which makes such alfalfa and cows as I saw in Yuba possible. Yuba appeared to be well supplied with dairy stock, and there are thousands of stacks of alfalfa hay.
GOLD
The lure of gold which brought good fortune to California in the days of ’49, was no false hope as far as Yuba County was concerned. Aunt Goldina said that $80,000,000 in gold dust had already been taken from the Yuba River beds, and the county is now first in the United States in gold production.
Gold dredging has built up two prosperous communities. Marigold and Hammorton, the latter said to be the largest gold mine in the world. Dredging is the more important method of mining now, but placer and quartz also share in the great industry. On the day we visited the gold camps there were five dredgers in active operation.
GROWING THINGS
On the farms I saw nearly everything that rightfully belongs on a farm. Hops, wheat, barley, alfalfa, rice and vegetables of all kinds, as well as fruits.
In the red earth of the plains and foothills of Yuba County the cherry thrives best for that soil acquires its rich red tint because of the heavy percentage of iron it contains. There are also, throughout the county, figs, apricots, apples, pears and prunes.
And peaches.
Yuba produces about half of the canning cling peaches of the United States. No doubt you have eaten some of these Yuba canned peaches.
And pears.
Yuba has the distinction of being the home of the largest pear orchard in the world. This particular largest one covers some 350 acres in the rich bottom district along the Feather River.
And health.
Yuba has also the distinction of claiming to be the healthiest spot in California. It is so healthy in Yuba that the undertakers have considered shutting up shop, and going into the highwayman business.

FRIEND DONNER NEVADA OF NEVADA COUNTY
The home of deep producing gold mines, thriving orchards, lakes and other things.
THE MOUNTAINS of Nevada County were as serene and beauti-ful a thousand years before the Sphinx was built as they are today. They were, then as now, too big and grand to be noticeablyUp-Down and All Around California	57
affected by the inroads of man. When, during the gold rush of 1849-50, thousands of prospectors tramped these mountains, they were continually seeing bears, mountain lions, deer and other animals. Even on my trip to Nevada City, I saw a bear. He was not a big bear and did not look especially vicious, but you just bet you I did not go up to him and say, “Howdy.” Instead, I hopped it from there as fast as I could, and streaked it for the home of my friend, Donner Nevada.
MINES AND FRUITS AND COWS
The double honor of being California’s pioneer and banner gold county is Nevada County’s unique distinction. This county was among the first in which gold was washed from the ravines and stream beds of California’s foothills; and it is within the grass valley district that the first discovery of rich gold-bearing quartz in veins was made, on which discovery the great quartz-mining industry was founded, and at Nevada City the first hydraulic mining of the “Dead River” gravels for gold was inaugurated in the early ’50’s.
Donner’s home was within a stone’s throw of a gorgeous pear orchard. The greatest fruit of Nevada County is the matchless Bartlett pear. In this county are grown the pears which at the California State Fair, in 1913, brought to Nevada County the sweepstakes award for the best pear exhibit, and for the best exhibit in each variety entered.
I found that my friend Donner bears an historical name.
In the early days a considerable band of pioneers were snowbound at a mountain lake in Nevada County. The storms were intense and they could not find any game or anything to eat. All of them perished of the cold and hunger. The lake was later named in memory of this unfortunate party, and is now called Donner Lake, after the captain of the party. My friend’s father was one of the men who found the unfortunate party after the snows had melted.
Again in the valleys I found that Nevada produces many oranges, figs, apples, cherries, and other fruits. Almonds, chestnuts, and walnuts are grown profitably, as are berries, prunes and olives. I asked why there was such a growth of alfalfa and Donner told me about the dairy industry.
It seems that the birth of dairying in Nevada County dates back to the organization of the Penn Valley creamery. This has been very successful, and of course that means that other men will imitate. All of which is fine for Nevada County, because it now has several instead of only one dairy. The alfalfa is used for winter forage for the large herds of beef, cattle, swine, and horses, that roam the foothills and lower mountain valleys.
THE HIGH MOUNTAINS
We visited, the high mountains and stopped for a day at Truckee. This beautiful mountain town is noted for its ice carnival, which opens58
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about Christmas, and continues well into March. A large ice palace is devoted to ice skating and dancing, while a long toboggan slide, skiing, and sleigh-riding to the different places of interest, form the principal outdoor amusements of the carnival.
Industrially, Truckee is interesting. Since it is a freight division it offers exceptional opportunities to the lumber industry. One mill at Overton cuts thirty million feet a year, while the Crown Paper Company, just a few miles away, consumes vast quantities of timber in the manufacturing of paper.
Nevada is a county of contrasts.
For instance, while the boys of the lower valleys are sitting under green orange trees, the boys of the upper regions are skating and playing on lakes of solid ice.
COUSIN MOUNTAIN SIERRA OF SIERRA COUNTY
Trees to the right, trees to the left, trees above. That’s Sierra County. And below ground the precious metals and the yellow gold.—That also is Sierra County.
AT DOWNIEVILLE.
Cousin Mountain Sierra lives in a town founded in 1849. This was the same year that the railroad was first completed from Boston to New York. The same year, also, that the gold rush was on which did so much to populate the State of California. Downieville is one of the oldest of all the California mining towns. At the time of the rush of gold seekers up the Yuba River in 1852, it had a population of five thousand votes cast. Every person was a grownup man!
When I visited it the population was less than six hundred, and it was about equally divided between men, women, children and pet animals.
Downieville, however, is quite a place.
For example, the educated chickens!
These chickens, so Cousin Mountain told me, have a vocabulary. They can and do talk to each other.
When they wish to say, “Beware of the Hawk,” it sounds like “Coor! Coor!” “Murder! Help !”•—“Kee-auk! Kee-auk! Kee-auk!”
“Come on!”—“Cluck! Cluck! Cluck!”
“Food here !”—“Cook-Cook-Cook!”
Announcement or alarm—“Cut—Cut! Cut-cut-cut!”
So far in my trip up, down and around California, these are the first and only educated chickens I have encountered. But the wonders of California are many—and perhaps other counties have just as miraculous things.Up-Down and All Around California
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AROUND AND AROUND
Sierra County is situated in the heart of the vast range of mountains known as the Sierra Nevada. Its one level place of any size, the great Sierra Valley, is near the eastern boundary. The rest is mountainous, a seemingly illimitable succession of lofty, forest-clad ridges and deep, wide and open canyons, with the countless mountain streams rushing into every canyon. How different these Northern canyons are from those of the south, which are mere unsightly gashes in dirt mountains, without water!
From an elevation we saw the broad sweep of Sierra Valley.
It is particularly adapted to stock raising. There are great herds of cattle roaming the tree and shrub covered uplands, and immense droves of cattle, sheep and swine in the lowlands. I saw more horses here than in any county yet visited. Superb animals these, with the hardy strength so much required in such a country.
The native grasses, alfalfa, timothy and red clover, barley, wheat, and oats, all yield abundantly throughout the county, except in the high mountains. Onions, cabbage, cauliflower, asparagus, celery, beets, potatoes, and all the hardier vegetables thrive. I saw many beds and farms of strawberries, gooseberries, loganberries, currants, as well as many varieties of wild berries. The orchards of apples, pears, and plums seemed to be well kept and healthy, as were the very large fields of sugar beets.
Cousin Mountain lives in a productive county, in spite of the mountains. The mountains themselves produce pine and fir for lumber; the valleys produce vegetables and fruit for human food; the lower hills and ridges along the Yuba River, and other streams, produce gold and other precious metals, and they have so produced for more than seventy years. A great county in spite of its comparative inaccessibility.
And lying snugly among the mountain tops are the lakes, some twenty-odd of them. A fisherman’s paradise, a camper’s delight, a nation’s playground!

COUSIN ADAM PLUMAS OF PLUMAS COUNTY
Winding dirt roads between forests of pine, spruce, fir, cedar and tamarack. Little settlements, saw mills, valleys, wheat, cattle—of such is Plumas.
IN PLUMAS COUNTY I saw many things, including an educated field mouse. Cousin Adam Plumas, who is a brother of Mountain Sierra, did not intend that the honor of educating things should go only to Mountain and his chickens.
This educated field mouse was supposed to stand guard over the grain bin60
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in the family barn. Every time a stranger field mouse came along and tried to sample the grain, the educated field mouse would squeal until Cousin Adam came and drove the stranger away.
On the day I was there the educated field mouse was in bad repute. It seems that half a hundred of its relatives came to pay it a visit. Since it was educated only to squeal when strangers came along, it joyfully welcomed its relatives, and they had a great feast.
LUMBER AND THINGS
Cousin Adam lives at the town of Quincy, and incidentally he is a director in the Quincy Lumber Company. The first thing he wanted me to see was his lumber yard and saw mill. Lumbering is a large industry in Plumas County.
Excepting the valley, almost the entire county is covered with an excellent growth of timber. Most of these forests are dense, with no roads, just logging trails. It has only been since the building of the Western Pacific Railroad that much lumbering has been done here.
The valleys in which the cereals, fruits and vegetables are most successfully grown are, Indian, American and Genesee. Those valleys higher up in the mountains are devoted mainly to the production of native and cultivated grasses, for hay and pasture, and are therefore devoted chiefly to dairying and stock raising.
Pure mountain streams abound, and this is very good for the general prosperity of the county, for it eliminates extensive irrigation canals.
The wheat and oat fields I found were luxurious and healthy. This county is not distinctively a wheat producing county, but those fields which are used for growing wheat produce in good quantities. Anyone who has ever been in Plumas County will tell you the same story. Indian Valley oats have no superior on this coast, and to prove that you need only visit Indian Valley and see the oats as I saw them.
MINES
In the early days, during the time of the California Argonauts, Plumas was most thoroughly prospected. There are now many rich mines in the county and in the course of our wanderings we visited some of them.
First we saw the properties on Peter’s Creek. Bonanza shows a well defined vein of ore forty feet wide. Here the sulphides are heavier, but the ores are more complex, carrying gold and silver in addition to copper.
We crossed a canyon and came upon other equally rich properties, and quite often thereafter we encountered mines, so I am of the opinion that Plumas is a good mineral producer.
Frequently we came to mountain streams which seemed ideal for fishing. These streams range in size from a rivulet to a river. According to Cousin Adam these streams abound with game fish. ManyUp-Down and All Around California
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men come to the streams of Plumas for their vacations, and they always bring their fishing tackle with them.
OTHER THINGS
I spent three days in Plumas County. This was necessary because of the slowness with which I could travel. However, I am very glad I did spend three days in Plumas, because I saw about all there was to see.
Plumas, however, is not all streams, mines, mountains and snow. I saw and visited orchards, farms and dairies. Currants, gooseberries, blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries grow in great profusion and perfection. Plumas also seems to be the natural place for the apple. In many parts of the county two thousand five hundred pounds of apples have been grown to the acre, and that surely is a whale of a lot of apples.
COUSIN MONTINA LASSEN OF LASSEN COUNTY
Near the summit of the Sierra Mountains lies Lassen County. Fertile valleys, rugged mountains and wooded plateaus.
BY THIS TIME I had become accustomed to the Northern California dirt roads, and so I did not mind those in Lassen County. The way led over hills and mountains and through the wonderful valleys of Lassen. My cousin, Montina Lassen, lives in what he calls “The Lucky Land of Lassen.” He is a grandson of old Peter Lassen. In the days of the same year as John Brown captured a place called Harper’s Ferry, and thus brought the American Civil War a step closer, Old Pete was having a fine time hunting Indians. It was unfortunate that in 1859 the Indians started to hunt Pete. They were highly successful in their hunt and killed Pete, else, no doubt, I would have found Peter Lassen, the original, waiting for me at Susanville.
Montina says that Lassen is lucky because new industries and improved methods are constantly increasing the list of products of the county and adding to its wealth.
One of the chief sources of wealth is again the good old tree. A tree may be only an ornament while it is alive and in the ground, but when it is placed on a logging train it becomes potentially (ask your father what that word means) valuable as lumber.
THE COUNTY
Montina is a member in good standing of the Lassen County Chamber of Commerce. That makes him a good citizen of the state. He says that, “although Lassen County is known as one of, if not the62
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greatest, timber counties in California, the resources of this great, vast, glorious belt have scarcely been touched.”
That’s a typical Chamber of Commerce statement, and a true one. There are several important valleys in Lassen. One of the principal valleys is known as Honey Lake Valley. Irrigation has been practised in this valley for many years. There are some 60,000 fertile acres in Honey Lake Valley yet to be irrigated, and water is plentiful.
When the white men first came to this valley they were agreeably pleased and surprised to find the Indians possessed of extremely angelic dispositions. They were courteous, and always washed their faces twice a day. When a white man (or another savage) had a hunk of deer meat, the Indians would let him eat it in peace and quiet. They were too polite to ask for a handout, or to take it by force. The remarkable sight of Indians washing their faces twice every day added to the wonderment of the white men. By and by a white settler himself took to washing his face twice a day in a lake in the valley. Soon his wife failed to recognize him. His face was unusually clean and he became gentle, polite and considerate. She was greatly astonished.
One day this woman was talking with the wife of an Indian buck, and from her she learned the sweetening powers of the lake. The Indians claimed that its waters were mellow and sweet, and that was wThy they were of so angelic a temperament! So, they tell me, that is how Honey Lake came to be called Honey Lake.
Surrounding Honey Lake Valley are tall mountain ranges. To the north and east these rolling hills and mountains are covered with native bunch grass, a vast free range for the stockmen, where horses and cattle and sheep feed a good part of the year. This valley, to-gether with Grasshopper Valley (there’s a good Indian story about Grasshopper Valley but I haven’t time to tell it now) is where the immense flocks of Lassen County sheep have their home.
THE COUNTY SEAT
I stayed for two days in Susanville. The citizens of this little city say it has the greatest future of any town in Northern California. Any man, woman or child you meet on the streets will tell you it is a comer. The recent development of this community has been due to the construction of the plants of the Lassen Lumber and Box Company, and the Fruit Growers Supply Company.
Susanville has a beautiful site on a bench immediately under a high bluff, which forms one of the eastern ramparts of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Now listen to a member of the Chamber of Commerce:
“The climate, for instance, is unsurpassed. (This is true of every county, city, town and hamlet in California, and any Chamber of Commerce member will tell you the same!) The summer nights are cool. The cold and snow of winter do not inconvenience anyone, in fact they serve to add pleasant variety to the weather. Surrounding Susanville are innumerable places where one may enjoy an outing.Up-Down and All Around California
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Lakes and streams in the nearby mountains and mountain valleys abound with trout, wild fowl and deer are abundant.”
Wonder what the president of the Chamber would say!
Bee culture is a very remunerative industry, the honey being of
high grade color and of most delicate flavor, as the bees feed almost entirely on alfalfa blossoms and wild honey. Honey from the prairies of Lassen County is second to none, as anyone who has ever eaten it will tell you.
COUSIN SALMON SHASTA OF SHASTA COUNTY
Shasta is such an energetic county that even the mountains get smoked up, for here is Mt. Lassen, an active volcano.
MANY THOUSANDS of years ago a greenish mass of ice appeared in the valleys of the world. Before it the inhabitants were compelled to retreat farther and farther. Centuries rolled around and the ice gradually receded, but in its stead were volcanoes, hot springs and fire. Again the slow, steady march of nature progressed until the earth resumed the shape and aspect we now know. Yet, even today, the forces are slowly moving toward some ultimate change. Most of the heat and volcanoes of the ancient period have become inactive, although here and there a mountain still smokes and smolders and occasionally erupts. This is what has occurred in Shasta County.
Southeastern Shasta County probably holds America’s greatest natural wonder, Mt. Lassen, the only active volcano in the United States. The government has created a national park around this steaming mountain and development of this great natural playground has already begun. In time it will surely be known as “Nature’s Curiosity Shop.” Here I found the extremes of hot springs near vast caves of ice; almost fathomless mountain lakes, with cinder cone islets and shores of volcanic scoria and glass; canyons half a mile deep and mountain peaks rising a mile above the canyon floor and two miles above the sea level. An unexplored and almost unknown wonderland, is the Mount Lassen National Park.
An interesting bit of a yarn.
Once upon a time there lived near the base of a mountain a big and exceptionally brave Indian chief. He was so brave that when he went out to get a bit of fodder from the hind quarters of a grizzly he did not take any weapons with him. No, not this chief. He slew his meals with his bare hands! He was a married man and he loved his little “Dimple-in-the-Cheek” madly. One day she was killed, and after this chief, whose name was “Strong-like-the-Tree,” recovered from his grief he determined to find “Dimple-in-the-Cheek.” To this end he started to dig down into the mountain. He dug and he dug until he had dug himself completely in. When he had dug deep enough he came to the council chambers of the Indian gods. Here he found his little “Dimple-in-64	Up-Down and All Around California
the-Cheek.” They were happy again. But the Indian gods were so impressed with the great strength of “Strong-like-the-Tree” they invited him to sit forever in their councils. Thereafter, whenever Mt. Lassen blew off the lid, the Indians claimed it was ״Strong-like-the-Tree” smoking his pipe around the council table of the Indian gods.
THIS IS NOT ALL
In this county nature also asserts her attractions with the thunder of innumerable waterfalls. Burney Falls, Fall River, Hat Creek Falls, Pit Falls, and others vary the majesty of the rivers and streams of which they form a part. Mineral springs in the canyon of the Pit at Henderson invite an ever increasing patronage, and others still undeveloped are points of great interest.
I must repeat myself a little because of the wonders of Shasta.
As I viewed these wonders with Cousin Salmon Shasta, my mind groped through history trying to arrive at some historical dates or facts a little more understandable than the vague Indian stories, or the supposed development of the earth, with which to connect these things. When the stone age was developing upon the earth these hot springs were just as hot as they were when I saw them. Five thousand years before the birth of Christ, when flourishing cities appeared in a place called Mesopotamia, Mt. Lassen was to all intents and purposes a volcano. Moses was born, lived and died, and the glassy shores of these lakes were as they are today. King Solomon built his temple while nature was piling the cinder cones onto islands here. Centuries and centuries passed, as they will continue to pass, and always these natural wonders will remain. Nature takes no account of time. Imagine a rock ten miles high and ten miles square, then once a year a wild stag comes to this rock. He sharpens his horns against its sides and goes away. Well, that rock would be worn away before a day in nature would have passed!
It is too vast a retrospection! I gave it up in the delights of seeing Shasta as it is in the year 1923.
THE SOIL
It required several days to see Shasta County, because the distances are great and the roads are rough. The soils of this mountain county are of three principal classes, as to origin: First, the river and creek bottom soil, laid down by moving water in recent centuries; second, older water-laid soils which have remained in place so long as to permit bleaching and weathering to have their effect; and third, the hillside soils formed by the decomposing of the underlying rocks. This difference in soil produces many varieties of growing things.
For example:
Grapes, berries, nuts, forage, cucumbers, squashes, eggplant, broom straw, and some cotton and tobacco. I feel honor bound, however, to tell you that the cotton and tobacco crops are not exactly what you would call extra large.Up-Down and All Around California
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And when it comes to live stock.
Shasta County is famous for the hogs fattened upon the acorns of its woodlands, as well as for the sheep and cattle pastured in the valleys during the winter and taken to the green mountain slopes in the summer.
Since there is winter pasture in abundance, stock needs little or no housing, and because there are so many kinds of forage crops (grass, alfalfa, weeds, clover, etc.), the animal industry is a profitable one in Shasta County.
FISH
The Sacramento River (this is the same river we have met before) is a great salmon stream. On one of its tributaries, called the McCloud River, I saw something new and different. At a little town named Baird there is located the Central Salmon Hatchery.
A fish hatchery is extremely interesting. It is also a necessity. Millions upon millions of little salmon are hatched, and then dumped into the river, after they have grown large enough to take care of themselves. Some of these little fish, who escape the terror of the waters, become big fish, which you have on your table on Friday nights.
Cousin Salmon Shasta lives in a county with an active volcano in it, but it is doubtful if that volcano can ever be as active as a salmon fish hatchery!

UNCLE WOODO MODOC OF MODOC COUNTY
At last a frank statement. Modoc is said to mean at the head of the river, or a valley in the mountain top. And that is just what it is. It is the topmost county of California, and borders on Oregon and Nevada.
IT WAS NECESSARY for your little Ana Belle to go into low gear. The way was steep and rugged. At Alturas I found Uncle Woodo Modoc waiting for me with a nice hot supper on the table.
Uncle Woodo is one of the men who went to the California Legislature in 1874 and helped create this county. He has always lived in Alturas. When, in 1873, the United States Government issued the first one-cent post cards, Woodo was postmaster of his town. It was during his political activities with the Legislature that he first saw a barbed wire making machine. This was in 1874 and he has the distinction of being the first Modoc citizen to put barbed wire around part of his farm. I know this to be true because I saw some of the barbed wire.66	Up-Down and All Around California
TIMBER
In proportion to its vast forests, Modoc is not even one-two-three in the timber producing ranks. This is because it has not yet been exploited. As I went around the county I saw a tremendous lot of unbroken forest. There are several large lumbering companies preparing to invade this glorious wilderness, and I am glad I chanced to see the county before it is partly denuded of its beautiful trees.
THE CLIMATE
After summer comes winter, but winters of Modoc are not the winters of the middle west.
Snow? Certainly. Cold? Yes—for a couple of weeks each year. Even Uncle Woodo acknowledged it was cold sometimes, but not often. The thermometer has a way of running down below zero frequently, but it does not stop the business of the county. At Alturas, for example, it does not keep the children out of school, nor the people off the streets. And the bees of the county sleep snugly in their hives, ready to come out again in the summer and produce the honey for which Modoc (like several other counties) is famous.
GROWING AND OTHER THINGS
This county, I found, has plenty of two things vital to the building of empires—land and water. Certainly there is enough vacant land to support a nation almost as populous as Denmark.
Irrigation is a big thing in Modoc.
The Big Sage district, which lies about eight miles northwest of Alturas, will soon be under a vast irrigation system. Then, also, soon there will be the Rocky Prairie district, the Jess Valley district, the Fandango, and others. All of which will utilize the plentiful water supply and make the valleys of the mountain top produce better than ever before.
Modoc is a fine dairy county, and produces thousands of pounds of cheese, as well as butter and eggs and milk.
I found one strong crop in abundance—onions. Woodo, on his farm, produces onions—big, strong, hardy onions.
Modoc is also a famous live stock county. Range is cheap and general conditions are favorable to the production of large numbers of cattle, sheep, horses and swine.
The man who kills for fun and therefore refers to himself as a sportsman, will find plenty of game in Modoc. The home of the Mule Tail deer is in the western part of the county, in a place called the Modoc National Forest.
The roads, however, were so difficult I was content not to explore much of the county. Uncle Woodo, however, told me about it and I pass what he said along to you.
During my stay I somehow had the impression of being right on the mountain top. Almost at the very top of the world, as it were.67
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AUNT KLAMATH SISKIYOU OF SISKIYOU COUNTY
Right smack in the north, with mountains, valleys, mines, resorts, big pastures and much celery—Siskiyou.
I HEADED WEST along the Oregon boundary.
In the world war, the soldiers had a saying that when one of their comrades had died or been killed he “had gone west.” As I went westward in Siskiyou County I recalled to mind something I had once read about ancient Egypt.
According to the historian, the Egyptian heaven or world of departed souls, was situated beyond the high mountains of the west, and when an Egyptian wanted to say someone had died, he said that he had “gone west.”
I was going west, but I was, and am, far from a dead one!
Then all at once I saw Mt. Shasta, in solitary guard over its valleys, cutting into the sky.
The mountains of Northern California culminate in this beautiful one. With its white, glistening, glacier-covered summit, Shasta forms a land-mark visible for many miles. Mt. Lassen is not in Lassen County nor is Mt. Shasta in Shasta County, but Lassen is. Verily, things are mixed up in California.
AWAY WE WENT
At Yreka I found my Aunt Klamath Siskiyou waiting for me, and immediately we started on our trip through Siskiyou County.
Keystone of the northern tier of California counties, this one is larger than the combined area of Connecticut and Rhode Island, or two-thirds as large as Massachusetts. The latter, however, has some 500 people to the square mile, while in Siskiyou there are but an average of three to the square mile. Use your pencil a little. The county has 6,256 square miles. Multiply that by three and you get 18,768. Ask any school teacher and she will confirm this. That gives you nearly the number of permanent residents in Siskiyou County. But, like all of the Northern California counties, what it lacks in population it makes up in other ways.
For example: Mining.
Since the discovery of gold at Yreka, in 1851, nearly 150,000,000 dollars has been taken out of the mountains of the county. Aunt Klamath has visited most of these mines. They are located along the streams flowing into Klamath River, and into Cottonwood Creek. Of course, a nice little motor car like your Ana Belle could not travel over all the trails leading to these mountain mines, but I did see some, notably the Hydraulic Mines. Mining by means of strong streams of water is being conducted along the Klamath, particularly near Happy68
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Camp. We took a little side trip to these mines. They are near the forks of Salmon Creek.
The origin of the name Yreka is interesting. It seems that in the early days a man came to the town and started in the bakery business. He printed a sign on canvas, “Bakery.” Before he hung it over his shop door, he leaned it with its face against the wall while he went inside to do something or other. A stranger at that psychological moment hove into view who wanted to know the name of the town, and seeing the sign he read it backwards, and pronounced the word “Yreka”! There was a big celebration that night and everyone was drunk and happy and the name stuck.
THE COUNTY
I found that immense herds of cattle were quartered in the sheltered valleys of Siskiyou, and driven to the mountain ranges and national forests in the spring months.
Surrounding the cattle ranges and farms are the forests of white pine, fir, and cedar, with here and there a lonesome grove of oaks. There are many small and large lumber mills, where the logs are turned into boards and boxes and shingles.
Wheat, oats, alfalfa, fruit and vegetables.
In the Scott Valley section, wheat will average 35 to 40 bushels to the acre. In another section the average yield may be smaller, but throughout the county, I was informed, the yield is abundant. Alfalfa, that great staple of all California products, flourished practically all over the county. Here, again, I found that Scott Valley leads, because it has a larger acreage planted to alfalfa than any other individual section of the county. But all things grow easily in Shasta, Willow Creek, Big Springs, and Little Shasta Valleys.
Aunt Klamath was especially anxious to impress me with the high quality and quantity of celery in the county. It seems that Siskiyou is a banner county in the production of celery; it also holds a high place in the matter of potatoes. A banner county for California means that some time during its history it was awarded the banner or mark of distinction at some one or more of the annual California State Fairs at Sacramento.
Bees!
With fifty thousand acres of alfalfa and clover in blossom, and countless wild flowers ever opening their stores of sweets throughout the summer, the bees of Siskiyou gather a golden harvest, which is shipped all over the nation. If the honey you have eaten on hot biscuits has been exceptionally delicious, then, according to Aunt Klamath, it surely came from Siskiyou.
One of the favorite diversions of travelers passing between Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco, California, is to hop off the train at Shasta Springs. They take a drink of the water which bubbles up out of the ground near the base of Mt. Shasta, and then climb back on the train again.Up-Down and All Around California
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FRIEND GLORIA DEL NORTE OF DEL NORTE COUNTY
This county offers a vast, undeveloped territory, which some day will take front rank. It is as yet almost the same unbroken wilderness the first white men saw when they came to Del Norte.
OVER THE MOUNTAINS I went to see my friend, Miss Gloria Del Norte. She has her home in what she called “An Empire
Not Yet Discovered.” Perhaps there is a reason why so much of Del Norte remains undeveloped; it may be the difficult roads and the high mountains.
Ah! A beautiful county is Del Norte.
THE COUNTY SEAT
While the approaching storm between the North and the South in the Atlantic States was growing more bitter, the State of California, in legislative convention assembled, decreed that Del Norte should become a county, and that Crescent City should become its county seat. Crescent City, at that time, existed mostly in name only. When I was there I found it to be a beautiful and pleasant little city.
It is the largest town in the county and is located in, perhaps, the best part. Crescent City gets its name from the curving, cement-like beach, over four miles in length, around which it lies. The placid bay makes a fine harbor, and as usual in quiet waters, there are many birds of the sea, feeding or flying gracefully above the waters.
Crescent City is surely a thriving community, with its three churches, three excellent hotels, and two moving picture shows, as well as numerous private and public buildings. Gloria says she likes to live there because of the beauty of the land and sea and because it is so healthful for all.
INDUSTRIES
Some day Del Norte will become one of the great apple producing counties of the state. It now produces, in addition to apples, other fruits such as plums, peaches, nectarines, pears and cherries, and all on a commercial scale. There are also dairies. In fact, Gloria says, Del Norte is a banner county for the production of butter, cheese and butter fat. There are more than a dozen complete creameries in the county and others building.
TIMBER?
Yes. Quantities of timber. The manufacturing of lumber and shingles is extensive. It will surely remain extensive for many years because the vast forests seem almost inexhaustible.70
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FISHING?
I should say so. One of the profitable industries is salmon fishing. Klamath and Smith Rivers are beautiful streams, as well as bountiful producers of the red-fleshed finny ones. This is true especially of the first named river, on the bank of which is a large cannery for dealing with the extensive catches.
OTHER THINGS
A good portion of Del Norte may be undeveloped, but I found it to be most wonderfully interesting. The grandest marine views in the State of California are obtained from a drive along the “Redwood Highway” in Del Norte County. And just a mile or so back inland are the mountain streams. Fish of the game varieties abound in these streams, and the sportsmen can catch enough for three meals in an hour.
Bordering the Pacific Ocean, the county “Of the North” is the northwest “corner stone” of California. It has most fittingly been called the land of crystal waters. Its towering redwoods are the wonder of all beholders and are unsurpassed in the tropical luxuriance of their undergrowth. Ferns of various kinds, growing to the height of from four to six feet, deserve special mention. Frequently these ferns grew out over the mountain roads as I went along them.
One afternoon Gloria took me to see the Mill Creek Redwoods. This is the largest single tract of virgin redwood timber on the face of the globe. (That is a bold statement but I investigated and found it to be a true one.) There is enough timber in this one grove to build half a dozen cities the size of Crescent City.
At low tide Miss Gloria took me for a spin on the beach. This beach, when the water is out, becomes hard and smooth. It is, I think, one of the best automobile racing beaches in the country, not even excepting the Florida beaches.

COUSIN REDO HUMBOLDT OF HUMBOLDT COUNTY
In the wild mountain fastnesses of Humboldt are deer, bear and mountain lions, and in the valleys, lumber, mills and farms. And in both are many cattle.
WHEN I CAME bounding down from the north into Humboldt County, it was a grand day, one of God’s big mornings. The
mountains were aflame with the splendor of the sun; the sea glistened like a highly polished mirror; and every now and then a wild bird piped a greeting as I passed.
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to know it must not cross roads when automobiles are on them, and the third time when a young doe bounded along in front of me for, perhaps, a hundred yards—a little spotted baby deer, that suddenly disappeared into the forest from whence it came.
THE COUNTY
From the portion I had thus far seen I was inclined to think of Humboldt as being covered with almost unbroken forests. But when I arrived at Eureka, and asked Cousin Reda Humboldt about the timber, I found I was in error. As a matter of fact less than half of the county is a forest, but I noticed, as we went around, that very frequently we passed through large Sequoia groves.
I quickly found that Humboldt was a mountainous county. It rises almost directly from the shores of the Pacific to the summits of the Coast Range. Along most of the coast-line the land rises sheer from the water, and the hills and ridges gradually increase in elevation until the eastern summits are reached.
East of the Redwood belt we came to the principal grazing sections. Even here it is almost all hilly, and about half of it is covered with scattered forests of pine, fir, oak and other woods. The native wild grasses thrive in the open places and furnish food for thousands of cattle and sheep, as well as the wild deer.
Along the streams cutting thru this region we found many small bits of fine bottom land. It is here, and on the fertile beaches and plateaus, that Humboldt raises its fruits, berries and grains.
THE LIGHT HOUSE
We stopped for several hours at the little town of Trinidad. This city is twenty-eight miles north of Eureka, on the Redwood Highway. On Trinidad Point, a high and rocky place, is a United States government lighthouse. It is built right on the top of a sheer rock bluff, one hundred feet straight above the Pacific Ocean. There is also a large cross on Trinidad Point, which indicates where white men first set foot on Humboldt territory. From the lighthouse we could see a ship making its way up the coast toward Seattle.
PRODUCTS
Here is a little lesson for you.
There are, so Reda informed me, three prominent branches of horticulture.
These three main branches are:
Pomology—Fruit growing.
Olericulture—Vegetable growing.
Floriculture—Ornamental plants.
All these are abundantly represented in Humboldt County. In this county I saw apples, pears and peaches, potatoes, onions and carrots; also rhododendrons, azaleas and Holland bulbs.
Thus endeth the lesson.72
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Several times the road took me close to sleek and fat herds of cattle, sheep, swine and an occasional drove of horses, vacationing in the meadow.
A LITTLE HISTORY
While Benjamin Franklin and George Morris were collecting money to finance the war of the American Revolution, a Spanish ship was making a peaceful voyage in the Pacific Ocean. This ship, under the command of Bodega and Heceta, entered Trinidad Bay on Trinity Sunday, June 9, 1775. This is the first record of a landing being made in the county, but nothing much came of the trip so far as Humboldt was concerned.
On December 20, 1848, a party of Americans, headed by Dr. Josiah Gregg of Missouri, coming from the interior, discovered and renamed the bay, Trinity. Events followed rapidly and on the 20th of April, 1850, the Laura Virginia, a ship flying the American flag, crossed the bar.
Almost within a decade thereafter towns sprang into existence and trails were opened up which led to the Klamath on the north and to the Sacramento Valley on the east. Subsequently a road known as the immigrant road was built, south into the Sonoma Valley. It was this road upon which I entered and left Humboldt County, on this trip of mine.

FRIEND SHEEPO TRINITY OF TRINITY COUNTY
A California lion, a domestic cat, a black bear; horses, waterfalls, a lake; farms, mountains and forests. Such is Trinity.
THE ROAD TO WEAVERVILLE took me over forest clad mountains, and beside silvery brooks, with now and then superb
views of green valleys. I came in joyous mood to the home of my friend, Sheepo Trinity, to find him deep in an argument with a former employee of his.
It seems that this man rented a field with the stipulation that the rent was to be one-fourth of the crop raised.
Trinity County crops, in the well-watered valleys, are exceedingly abundant, so Sheepo expected a nice little profit from the farm.
He did not get a thing! And that was the cause of the argument. At harvest time my friend was amazed to find that he received
nothing at all in exchange for the field.
The farmer hauled three loads of produce to his own barn, and so
my friend remonstrated with him.
“How’s this?” Sheepo demanded, as I came up. “Wasn’t I to
get a fourth of this crop?”
“Yes, you were,” candidly rejoined the tenant, “but as it turned out there was only three-fourths of a crop, as you can tell from the fact that I hauled in only three loads!”
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No county I had yet visited excels Trinity in the beauty of its forests, and with the good highways soon to be built, it promises to become a mecca for tourists and campers, as well as lumber men.
NATURE
In the year 1775, the Minute Men in and around Boston, Mass., staged one of the biggest events ever pulled off in the United States, or in America for that matter, because the United States did not then exist. These Minute Men staged the battles of Lexington and Concord, and every last one of those Minute Men went down stage right in the spot light. In the same year a party of Spaniards were exploring the country in Northern California, which we now call Trinity, but which they called Trinidad. While the Minute Men were hunting the Red Coats, these explorers were no doubt hunting the Red Skins, and other big game. And to this day Trinity has remained a good hunting ground. Some folks claim that an ancient Indian story placed Trinity as being the “Happy Hunting Ground” of departed Red Skins. I claim Trinity is the real “Happy Hunting Ground” of modern pleasure seekers.
Lovers of hunting and fishing find inducements to spend their vacations in Trinity County that are not excelled elsewhere in California. Deer are everywhere in the county (except where the hunter is???), and the hundreds of mountain streams are well stocked with fish that bite quickly.
Mountain grouse and quail are fairly abundant (which is a conservative way of saying they are hard to find), and it is not unusual for the sportsman to meet a Black or Cinnamon bear, or maybe a California lion, if he tracks his game in the high mountains.
PRODUCTS
Hydraulic, placer, drift, dredge and quartz mining are prospering, and the county seems to have a large deposit of gold-bearing gravels which will some day make Trinity ideal for hydraulic mining. I saw also many farms, orchards, and large fields of alfalfa and grain, while, because of the climate range and natural grasses, Trinity offers exceptional inducements to the stock man.
We went to a little valley set at the base of some high mountains, which to me seemed certainly as beautiful as the Swiss Alps folks make so much fuss over.74
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COUSIN GUADALUPE TEHAMA OF TEHAMA COUNTY
A county without a grain failure. A county of great orchards, stock farms and broad •valleys, surrounded by high mountains.
THE ROAD TOOK ME almost directly south. It was unpaved, but the natural compactness of the red soil made the going rather good. I chanced to look at a map and found that the city of Red Bluff was about the same latitude as Denver, Colorado; Columbus, Ohio; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In those cities the winters are always cold and there is much ice and snow, and growing things shut up shop and call it a season when the winter comes. Not so with Tehama County, despite its latitude.
In this county I saw oranges!
My cousin Guadelupe (hereinafter called Guad) Tehama, bragged so much about his orange groves that I suggested I would like to see them. Oranges, I had thought, cannot grow so far north, for I was more than 550 miles north of Los Angeles.
But Cousin Guad was not bluffing, and he displayed to my admiring and wondering eyes thriving and blossoming orange groves!
The distinction of possessing the most northern commercial orange and lemon groves in America surely belongs to Tehama County. Imagine, if you can, oranges living through a Denver or a Philadelphia winter!
A DIVERSITY
On this same short excursion I saw many large droves of hogs. Swine are fond of alfalfa and Tehama raises much alfalfa. In fact, a pig fed on Tehama alfalfa will soon make a hog of itself! In addition to alfalfa, I found, as I went around the county, an abundance of corn, barley and pumpkins. All, of course, delicious to the pig who has made a hog of himself.
And the olive.
I suppose it is because I first read about olives in the Holy Bible, that I was rather accustomed to thinking of olives as belonging to warm countries. On this visit my ideas received a jolt. Tehama county is well adapted to the growth of the olive. Should a second act of the ark be pulled off, the scene (according to Guad) should be laid in this county. For in Tehama it seems that the streams are varied as well as beautiful, the storms quickly subside, and here the dove would find the waving olive branch almost everywhere.
In the mountains we passed several delightful waterfalls. There is an old Indian tale about these Tehama waterfalls, and rivulets.
The story says:
During the supremacy of the Indian on the continent, many years beforeUp-Down and All Around California
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the coming of the white man, there was a strong Indian. This particular brave was especially strong and vigorous, a sort of Sandow as it were. This strong boy became so angry at a neighboring tribe that he set out all by himself to give them battle. He walked at such furious pace and with such mighty strides that wherever he put his foot down, forever afterwards there was a small cliff. Thus when he stepped in a river bed the land sank away and formed little cascades.
PRODUCTS
Tehama County has long been a cattle country. Cattle are now driven to mountain and meadow ranges during the summer, and returned to the valley ranges and alfalfa fields before the fall of snow in the mountains. That is thoughtful of the Tehama stock men, because these mountains do get cold in the winter time. There is an average of three or more crops of alfalfa each year. This is baled and stored so the cattle can eat it when they come down from the mountains.
Cousin Guad, who is an authority on Tehama County, avers among other things: “That no place, of equal area, in the United States affords so great a variety of wild game as Tehama.” He informed me that in the mountains are deer, mountain lions, panthers, cougars, mountain goats, and you can get up a foot race with a bear on almost any day. I took him at his word about the foot race, but I did enjoy the fresh venison he served for supper.

UNCLE NOVO MENDOCINO IN MENDOCINO COUNTY
“The wonder spot of wonderland!
With mountains so green all around me,
And mountains so xvhite above,
And mountains so blue in the distance—
I'll follow the trail that I love.”
UNCLE NOYO MENDOCINO lives in a county that is ideal in many respects. There is, for instance, little underbrush covering the hills and mountains. That makes it comparatively easy to go hunting, fishing, camping and hiking. That is one of the reasons why so many city people spend their vacations in Mendocino County.
The road over the mountains from Red Bluff to Ukiah was not so bad. It is a popular road, for I passed a good many other autos on the journey. One thing in Mendocino struck me forcibly: I saw so many mountain ranches. When I talked with Noyo about it, he told me these little ranches, with their houses, their grain, garden and alfalfa, were uncleared timber land only three or four years ago— another proof of the strength and hardihood of Mendocino men and women.
This county, I found, was twice as large as the State of Delaware. Mendocino climate conditions include the warmth of the southland, the76
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cool breeze of the sea shore and even the snow-capped mountains of the northland. I soon realized the lure that attracts so many pleasure seekers to the towering mountains, tree-clad hills, abundant streams, and springs; lovely valleys and the grandest forests of redwood and pine that ever was on land or pictured canvas. Mendocino is as charming a spot as any I have ever seen throughout this broad state of California. It is a county of industry, business, and a county of hunting and fishing and romance, which makes Mendocino a good combination.
VICHY SPRINGS
Ukiah is a city of the sixth class (you’ll have to look up the post office regulations to find out just what a city of the sixth class is) and is a shipping point of considerable prominence, serving as a railroad distributing and trading center for a large productive territory. In the surrounding valleys were a great number of cattle, sheep and horses.
The luxuriant acres of wild grasses, and the cultivated fields of alfalfa I saw in Mendocino go far toward giving it its enviable place in the stock raising division of industry.
Near the city of Ukiah are the Vichy Springs.
“The famous Champagne Bath” is what the people call these springs. The waters have a remarkable curative value. The effect of the bath depends somewhat upon the time the patient remains in the water, but the general effect is to slow and regulate the pulse, especially in nervous patients.
There is an attractive story floating in the air around these springs.
Centuries ago, even before the time of Athens in Greece, an Indian by the name of “Swift-run-and-Jump” fell in love with an Indian maiden whose name was “Red-like-the-rose.” Nothing unusual in that, but this young buck Indian was a big chief. The maiden, “Red-like-the-rose,” did not take to him. She was cold and did not smile upon his love. “Swift-run-and-jump” became sad and discouraged; he even contemplated suicide, for he argued that if “Red-like-the-rose” did not love him he wanted to kick off. He wandered into the forest, hoping some bear or lion would kill and eat him all up. No such luck for “Swift-run-and-jump.” However, he was so depressed that the tears blinded his eyes, so he fell into a spring of hot water. Instantly his nerves became quiet and his sadness departed. He sprang out of the water and ran to the home of “Red-like-the-rose.” He was so clean and radiantly happy after his unexpected bath that “Red-like-the-rose” could no longer resist him and so they were married. From then on the Indians venerated the springs and made them a sort of holy place.
If those springs do have that power they certainly should advertise it. There are many patient wives who would like to have their husbands take that bath if it would make them radiantly happy.
FORT BRAGG
How very interesting was this old place! It is the only city in Mendocino that has both rail and water shipping facilities. The bigUp-Down and All Around California
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mill of the Union Lumber Company provides work for everybody, and there are no idle people living in Fort Bragg. That is, perhaps, why it is such an interesting city.
Fort Bragg has a self-supporting municipal water system, supplied from natural springs, a splendid school system, and an electric lighting plant and power system; beautiful, wide, tree-lined streets, as well as comfortable homes, schools and churches.
The country around the city is fully as interesting. Fishing in the waters of the mighty Pacific, hunting in the nearby mountains, camping in the redwoods, all add to the Fort Bragg country and make it a part of the “land that I love.”
FRIEND BOB GLENN OF GLENN COUNTY
Back again to the broad Sacramento Valley, the poppies and the grain -fields. Glenn—the county of temperate winters, industries and productive summers.
THE ROAD TO WILLOWS was not so bad, in fact, after the Redwood Highway and the mountains, was extremely good. When I entered the county proper, the mountains ceased and gave way to the low hills and broad valleys which seem to be characteristic of Glenn County.
My friend, Bob Glenn, was waiting for me at the county seat at Willows. Bob has lived in Glenn County since 1890, the same year that the first bicycles equipped with pneumatic tires appeared. He still has the original “bike” he bought when they first came out, which by the way, was just one year before Glenn became a county. After seeing that old “wheel” your little Ana Belle was glad she was an automobile and not a “bike.”
THE COUNTY
For many years Glenn County has been a great grain producer, and large ranches have been the rule. Some of these ranches are almost as big as all of Alpine County. That’s how big some of them are. But this is changing now. The larger ranches are being subdivided into smaller ones, which is much better, as it gives more people an opportunity to own Glenn land.
Bob told me a story about these big ranches.
Once Doctor Glenn farmed some 40,000 acres, planting it year after year with grain. It required the services of a small army to maintain his principality properly. A plowman would start at daybreak at one end of the field, and complete one round by the time darkness had set in, and the supper bell would welcome him back. Now these immense fields grow luxurious alfalfa, as well as grain, and also many varieties of fruit and vegetables.78
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IRRIGATION
In Glenn County is situated the first irrigation project undertaken and completed in the Pacific Coast States by the United States Government. I went over to see this Orland project, as it is called, and found that it embraces 20,000 acres of rich land, all now under irrigation in this one project alone.
No county of California enjoys more absolute certainty of its water supply than does Glenn. One section is irrigated by water developed and guaranteed by the United States Government. Another has the rich waters of the Sacramento River distributed by means of a perfect canal system, and that portion situated remote from these sources has the subsurface supply that comes from trickling mountain streams beginning in veritable banks of everlasting snow. There is also an ample underground water supply which bubbles up in artesian wells in many places.
PRODUCTS
In Glenn I found many miles of paved highways and others constantly building, which is another reason why Glenn folks smile all the while.
Bob is an ex-president of the Willows Realty Board, so he is quite naturally a Glenn County booster. He insisted upon showing me the prize fields, ranges and farms of the county.
Here, again, I found that alfalfa was one of the leading industries, and that pre-supposes stock raising. Most of the stock is cows. Dairymen are striving for graded herds of cattle, and many of the farms keep only registered stock. Jerseys, Holsteins and Durhams are to be seen in various places pretty much all over the county.
The impression among many city folks is, that since the advent of the motor car (which is nothing but an individual locomotive), the horse would die off and so there would be no use for alfalfa. Perhaps you have wondered at the great amount of alfalfa grown in California, in view of this automobile-versus-horse supposition. The thing is, you do not take into consideration the cow and the pig. These animals consume more alfalfa hay than the horse ever did, and so alfalfa will always remain a very necessary crop.
Glenn produces prunes, pears, almonds, peaches, oranges, and lemons; each on a large scale, with prunes predominating.
AUNT ESTRELLA BUTTE OF BUTTE COUNTY
If you want an orange grove in the north, or an olive orchard, or hunting, fishing, or broad fields of grain, then go to Butte.
IT WAS EASY GOING for most of the distance to Oroville. This county is hilly in the eastern part, but the roads I took led me along the bottom of wide canyons and over low rolling hills. I foundUp-Down and All Around California
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my Aunt Estrella Butte in Oroville. She is a true California booster, for she was reading a circular gotten out by the Chamber of Commerce about the city.
A California Chamber of Commerce is some institution! It knows everything about the district for which it is organized, and prints many words in praise of it. So far as I can ascertain, the first Chamber of Commerce in the world was back during the time of Moses. You remember (for of course you read your Bible) when those two men went ahead of the Children of Israel and took a look-see at the promised land? Well, they must surely have been the original Chamber of Commerce scouts in the world, for they brought back such glowing tales of the promised land.
Aunt Estrella insisted upon reading from the circular about Oroville, before we could start on our journey around the county.
OROVILLE OUTLINED
“Location—Butte County, California, Upper Sacramento Valley.
Population—6,000.
Plants and payrolls—”
(Here followed a list of some twelve industrial plants. Later we saw one of these packing plants, and it was a big one.)
The circular went on:
“Railroads—Western Pacific, Southern Pacific, Sacramento-Northern.
“Highways—Paved in all directions—More building.
“Irrigation—Four big irrigation projects.
“Products—All kinds. Citrus-deciduous fruits, nuts, berries, grapes.
“Land—Still cheap and plentiful: $75 to $150 per acre unimproved.
“General—Earliest oranges in the state. Two largest olive processing plants in the world. On the banks of the Feather. Excellent swimming, recreation. Entrance to famous Feather River Canyon. Two hours by auto to the High Sierras. Fishing and hunting.”
By gollies, that is a swell folder gotten out by the Oroville Chamber of Commerce in Oroville, Butte County, California!
We went the next day for a ride up the Feather River Canyon. There are a good many small mountain streams flowing over the ledges and rocks into the Feather. The Feather itself is a large mountain stream flowing usually between high banks or canyons. On these mountain sides are many summer homes, hotels and resorts.
Butte County, I found, has quite a rich mining section; indeed it is from the mines that the county seat gets its name: “Oro”—referring to ore, and “Ville”—meaning town; therefore Oroville means mining town, or something to that effect.
I will confess that I was a little skeptical about the oranges being raised in apy quantities. I knew by this time that oranges and lemons will grow in a half-hearted sort of way in the north, but as to a80
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northern county devoting considerable space to them, it seemed a bit preposterous. But I was wrong.
Butte County has a perfect right to praise its climate. It lies more than 400 miles north of the so-called orange country around Porterville, yet Butte County annually ships the first oranges out of California, and I saw many thriving orange groves there.
Besides oranges, minerals and summer resorts, Butte County is extremely productive in other agricultural and horticultural ways. This ceases to be surprising, however, when you consider that Butte is in the Sacramento Valley. This valley, together with the San Joaquin and the Imperial, combine to make California such a wonderfully productive state.
I do not want to bore you with too much of Butte County oranges, but all the same I was so thrilled with these northern oranges and groves that when I came upon a young grove I examined it closely.
A full grown orange tree is so tall that a boy can hardly kick a football over it, but this baby grove was so small that even a little boy could easily kick his football over two or three of the little trees at one time.
COUSIN PEGGY COLUSA OF COLUSA COUNTY
Through the plain a mighty river, teeming with striped bass and salmon—not to mention the back load of shad you could scoop up in a few minutes. Dairy cows, broad fields, well kept orchards—Colusa.
COLUSA TURNED OUT to be another of those California garden spots, the kind of a county about which I had dreamed but seen only once in a while. The longer I continued this journey through California the more wonders I seemed to encounter. Every county has its wonder spots, and some of them, like Colusa, seem to be made entirely of wonder spots. The orchards are well kept. Colusa growers make a business of “growing trees,’’ and judging from the number of trees I saw, in company with Cousin Peggy Colusa, these men are successful in their business. We saw groves of oranges, lemons, grapefruit, almonds, prunes, apricots, peaches, cherries, plums, pears, and English walnut trees, all spick and span and as clean as clean could be.
A REAL COUNTY
As I traveled on its broad paved roads I fell to thinking about this county. This broad valley was once inhabited by Indians. When that old pioneer, Daniel Boone, was chasing the Indians in the Kentucky blue grass, or in his turn being chased by them, these Colusa Indians were fishing and hunting and growing grain right in this county. What a shame that the Indians could not have cultivated it as capably as the white man has done! Think what a start the countyUp-Down and All Around California
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would have had in that case! But the Indians are gone and I was seeing modern Colusa.
WATER
This county has an abundance of water for irrigation. The mighty Sacramento flows placidly through its valleys, while numerous smaller streams run in zig-zag fashion in many directions. For a long time a great amount of this water was wasted, then the people built a dam. The principal object of a dam is to store the water in the spring and then give it out in proper quantities in the hot summer months.
Here, again, in the bottom lands along the mighty river, I encountered rice. Rice, the food of the Oriental, grows on several thousand acres of the county. This is low land and easily flooded, for rice requires water and water and more water. Rice must always live in a shallow lake or swamp else it will not produce. The rice fields, however, are a small drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of thousands of acres of fruit, vegetables, alfalfa and grain.
I found Colusa to be a free and easy county, where everyone minds his own business. A four-square, cheerful, free-handed people who support good schools, good roads, and take a pride in good living and in friendship.
Population in Colusa has elbow room. Great ranches acquired from the Indians or Mexicans in the early days, or smaller farms, so desirable they could not be bought, have kept settlers out. Colusa County is unique in one respect. It has never had a land boom (Oh, shades of Los Angeles, where art thou?). The reason seems to be because the farms and pastures are so productive the people get there and stick.
The soil of Colusa is deep and rich. The roots of the growing things go deep down to where life and strength giving minerals are in the earth. These mineral salts are what make the fields so green and the fruit so delicious and big.
Once when we stopped by the roadside I saw a man digging in a field. When I asked him what he was digging for, he replied with some valuable information. He said he was testing the depth of the soil, seeing how deep the rich Colusa soil went before it entered hard-pan. He said he expected to dig a good many feet, because the soil would stand the most careful investigation.
AUNT SWIMINA LAKE OF LAKE COUNTY
Lake County is a heavily wooded paradise for those of us who enjoy nature. Camping, fishing and hunting galore.
HEN THE BATTLE of Bull Run was fought in the Civil War, J my Aunt Swimina Lake was about a month old. She did not, therefore, take much part in the war of the rebellion. A good number82
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of men from this part of California did, however, enter the Union army. Still, my aunt would certainly do her bit if there was a war now, just the same as she did in the Spanish-American and the World War. She is old, but still very lively.
About one hundred miles north of San Francisco the Coast Range of mountains between the ocean and the Sacramento Valley, widens to form a great valley, some fifty miles from the coast. I came to this valley after traveling over high mountains and along unpaved roads. In the midst of this basin, surrounded by forest-clad hills and valleys of surpassing fertility, lies Clear Lake, a body of pure water, about twenty-five miles long and of a width varying from one to nine miles. Mt. Konocti, one of the highest peaks in the county, rises directly from its shores, at its narrowest point. Free from storms, rocks or shoals, Clear Lake is indeed ideal for bathing and boating, in addition to being well stocked with fish. All of these characteristics combine with its scenic beauty to make its shores one of the natural play grounds of the Pacific Coast.
Fruit I found to be one of the main stand-bys of Lake County, fruit and especially pears. Near the city of Lake Port I saw prunes drying in the sun, which means that Lake also produces a good many tons of this fruit.
But the fruit of most prominence is the Bartlett pear. It has been found that the soil and climate of the valleys of Lake County are particularly adapted to the growing of Bartlett pears. Nowhere else have the conditions of altitude, temperature, fertility of soil, and presence of ample moisture during the growing season, combined to produce an environment so suited to the cultivation of this magnificent fruit.
Lake County, I found also, has numerous industries, the most important of which is probably the bean canneries in the Upper Lake section. Lake County canned string beans are known throughout the Pacific Coast states, and everywhere lead in quality and flavor.
Dairying seems to be another profitable industry which is growing in importance as the acreage of alfalfa increases. Hay raising is probably the most profitable and important agricultural industry of this county of the lakes, at least the immense acreage set to alfalfa leads to that supposition. Many cattle roam the mountains and foothills, and there is a meat packing plant at Lower Lake.
And boys and girls, listen to this!
Thousands and thousands of turkeys are raised every year for Thanksgiving and Christmas markets.
There is a good Indian story about Mt. Konocti.
When all men were giants, there was a bad Indian among the tribe living around the shores of what we call Clear Lake. This tough guy was in the habit of staying out late at nights, playing poker, standing on the corner and otherwise doing what wild birds like to do.
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father, who chanced to be awake, was so angry that he hit him over the head with a young tree. He hit him so hard that all of the body of the tough guy was driven into the shallow waters of the lake. Forever afterwards there will remain this Mount Konocti, which is nothing more or less than the head and shoulders of this old-time Indian sport.
When, one afternoon, we paused beside a chain of small lakes, I knew why Aunt Swimina is sometimes called the Lady of the Lake.

COUSIN EGGO SONOMA OF SONOMA COUNTY
Trees so old they have been turned to stone. The Valley of the Moon. Chickens, eggs.—Sonoma.
THERE IS THE tang of the sea in Sonoma County. It comes from two sides, and because of this Sonoma has sufficient rainfall to grow every crop without irrigation. Neither does it have extreme heat or cold to contend with.
Every part of California has the distinction of being the greatest in something or other. Sonoma leads in two things, and both are human.
In the city of Santa Rosa, Mr. Luther Burbank, the world’s greatest horticulturist, lives and works. Mr. Burbank has several acres around his home, but his chief experimental gardens are but a few miles to the west, at Sebastopol. He is the man who developed spineless cactus, the Burbank potato, and hundreds of other remarkable plant growths.
The other man wTas Jack London, perhaps the greatest thinker and writer of his kind in all modern history. He came to Sonoma County years ago and bought a home and ranch in the Valley of the Moon. There he worked and there he died, within the confines of his beloved valley.
THE CHICKENS
Cousin Eggo Sonoma lives in both Santa Rosa and Petaluma. Eggo is engaged in the chicken business. In this he is like other Sonoma County citizens, as it seemed to me that every person had at least a hundred chickens running around the front yard. Poultry farming is the leader of all other single industries of Sonoma County, and poultry farms of from one to twenty acres dot the hillsides and cover the valleys in every direction.
I learned much about chickens.
Not only is the egg production collected in Sonoma County, but all the by-products are incorporated in the industry. Incubators and brooders are manufactured, and these together with hatcheries and “baby chicks” are shipped all over the Pacific Coast. Chicken feed is raised and sold, and Sonoma County “fryers” are eagerly sought by all bigh-class culinary artists who can get them.84	Up-Down and All Around California
TREES
In this county I again encountered the majestic redwood. In the inland districts and along the Redwood Highway toward the sea, these wonderful trees were found flourishing in all their age-old glory. Then suddenly I came upon the petrified forest.
In prehistoric times, when Madam Caveman and Mr. Caveman fought the sabre-tooth tiger and other wild animals with stones and clubs, Mt. St. Helena (you will meet this mountain in Napa County) was an active volcano, extending into what is now Sonoma County. While Mamma Caveman was rolling stones down the mountainside at the cave bear, Mt. St. Helena went on the warpath. She erupted and threw out great quantities of scoriae (which is the scientific way of saying volcanic ash). The old mountain was feeling more vigorous than usual, consequently so much of this ash came out that it buried a forest of trees growing near its base.
Madam Caveman became Mrs. Housekeeper, Mrs. Housekeeper emerged into Lady Castlehouse, and who in turn became Miss Pioneer, and the trees remained buried. Mt. St. Helena became domesticated and did not get angry again, or maybe paid more attention to her diet. At any rate she no longer tossed fire and brimstone into the air. The wind and the rain gradually washed some of the soil and ashes from this buried forest. Sonoma County was explored by a modern man, and lo, the forest was discovered, only the trees had turned to solid stone ! In all the trees the transmutation from wood to stone has been so perfect that the texture and fibre were completely preserved, and the varieties are easily determined.
LIVE THINGS
Every month is harvest time in Sonoma County. In January there are the olives, in February the oranges, and in March the early asparagus. Cherries and early berries begin in April, and May sees the height of the berry season; and in June the apricots begin. The haying season falls in June also, while in July comes the famous Sonoma County prunes and other fruits. In July and August the Gravenstein apples are being picked and dried; September and October find the harvesters busy in the vineyards and hop fields; and the calender year is filled out with the harvest of late apples and nuts.
•1• 4• •k
COUSIN GEYSER NAPA OF NAPA COUNTY
Again the Redwoods, where God’s handiwork is glorified, and palms grow as well as pines.
WENT TO VISIT Cousin Geyser Napa in rather a roundabout way. This was because he wrote me a letter and suggested that
I meet him at the town of Calestoga.
There was a reason for this.
He wanted me first of all to see the Valley of the Geysers. Centuries before the coming of the white man, the Indians whoUp-Down and All Around California
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then lived in what is now called the Valley of the Geysers, held these spouts of hot water and steam in great respect.
The story is:
Once all their fires went out and there was no way for them to kindle new ones. These Indians did not have matches in those days, nor was there a boy scout master to show them how to create fire from two sticks. Without fire they were compelled to eat their fish and other things raw. They did not especially care for raw fish, and were therefore unhappy, until one day an accident happened. After that all was Jake.
A young gentleman Indian by the name of “Tin-Ear” had a fish. Another young gentleman Indian by the name of “Charlie-Horse” wanted the fish “Tin-Ear” had. They were quarreling about it and suddenly “Charlie-Horse” attacked “Tin-Ear” and tried to get the fish. In order to save the fish “Tin-Ear” threw it as far away as he could, while he went to work on “Charlie-Horse.” The fish sailed through the air and landed ker-plunk in this big geyser. Presently the bell rang and the referee declared the fight a draw, so the two young Indian gentlemen went to the geyser to wash the blood and dirt off their faces, and to clean up a bit. When they reached the geyser there was that fish bobbing up and down in the water. Another Indian who had been a spectator and whose name was “Fug-and-Slug” poked the fish out of the water and all three gathered around and inspected it. They found that it was now a boiled fish, and so they ate it. Ever since that fight between “Tin-Ear” and “Charlie-Horse” these Napa Indians had boiled fish for every meal, until the medicine man was again able to produce fire, after which they varied their diet a little with roast fish.
DOWN IN THE VALLEY
The road to Napa was shaded most of the way by the delightful California Redwoods. It was a nicely paved highway, and after touring for such a great distance on a variety of roads, I was glad to ride over this smooth one. Ask any little automobile about roads and she will tell you the same.
We passed through a green valley, glorious with verdure. It is a district that can rightfully be likened to the famous valley of the Shenandoah in Virginia. Its ever changing panorama of fertile flats, hills and picturesque mountains make it so. In the distance I could see the snow-white top of majestic Mt. St. Helena. Mt. St. Helena stands like a mighty sentinel at the head of the valley. It is as tall as half a hundred churches and three school houses on top of them. At its base are the Geysers, and on each side of the valley are wooded hills and ravines, chiefly of redwood. On the far side of the mountains are the petrified trees which you met in Sonoma County.
Napa County seems to be a well protected valley. Here the conditions are just right for the production of an exceptionally well-flavored sweet prune. The Napa prunes, in quality and production, are by far the most important and valuable crop of the county. This county is also famous for its vineyards. All of the deep, rich valley lands, beside the road and those bordering the Napa River, have fully demonstrated their adaptability to the vine and pear, and along the slope of the hills and back in the smaller valleys, is quite an acreage of apples.86
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THE CITY
Cousin Geyser Napa lives in the city of Napa, situated on the banks of the Napa River, at the head of navigation, some fifteen miles north of San Pablo Bay (which is really a part of San Francisco Bay). At the lower end of the valley are the Geysers and Mt. St. Helena.
COUSIN ROYAL YOLO OF YOLO COUNTY
A bit of Old China, some of Turkey, a hint of the Valley of the Nile—Yolo.
IT WAS A PLEASANT and easy journey to Woodland. As I progressed along the paved highways of Yolo, I fell in love
with the county. Your little Ana Belle has a right to get all smoked up once in a while. But I hope it will be a long time before I get as steamed over any section of the world as I was over Yolo.
When I joined my Cousin Royal Yolo, he started right in to keep me in love with Yolo.
“The little county,’’ quoth he, “with the big bank roll! The richest agricultural county in the United States, the blue-ribbon county, and other characterizations indicative of great wealth and productive possibilities, are common to Yolo.”
WHERE FROM
By the next day I had sort of resumed the even tenor of my ways and so could look upon Yolo with a clear eye. Where does this wealth, my cousin was talking about, come from? Well, for instance, rice.
In 1915, when the then powerful German army was battering away at things in most every direction, rice was first planted on a commercial scale in Yolo. Since then, from nothing, the annual crop has increased until—well, figuring thirty sacks to the acre, the output in creased from 6,000 sacks in 1915 to 93,000 sacks at the peak in 1918, and since then has verged well up to the peak. A sack of rice is about as big as a sack of sugar, or half the size of an average gasoline tank on an automobile. 93,000 sacks would pave the entire block of four streets around a city square, and many thousands more sacks would be put on top of the first layer before the entire 93,000 were used up.
Rice is generally considered the food of the Oriental, but Royal told me most of this Yolo rice is sold right in the United States. The next time you meet a Japanese gentleman or lady of your acquaintance, you will no doubt think of rice. Go up to this Japanese friend and say in a clear voice: “What kind of a county is Yolo.”
And your friend may reply: “Toyo-ashiwara-mizuhono-kuni,” which means: “The fertile, reed-clad country rich in grain.” Any Jap will tell you the same.Up-Down and All Around California
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TOBACCO AND DOLLARS
In Yolo two Greeks have the largest plantation this side of the Rocky Mountains. They devote 175 acres to the culture of the Turkish weed. The output totaled 125,,000 pounds in one year, including two varieties: Samsoon and Cavalla. That’s a whale of a lot of tobacco.
It would take maybe a million men, each smoking a dozen pipes every day for a week, to smoke up this amount.
THE GOLDEN FLEECE
We next visited the Bullard Ranch.
When General U. S. Grant was president of the United States, the father of the present owners of this ranch came to California. He laid the foundation for the present flock of Rambauillet sheep by importing them from Vermont. Since 1875 records have been kept of each individual sheep, the aim being to develop a larger mutton carcass and still retain the fineness, quality and luster of the Merino wool, and increase the length of staple.
MORE WEALTH
But the wealth of this county of Yolo comes from other sources as well. There is a possibility that oil will be found, and already it is known that the mountains contain generous deposits of limestone, cement material and commercial clays.
The field and farms are generous in their yield of barley, wheat and other grains. Beans, spinach, and practically every vegetable you ever heard of abound on the farms. And everywhere I saw orchards, and groves of peaches, plums and figs, as well as vineyards and fields of berries.
Yolo! Yes! I found that Yolo was a glimpse of Paradise on the edge of the Sacramento Valley.
AUNT SARA SOLANO OF SOLANO COUNTY
Grain. Wheat. Barley. All interspersed with other farm products. Fruits. Industries. That’s Solano.
PRESIDENT ZACHARY TAYLOR died after serving only one year in the executive office, and Vice-President Millard Fillmore became the nation’s chief executive during the same year that my Aunt Sara Solano was born. That was in 1850, and makes Aunt Sara one of my oldest relatives. In spite of her advanced years, Aunt Sara was a live one with much pep. It must be the climate of Solano, because she went with me on all my side trips in the length and breadth of the county. These trips were not always made on paved roads,88
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either, for Solano has comparatively few miles of highway, and these are on the main trunk roads.
One of the first things I saw, after leaving the town of Fairfield, was fruit drying in the sun. As I went along it seemed as if every orchard had its yard for drying the fruit grown on the trees. This, of course, is not altogether true, because, as a matter of fact, most of the fruit is dried and packed for shipment near the city of Dixon. Dixon is a replica of other small towns in the Sacramento Valley. It seems to make a specialty of drying fruit, and I guess does very well for itself that way, especially since the solar heat costs nothing.
We went to a movie at the city of Vallejo and after the show we looked around the town. Vallejo is a remarkable city, built on the bank of one of the arms of San Francisco Bay, and lying mostly on a hill side, or rather on several hills. Here I saw large flour mills, which handle some of the wheat grown in the county and turn it into flour which later becomes bread and biscuits and buns, and then is eaten by little boys and girls many miles from where the wheat was grown in Solano.
MANY THINGS
Solano is a great granary. Some of the wheat fields, which flourish almost without irrigation, are large. One Solano County farmer even sows his wheat by airplane. The machine flys about one hundred feet from the ground and the released seed covers a swath fifty feet wide. It has been found that half a sack of seed is required to the acre. Certainly a rapid way to plant a wheat field, but, I wager, an expensive one.
In the upland marshes there is fine pasturage for cattle, sheep, horses and pigs, which to me appeared healthy and quite content under the Solano sky. To me the sheep all seemed heavy with wool, and the swine were fat and happy as swine should be.
More about grain: The best of it comes from the Montezuma hills. These hills are called in honor of Montezuma II, Emperor of Mexico, who took office in 1502 and governed with great cruelty. His dominions were attacked by the Spanish General Cortez, in 1520. Montezuma was killed by his own people while persuading them to submit to the Spaniards.
These Montezuma hills are of rich adobe soil and have grown grain since the county was settled. More than that, Aunt Sara told me that these same hills grew Indian corn and Indian grains many centuries before the white man came and took the hills away from the Indians.
Solano County is not a large county in the matter of square miles. It is, however, ambitious in the matter of its products, and my short visit there convinced me that it is a thriving and a rich district, destined some day to be one of the best counties around San Francisco Bay.Up-Down and All Around California
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The chief thing I noticed, outside of the large grain fields, was the great number of small farms. This is a good thing—an exceptionally good thing. A small farm can be more easily worked than a big one, and, besides, small farms do not take up as much room as do big ones. And, anyone who knows anything about algebra, or farming, or new thought, will tell you the same.

UNCLE DON MARTINEZ OF CONTRA COSTA COUNTY
The Delta Empire, which lies partly in Contra Costa County, is as productive as the Ealley of the Nile. Pear orchards, factories, farms, cities.
WHEN, AFTER ONLY a short trip, I came to the home of my Uncle Don Martinez, I found him out in the yard. Uncle Don raises poultry and garden truck as a side line. His main vocation is directing an oil refinery. On the day I was due he had remained at home with his farm and his chickens.
After the customary greetings were exchanged we set out to view the county. The able editor of the “Byron Times” met us when we reached that little town. The town itself is not so much, but the editor is a dandy. As soon as he knew I was on a tour of California, he launched into an oration. I have heard many famous speakers and have read of others. In the time of Pericles of Ancient Greece, there were wonderful speakers. Patrick Henry of Virginia was certainly an able talker, as were Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun, but I venture to say that none of them had it over this editor-in the town of Byron in Contra Costa County.
THE COUNTY
He spoke at length about the excellent roads of his county, and then he went on to say something to this effect:
“Throughout Contra Costa, the $350,000,000 industrial and manufacturing county of California, the busy bee of activity is heartily in evidence, with development projects in substantial forms in full sway, and thousands of energetic men and women doing ‘their bits’ to create a present that will mean a future worth while.
“Contra Costa County is one of the richest and most interestingly productive portions of the entire state. It is a section of many developments, a county of real worth and merit, where the opportunities are most inviting.”
At this stage my Uncle Don broke in with:
“Miss Ana Belle wants to see all these things and so we’ll be going.”
“Yes,” said I, “we’ll be going.”
And we went away from there.90
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The dairy industry of Contra Costa County is best attested by the number of new dairy plants being established. This county is now known as the “milk and cream pail” of San Francisco and the Bay City sections.
Because of the great crops of alfalfa on every farm, the richest of milk producing feed is provided. This milk is shipped daily to all nearby points, by express and steamboat. The fact that Contra Costa has both rail and water transportation adds greatly to its wealth, for even your little Ana Belle knows that two means of transportation enable things to be shipped out and things brought back easily.
A GOLD MINE
Contra Costa ranks as the third county in California in the production of almonds. This, together with the other things I saw here, which included cattle, asparagus, farms and orchards, make the county better than a gold mine, or even two average gold mines.
I found, further, that Contra Costa’s wealth and pre-eminence rests upon its industries as much as upon its farms.
The fisheries are active in the deep waters of the bay, and in the mountain streams an angler can almost surely catch a beautiful mess of speckled beauties in a single morning. Among the industries are six of the largest plants of their kind in the world:
Oil refinery.
Sugar refinery.
Powder factory.
Smelting of gold and silver.
Redwood manufacturing yards and mill.
Cannery.
ECONOMY
I was taught a lesson in political economy in Richmond. I found that my supply of gasoline was low, and stopped just outside an oil storage tank for a new supply. The young gentleman who waited on me was quite nice and agreeable, but he charged me full price for the gas. This, at first, seemed funny, since I was in actual speaking distance of the huge storage tanks. However, Uncle Don explained the necessity for selling products at a uniform price, regardless of where the purchase is made. “It is,” said he, “one of the staple fundamentals of business.” As I contemplate his answer I know he is right in his conclusions.
We returned to Martinez.
This city is like a section of Chicago, Detroit, or Pittsburgh. It has so many smoking chimneys of flourishing factories, refineries and mills. Since Martinez is located on Suisun Bay it has deep water harbors and big wharfage, so it easily handles the ocean-going steamers which come there to load or unload their cargoes from all ports of the world.Up-Down and All Around Calii^ornia
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COUSIN TAMALPAIS MARIN OF MARIN COUNTY
A fine place for tired folks. Rolling hills, lovely valleys, softly shaded groves—such is Marin.
WHILE I WAS WAITING for some gasoline, just after I had entered Marin County, the oil station man told me this story
about a Marin County drake:
A farmer picked up a peach cull, having a degree of hardness comparable with stone, and tossed it to a drake. This gentleman duck seized the morsel and made frantic efforts to get away with it, but finally gave up in disgust.
After a few minutes of contemplation with his eyes on the peach cull, the drake picked it up and carefully carried it to his pond, where he deposited it in the water, which in time softened it to such a degree that it was easily eaten by the bird.
The farmer now claims that the drake was so pleased with the result that he spends part of each day in collecting the dried culls and depositing them in the water, so that they may be readily consumed at any time. The smartest drake in California is like thousands of citizens—it craves dried fruit.
Such was the story told me upon my entrance into Marin County.
I found that Cousin Tamalpais Marin lives in a perpetual playground. When I viewed this county for the first time I wondered how the people made a living, but as I traveled over it I found there were farms, orchards, dairies and industries, as well as lovely streams and forests. It is a county of big and little homes. Many of its residents go every day to San Francisco and come back at night, while many thousands live in the county and work and produce right where they live.
Marin County has a state institution which, while being repulsive, nevertheless, seems to be necessary. I refer to the state penitentiary of San Quentin. I had a friend living in this big house. If there had been time I would have gone in to say hello, but I was in a hurry so did not go to see him.
JACK LONDON
Jack London (whom we met in the Valley of the Moon) one day took his pen in hand and wrote about Marin County, and this is what he said:
"Marin County, located as it is within a stone’s throw of San Francisco’s shores, surrounded by the most wonderful scenic attractions this world can offer, demonstrates that there is absolutely no comparison between the northern and southern part of California. Here in the northern part of California a man can work 365 days in the year. Of all parts of the world which I have visited, Northern California, and especially Marin County, is in my opinion, the real paradise of the earth. The Riviera, the sights of Egypt, and the wonders of India, are but the works of mankind, ־while here Mother Nature has lavished her best92
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efforts. I have written the ‘Call of the Wild/ which some of my friends refer to as my ‘best seller/ but the thing nearest my heart is the 'Call of the North’—of Northern California—the natural, God-made paradise, which equals only the paradise inhabited by Adam.”
And that’s what Jack London said about Marin County.
MILL VALLEY AND TAMALPAIS
Mill Valley, at the foot of Tamalpais, has always been an inspiration for artists and lovers of nature at her best. Cousin Tam (I call him Tam for short) took me to Mill Valley, before we climbed Mount Tamalpais. This valley gets its name from an old mill used many years ago by the settlers.
Mt. Tamalpais is a famous mountain known all over the world. Its towering sides drop in rolling leaps to the rockbound shores of the Pacific Ocean on one side, and emerge into the fertile valleys on the other. Here in the wonderful valleys, dales, and winding trails, are the favorite resorts of thousands of people who spend their holidays in Marin County, at this mountain, or in Muir Woods.

COUSIN HAY ALAMEDA OF ALAMEDA COUNTY
In the center of California, Alameda is perhaps the principal manufacturing county in the state—and rich in agriculture as well.
COUSIN HAY ALAMEDA lives in a county famous for many things, the first being, possibly, that this county of Alameda was
created the same year that the Crimean War began in eastern Europe. But, unlike Russia and Turkey, since 1853 Alameda County has kept right on advancing and advancing. Another famous thing in the county is the state university at Berkeley.
It is quite out of the question to expect your Ana Belle to tell you all about the extensive factories and shipyards, mills and shops, I saw, visited and learned about with Cousin Hay. He says, and he speaks the truth, that the manufacturing industries employ more than 85,000 workers in every line of manufacturing, from automobiles to clay statues.
From the following short article clipped from an Alameda County newspaper, I would say there are other things manufactured also:
MUSA—SHI YA the
SHIRTMAKER (also dry goods selling also)
Speaking of sweater in Oakland, maybe misconstewed for insult to famous climate, yet not so. Climate at some instance require sweater. AutomobileUp-Down and All Around California
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riding not always warm pastime, even for noted climate, and sweater is gratefully considered. When obtaining generous perspiration by long-tennis and other muscle excitement, sweater is natural result for protection from sneeze.
And that is the advertisement I read one blessed morning in Oakland.
There are several thriving cities clustering around the Bay of San Francisco, on the Alameda County side. This bay forms the water line, and on it are bathing resorts as well as ship-building docks, and other industries. I should, however, say a little something special about Berkeley. This is a college city built in the low foothills within sight of the Bay. The University of California is located here and this university is said to have the largest enrollment of any in the world. It is famous, also, for its football team, and the Camponile, or clock tower, which stands guard over the campus. It is a lovely city.
( CAN SPEAK FULLY OF AGRICULTURE
Bay Farm Island, which is located just south of the city of Alameda, is given over almost exclusively to the cultivation of asparagus. Potatoes are extensively grown near Mission San Jose, in the Livermore district; pears are grown in the Hayward district. Beans, tomatoes and cucumbers are raised in great quantities in the San Leandro and San Lorenze territory, and the ever present alfalfa for hay is in practically every part of the county.
Before I forget it, I must tell you about a strange and beautiful spectacle to be seen near Oakland. In the very heart of the city of Oakland, within less than a mile from the City Hall, is a small lake called Lake Merritt. This little body of water has become famous the world over for the multitude of wild ducks that find rest on its placid bosom in winter. These birds are safe from the guns of the sportsmen and seem to know it.
Now that I have not forgotten that episode, we will go back to the practical side. Transportation, for instance, is very good in this county. There are so many men and women who each day cross the bay to San Francisco that the electric lines and ferry boats must be sufficiently prompt to accommodate them. It has been said that Alameda County, or rather that portion of it which lies directly opposite San Francisco, is the “household” for that city.
THE FIRST
Now let us go back into history for a short distance.
The war between the United States and Old Mexico was drawing to a close. General Scott had captured Vera Cruz, and all things were sitting nice and pretty. California was still to all intents and purposes, a part of Old Mexico, but things in a military way were very quiet. Nothing at all for the brave soldiers to do, except play around94
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and enjoy the climate. But in other things this part of California was extremely busy.
While President James K. Polk was sitting at his desk in the White House in Washington, figuring on what he would take away from Mexico, the Alameda district farmers were growing fruit. The first exportation of fruit in a commercial way was made from an Alameda County orchard. This event occurred in the year 1847.
Apricots, peaches, nectarines, cherries, prunes, olives, and other fruits, now form the major fruit crop of the county, although even here I saw some orange and lemon groves. These, however, Cousin Hay told me, are grown more for ornamental purposes than for profit. In Alameda I found something new. It seems that this county boasts the greatest pigeon industry in the United States.

FRIEND FOGA SAN FRANCISCO OF SAN FRANCISCO COUNTY
The Golden Gate. China Town. The girls on Powell Street. The Mission and the Potrero. Business.—San Francisco.
COUSIN HAY put me on the ferry boat at the Oakland wharf and I went across the Bay to San Francisco. At the landing I was met by my friend, Foga San Francisco, and immediately we started out to do the town and county.
Golden Gate Park, which stretches back and around from the Seal
Rocks, is one of the best civic parks in America. In it are lakes, museums, athletic fields, a zoo, and on Sundays, thousands of people. Our first exploration ended for a time at the Cliff House. The original Cliff House was burned long ago, but another has been erected, and around it is now quite a pleasure beach.
While Foga was otherwise engaged I had an opportunity to read a little about the history of the city of San Francisco.
A LITTLE HISTORY
During the time of the French and Indian wars in the then British Colonies on the Atlantic Coast, and after these wars had stopped, a party of brave and hardy Spanish soldiers were walking over the California hills. They tramped many miles, coming up from the vicinity of Monterey. Their march took them over a country devoid of any signs of civilization. They saw no towns, no movie shows, no pool rooms, and no people, except now and then when some Indian took a pot shot at them with an arrow. But, as they tramped along, they did see wild game in large numbers. This lack of modern amusements was disheartening, but they plugged right along, as soldiers are supposed to do.Up-Down and All Around California
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"Carramba! Mucho Heato!” they cried to each other and the atmosphere in general. "Diablo, what an El Monte!” They kept right on marching. “El Hillo is steepo!” they doubtless complained, but over the hills they went. Then one day their toil was rewarded. "Mucho Watero!” they shouted. "Mucho Watero!” And so, in 1767, the Golden Gate was discovered.
Don Gasper de Portola and his men saw the Golden Gate on this blessed California day so long ago. Eight years more slid slowly past, and the first permanent settlement of white men was made. Just a month before the Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia, on July 4, 1776, a garrison and military post was established in San Francisco. It is now called the Presidio Reservation, and is used by the United States government for a military post, even as the original Spaniards made it for the same purpose in that year so long ago.
The Mission Dolores was founded in the October following, and after friend Foga had rejoined me, we went to see this old Mission Dolores.
It is surrounded now by factories, flats and stores. Not so many years ago, it was in the midst of fields of grain and farms, and cattle, dogs and pigs listened nightly to the chimes of its old bells. For many years after the Mission was founded the few residents led a secluded life. In 1845, the year Texas was annexed to the United States, there were only fourteen houses in San Francisco, then called Yerba Buena. In those fourteen houses were sixty inhabitants. That makes four and two-sevenths to a house, not counting the dogs and chickens.
The discovery of gold, early in 1848, brought a rush of immigrants to the place, which was by this time called San Francisco. These men and women came around the Horn, over the Isthmus of Panama, and overland, and they came in ever increasing numbers. Incidentally they have been coming ever since and their descendants are now scattered all over this glorious state.
TODAY
Now San Francisco is so big and thriving it requires a City Hall as good as any in the county. This building is the middle one of a group of imposing buildings set in a sort of circle at the junction of Market and Van Ness Streets. The San Francisco civic center is one of the real show places, not only of San Francisco, but of America as well. We viewed the civic center and then continued our hike around the city. This trip now became a succession of ups and downs, for San Francisco is built on a series of short, steep hills. The streets are often cobble stones, to prevent slipping, and many of the street cars are pulled to the top of the hills by steel cables.
I had thought to find many evidences of the disastrous fire of 1906, but such is the indomitable will and courage of the citizens ofUp-Down and All Around California
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San Francisco that I saw practically no evidences of that catastrophe.
In seeing the city we visited Twin Peaks, by means of a scenic road, which at its summit, gives a most entrancing view of the city, the bay and the mountains. We also went to Buena Vista Park, Ocean Beach, and the Ferry Building, as well as traversing the entire length of Market Street, from Valencia to the Ferry, where there are four street cars all in a row. It seemed to me there were always four street cars thundering by. We saw the Presidio and the remains of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, the Art Gallery and the flying field. Had some chop suey at Sing Fat’s in China Town, some ravioli in the Floria De Italia, some oysters at Tate’s at the beach, and some ham and eggs in Boos Brothers cafeteria.
The atmosphere of San Francisco is intriguing (ask some flapper what that word means) and I soon discovered that unless I went away from there the balance of my trip would be neglected, so I left immediately.

UNCLE ARCHIE SAN MATEO OF SAN MATEO COUNTY
The home of thousands of people who work in San Francisco. A great producer of artichokes and fresh water.
IT IS A BOAST of San Mateoites that one cannot cross the county’s boundaries at any point without realizing that here is a land of plenty, beauty and happiness, as different from its northern neighbor as the plains of Canaan differ from the fields of Gomorrah. Everywhere within its borders is fecundity (see your dictionary), wealth and solidity. The stranger is at first amazed and eventually bored by the unrelieved regularity of bumper crops, big fisheries, well-fed stock, mighty oaks, and fresh water. Factory and farm, church and dwelling, school and library, partake of the air of prosperity which is San Mateo.
I seemed to sense this contentment even before I met the county itself. My Uncle Archie San Mateo joined me in San Francisco. Most San Mateo folks like to have a good excuse to go to San Francisco, and Archie was no exception to this rule. When we started for his home in Redwood City, the way took us first to Colma.
BLOOD AND THUNDER
Colma was not so many years ago a bloody place. It was here that Battling Nelson smashed various and sundry gentlemen on their individual noses. It was here also that Jim Jeffries blacked the eye of some other husky man, and here is where the sports from many states gathered to witness the activities of the men in the prize ring. Now Colma has fallen into decay. Gone are its saloons, and festive glories.Up-Down and All Around California
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I found it a quiet, sleepy place on the southern fringe of the city of San Francisco^ and peopled with folks who either work in the city or live from the proceeds of small truck farms.
At about the main part of Colma we turned to the right. This road was of exceeding roughness; and lead us over high hills. It was; in spite of that; quite a road to travel over. Frequently we caught glimpses of little valleys between hills, and always they were filled with green farms; with here and there chickens; cows and dwellings.
We passed by many flourishing fields of artichokes. Millions and millions of these plants grow along the slopes, and in the bottom lands, fanned by the salt breezes from the Pacific.
WATER
At the town of Half Moon Bay we had luncheon at a restaurant operated by a Portuguese. There are many of these industrious people along the north shore of San Mateo County, and upon them falls the task of fishing and of cultivating the vast fields of artichokes.
At Half Moon Bay we took a smoothly paved road and cut across away from the ocean back into the hills. In a few miles we came to Spring Valley.
Spring Valley is the location of an immense water system, which has its reserve supply stores in several beautiful lakes.
Thousands of years before history began, this part of San Mateo County was a vast stretch of marsh land, or perhaps even the mighty ocean itself rolled majestically between the high hills. At about the same time as the geysers in Napa County started to spout, the land rose up, and so most of the water ran back into the ocean. Centuries passed, and eventually these Spring Valley lakes became fresh water. Now the Spring Valley Water Company owns them and they are carefully nursed and cleaned. The sanitary condition of these lakes is one of the reasons why the water is so sweet and pure, and gives such a refreshing kick when taken internally.
INLAND
When we emerged from the mountains we were near the three towns of Hillsborough, San Mateo and Burlingame. I could say these three names backward and they would mean the same thing, because the three cities join each other and are really one. They are delightful places, with many fine mansions and thousands of big oak trees. In the chapter on Madam California I told you about the oak trees of California, and that on our way back through the Santa Clara Valley we would again meet them in large numbers, and here in San Mateo were the first evidences. I had, however, seen them in scattered valleys in nearly every county.
We streaked it for Redwood City.
The county seat is a remarkably attractive little city. Aside from its having a nice courthouse, and many fine homes, it has another distinction. All of the railroad trains, passenger and freight, stop at Redwood City, and so did I for the night.98
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FRIEND PRUNA SANTA CLARA OF SANTA CLARA COUNTY
Universities, prune trees, a broad valley—Ah,
Santa Clara, the magnificent!
IT WAS NO TRICK at all to go from San Mateo County to Santa Clara County. The highway was perfectly level, and almost straight, and well paved. I hummed over the dozen or so miles until I arrived at the city of Palo Alto (High Tree). It was here that my friend Pruna Santa Clara met me. He had sent word to me to join him there so we could look around the campus and buildings of Stanford University.
Palo Alto is a college town, but one which is in addition a thriving business place. It is the center of the chicken industry in the county. Productiveness is characteristic of Palo Alto. One chicken raiser of my friend’s acquaintence, who now has several thousand lady and gentleman chickens, is said to have come there with only two. In a day or so, being hungry, he ate the rooster, but—well, now there are many thousands of chickens on his acres.
Leland Stanford Jr. University.
On a 7,000-acre tract of gently rolling hills, thickly forested with big oak trees, the buildings of Stanford University have been spread out in quadrangles. These buildings are made of soft-tinted buff sandstone, with red tiled roofs. Its many open courts are enclosed by long walks, all reproducing on a magnificent scale the picturesque style of the early Missions of the Spanish Padres. Stanford is, so I was told, an endowed school, as distinguished from the state institution. It was founded by a man named Stanford, who was a very rich as well as a cultured gentleman, and who lived in this part of California many years ago. It is quite a privilege to be admitted as a student into Stanford, because the requirements are high.
MORE HISTORY
Later in the day, as we rolled over the perfect highway south toward the city of San Jose, Pruna told me a little of the history of the region. It is interesting and so I’ll pass it along to you.
While the Colonial army was fighting the war of the American Revolution, and indeed in the same year as the surrender of the British General Burgoyne, this section was started by the Spanish. The Pueblo de San Jose de Guadalupe was founded on the 29th day of November, 1777 (just forty-two days after Burgoyne’s surrender). The valley at that time was a natural park of huge white oak and live oaks, while grizzly bear, deer, coyotes, and other wild animals were numerous.
Time passed, and in 1831, when Andrew Jackson was President of the United States, a man named Guthrie, a scientist living in Scotland,Up-Down and All Around California
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developed the first chloroform, San Jose had a population then of only 524 people. Rumor has it that there were nearly as many dogs as people. Of course I do not know whether that is true or not, but had they known of chloroform there might not have been so many dogs. Events moved slowly those days and the Spanish settlers had things pretty much their own way. Then in 1846 the boom started, when an American, a captain in the army named Fallon, hoisted the American flag over the town. He had no legal right to do this, but he just went ahead and did it anyway. His act claimed the valley for the United States, and it was, to all intents and purposes, thereafter a part of the Union. Legally, however, it was still a part of Old Mexico, but Fallon, even if he had no legal right to raise that bit of Old Glory, did have the right that comes with guns and soldiers, so the Spanish didn’t holler so much. Three years later California was acquired from the Mexicans, on February 2, 1848.
Thereafter things took a hump to themselves, and up to the present Santa Clara County certainly has boomed right along and will continue to boom for a long time to come. The main product of this county is the prune. The second main crop is apricots, and the third main crop is other fruits, with some grain and vegetables tossed in for good measure.
NOW
When the fruit trees are in blossom, in the spring, the valley resembles one vast ocean of flowers.
San Jose, I found, to be a most remarkable city. It is still, however, a bit old fashioned. The streets are narrow, and it is distinctly difficult for even a little automobile like me to traverse First Street or Santa Clara Avenue during the busy hours of the day.
Santa Clara Valley is a world famous producer of fruit. Its prunes are delicious. A prune is a big blue plum with a greenish-yellow (or yellow greenish, depending upon the way you look at it) pulp. These delicious things are sold after being dried, and under the influence of boiling water they swell up as if they wanted to burst! In eastern hotels a prune costs maybe a quarter; in Morgan Hill you can buy two pocketfuls for a nickel. So most of these prunes are shipped away, and I can’t blame the prune grower for that either.
The beginning of the fruit industry here was in 1855. At that time a man named Pellier, a Frenchman, brought from his home district of Agen in France, a number of prune scions (roots or buds) to San Jose. Now, although there are several varieties of prunes, the Pellier prune, which is now called the Petit Prune d’Agen, is the great commercial prune of California.
There is in this clear valley a total of some 115,000 acres (that’s 115,000 baseball fields) in orchards of all kinds. Prunes, cherries, apricots, pears, apples, peaches, and other varieties, in addition to almonds, walnuts and grapes. Many large and small packing and100
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canning plants are scattered throughout the valley to take care of these immense crops.
From San Francisco south, and through San Mateo County into Santa Clara, the country was different.
There were no more redwoods, no more snow-covered mountains. The hills were the soft ones of Central California, and the valleys broad and flat, like those in Orange or Kings.
MISS CARMAN SANTA CRUZ OF SANTA CRUZ COUNTY
Mountains covered with big trees, occasional snow, and at their feet, the warm Pacific—Santa Cruz.
WITHIN FIVE OR SIX MILES of the prune orchards of the
Santa Clara, I came again to the redwoods, and a little further into the mountains I passed through what is known as the Big Basin, where I found hundreds of large redwood trees. It was almost as if I were again journeying through Humboldt, or Del Norte Counties. This Santa Cruz grove is world famous as a summer resort. Dozens of hotels and scores of cottages dot the mountain side, while here and there a silvery rivulet cuts across the canyon bottom.
THE CHICKEN IS THE COUNTRY’S, BUT THE CITY EATS IT
So said Miss Carman; it fits the situation here exactly, for whatever Santa Cruz chickens produce, San Francisco and other city markets buy. The chief factor in the poultry industry of Santa Cruz is the production of eggs for these waiting markets. As we looked around the county there were evidences of chickens on every side. I saw tiny “chicks” just hatched from the brooders and incubators, and lording it over them were the old lady chickens, who petted and scolded the youngsters until they were themselves able and capable of doing the same thing for their own children.
Carman says it has been proven beyond a doubt that there is no place so well suited to the profitable culture of poultry as the Santa Cruz district. She did not take off her hat even to the chicken raisers of Sonoma or Sacramento, claiming that Santa Cruz was equally as good.
A LOVELY PLACE
Somewhere—“the place I’d like to live”—is a vague place on the mental map of most people. Men and women the world over like to think about it each in his or her own way.
Your somewhere may be located in a land where mountains shoulder the sky line, and fragrant woods abound. Or it may be in a serene city,Up-Down and All Around California
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within sight and sound of the sea. “There’s the place I’d like to live,’״ you’ve said to yourself, and heard so many others say it. On this trip of mine I visited many places where I thought I would like to live. San Diego is one, Fresno, Humboldt, Yolo, were others. But, when I stood on a little hill and looked between two trees at the town in the valley, I was almost convinced that Santa Cruz was the place for me. However, I was only on a visit, and there were hundreds of miles yet to be covered, so I contented myself with sketching the trees on the hill. But I’ll go again some day to Santa Cruz.
BEFORE THE BIRTH OF CHRIST
More than eleven hundred years before the birth of Christ there was a series of terrible battles. The ancient city of Troy was eventually captured. Helen of Troy, who had skipped from her husband with a gay bird called Paris, was acting as queen of the city. Her husband wanted her back again, for reasons best known to himself, and after much effort, and with the help of a large horse made out of wood, he captured the city and its queen. What he did to Helen I don’t know, nor do I care.
Then a thousand years later Caesar conquered Britain (which is now England). Fifty years after Caesar took Britain a little child was born. He was born in a stable and called Joshua, but we now call him Jesus. Right then began the war between the barn and the mansion, and the barn was to come out victorious.
Time rolled on. Events came and went. History, as we know it, was made, and then 1,791 years after the holy event in the stable, the Cross, symbol of that babe, appeared on the shores of Santa Cruz.
But even before the fall of the City of Troy, and throughout all the years until today, the trees of Santa Cruz were alive and thriving. These same redwoods (barring accidents or the woodsman’s axe) will surely be alive a thousand years from now, for they seem to be almost everlasting, and they are as beautiful as they are durable.
At the city of Santa Cruz there is a fine bathing beach. It is shaped somewhat like a crescent moon, and has a soft sandy shore line.

AUNT DOLORAS MONTEREY OF MONTEREY COUNTY
The beginning of the political state. Madrid,
Seville, Old Spain, rudely shaken off to give place to cowboys, farmers, and the annual state golf championships. Lovely, broad Monterey.
THE ROAD was sadly in need of repair. I bumped and grunted along it, complaining mightily. Then I thought: “I’m bound
for Old Monterey, the land of black eyes, soft lips and noonday naps.” So after that I forgot the rough condition of the road.
Monterey has too much of high art and business in its makeup to worry about a little-used road, for I traveled around the Bay of Monterey in rather a roundabout way. I wished to do this, because102
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by so doing, I would come first to Pacific Grove, for it is in this little seaside town that I was to meet my Aunt Doloras Monterey.
THE OLD TOWN
We went along the ocean drive from Pacific Grove to Monterey. I must tell you something about this city before I go any further.
General William T. Sherman, who was such a capable general during the War of the Rebellion, lived for a time at the Presidio at Monterey. That was a long time ago, many years before you or I were born. There is a pretty and rather a sad story about his stay at the old Monterey. I saw a house called the Sherman Rose Cottage, and a rose bush grew beside it. This is called the Sherman Rose. It seems that Sherman, then a young army officer, fell in love with Señorita Bonifacio. He planted this rose in her honor when he was called away on military duty. He never came back to Monterey, but the rose bush still blooms beside the cottage.
In the first California theatre, story and legend have it that Jenny Lind (a Swedish singer with a beautiful voice), appeared in concert. Since then many famous actors and musicians have appeared there. It is a relic of the glory that was Monterey’s in the days before the business man took possession of it.
When James K. Polk was president of the United States, and during the same year that Mr. Howe completed the invention of the sewing machine (my sister Talma says that was a very annoying thing for Mr. Howe to have done), the American flag was permanently raised at Monterey. Commodore Sloat of the American Navy raised the flag on July 6, 1846, and, as the saying is, nailed it to the mast. It has never come down since that time. The conquest was most peaceful, because there was no objection from the Mexican forces. The flag first appeared on an old customs house, the interior of which has now been fitted out as a most interesting museum of early California history.
The first newspaper ever published in California was printed at Monterey in 1846. Mr. Walter Colton was the editor, and he later took a leading part in writing the first constitution of the new state.
AND NOW
You have heard enough about the history of the city of Monterey. Let us take a look around and see something of the county as I saw it in the year 1923.
The Monterey County shore line is high and rock-bound, with beautiful cypress trees growing out of the soil between the rocks. This rocky coast is wind-blown and frayed, but it has been there almost since the world was made. It will likely be there a thousand years from now, still wind-blown and frayed, but as strong and serviceable as ever.
From the coast toward the county seat at Salinas the road runs through winding valleys and over low green hills. One of the chief103
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crops of this part of the county is apples. In the Pajaro (bird) Valley around the city of Watsonville, almost every orchard is an apple orchard.
As we came closer to Salinas, wheat fields, strawberry beds, and prune orchards appeared. Salinas is the center of the county’s industries. One of the largest strawberry fields in the world is only a short distance to the north, while stretching away to the south are immense pastures; fields of grain and sugar beet fields.
BUCKfiROOS
Salinas is especially noted for its annual Rodeo. A Rodeo is a meeting of cowboys, and cowgirls who ride bucking horses and steers. To this Salinas Rodeo come the champion riders and cowboys from all over the west. For a week the activities of the community are given over to broncho busting feats of horsemanship, and steer bull-dogging. To bulldog a steer a husky son of all outdoors takes the animal by the horns with his hands (some do it with their teeth in the steer’s nose) and wrestles the animal to the ground, or else gets himself wrestled to the ground; it matters little which, because the crowd is cheerful just the same.
South of Salinas, in our journey, we came to the broad fields of Soledad and King City. This section is known as the Salinas Valley and is an extremely rich granary. It produces many dairy cows, sugar beets, vegetables and alfalfa. In the hills roam large herds of cattle, feeding for the most part on the natural wild grasses.
It was a long trip we took and we did not return to Pacific Grove until the next day, but passed the night with some friends of Aunt Doloras in King City.
On the next afternoon we went over the mountains from Monterey to the colony of Carmel.
Carmel! Ah, Carmel—a steep mountain side, with lovely beach a few feet from the tree-thronged cliffs. It is the home of many artists, writers, poets, and those who think they will some day qualify in the arts.
The commonest sight to be seen in and around Carmel is an author pounding his typewriter, and a lady reading a manuscript, possibly of some unpublished masterpiece.

AUNT JUANITA SAN BENITO OF SAN BENITO COUNTY
A small county set in the foothills of the Coast Range. An interesting place, as you shall see.
AUNT JUANITA SAN BENITO in this county has a place worth telling about.
Picture a weird and wonderful place, lined with rocks that tower104
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like a wall 1,500 feet into the air, split by deeply-carved canyons, in some of which gigantic boulders have rolled from the mountain tops and hang suspended between the walls.
At the canyon’s mouth a cool, clear stream disappears into a mysterious cavern which honeycombs the base of the great granite pillars, and leads from the east to the west side of the mountains. I tell you to picture such a place, but it is hard to do, for even after seeing it I cannot sketch or describe it properly.
This place is called the Pinnacles.
The Pinnacles are situated in the center of the Pinnacles National Park, in which wild life is protected and in which game is abundant and herds of deer are a common sight.
An old man who was hanging around told me this story:
It seems that when Maniteau walked the earth he had a favorite dog. This dog was always at his side, until one day when this Indian god was sitting on a California hillside he fell asleep. While Maniteau slept his dog made friends with a wolf. When the god awoke and found what his dog had done he became so angry that he cast up these stones and tore open these canyons. He then cursed his dog and cast him out into the world.
The dog thereupon became the first coyote, which is neither dog nor wolf.
Aunt Juanita had taken me to the Pinnacles first because of the curiosity of the place. When we started for the floor of the valley we paused for a time on a hilltop. From this eminence I could see the great valley of the county, filled with orchards, towns and grazing herds. In the distance was a fine orchard carefully pruned (trimmed) and whitewashed to keep insects from damaging the fruit.
THE COUNTY
I found that the principal industries of San Benito County are fruit growing, stock raising, dairying, seed culture, and mining, with a liberal sprinkling of poultry.
At Hollister, and indeed throughout all the valley around the city, many chickens are raised. It is a good thing to do, raising chickens, because if the folks in the country did not raise poultry, what would us city people do for eggs? Hollister is a shipping point of importance, because the farmers and growers from all over the county bring their products to Hollister to be shipped away.
I noticed the number of well-kept dairies, and upon investigation I learned that San Benito produces immense quantities of cheese, butter, and butter fat, and that is why there are so many sleek, contented cows in the county. There was in San Benito something different than I had encountered elsewhere—seed farms! There are more than 6,000 acres devoted exclusively to seed growing. Seeds of every variety are grown, from the tearful onion to the stately hollyhock. These seeds are shipped to all parts of the world, because they have earned an international reputation.
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became a county. In 1874 this happy event occurred. Exactly 77 years before this event the Mission San Juan Bauptista was founded. This old mission is still in use,, and around it has grown up a thriving little city, and a berry and fruit raising district of first importance. Looking down upon this little city is Fremont Peak, a promontory from which the American flag was unfolded to the breeze many years ago by Captain John C. Fremont.
The main traveled roads of the county are paved highways, and its location is convenient to San Jose (only one hour away), while San Francisco can be reached in less than three hours.
COUSIN GRAINER SAN LUIS OBISPO OF SAN LUIS OBISPO COUNTY
Famous hot springs, mountains, thousands of Pismo clams—and there you have San Luis Obispo.
MY COUSIN GRAINER SAN LUIS OBISPO met me at Paso Robles, a small inland town set in a beautiful valley. The chief attractions are the Paso Robles Hot Springs, the Golf Links, and the Oak Trees. A good many years ago two events were occurring, both having a bearing upon the state of California as we know it. One was the Boston Tea Party, which social event took place in the year 1773. That gave tea great advertising; in fact you might almost say that throwing the tea into Boston Harbor was the first broadcasting advertising stunt ever attempted. While these Americans, disguised as Indians, were romping around doing their stuff in Boston, the people of another race were bathing in the Paso Robles hot springs. In those days the bishop and other ecclesiastics, as well as the natives and soldiers, bathed in these healing waters. Had the Boston Tea Party not occurred, perhaps the United States would still be a part of the British Empire, and had these springs not been so beneficial to the gout or miseries of some noble Spaniard, the Mission at San Luis Obispo might not have been built. But both events did happen, and the springs are still there.
When I visited Paso Robles, there were no Spanish padres sporting around in the water or wallowing in the mud baths. Instead, the pool within the rambling old hotel was partly filled with happy youths, who welcomed it in preference to the usual Saturday night affair. In the valley around the town are thousands of oak trees. This is perhaps why Paso Robles is called Paso Robles, which means the “pass through the oaks.” It seemed as if each oak tree had also its parasitic growth of mistletoe. This vine attaches itself to the oak trees and thrives amid their branches. When you are driving along the highways of California, observe the oak trees and you will surely see a thick cluster of mistletoe clinging to many of the branches.106
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THE DIVIDE
The distance to the city of San Luis Obispo, I found, was some thirty odd miles. The road humps itself over some rather high mountains. These mountains are called high, but they do not compare in height to some I had crossed in the northern counties. I crossed the Cuesta (hill of charity) grade in high. Fancy my doing that in Siskiyou County? Up there the hills are mountains and it is sometimes necessary to turn around and back up some of them. Cuesta, however, is an elegantly paved grade.
San Luis Obispo County is near the center of the coast line between San Francisco and Los Angeles. The Cuesta grade is the boundary between Northern and Southern California, on the coast side. This range of mountains is what makes the difference in the climate of the county. It can truthfully be said that San Luis Obispo County is both Northern and Southern California. It works out that way in things produced.
In the southern part of the county, sub-tropical vegetation thrives; while in the northern part, which forms almost three-fourths of it, the frosts of winter come early and remain too late to permit the growth of orange or palm trees.
WHEN TIME BEGAN
The hanging gardens of Babylon had never even been thought of and the City of Carthage was only a barren muddy swamp when nature was at work on the Pacific Coast. Sometime during the ages that preceded the birth of history in this world, a great rock reared itself, or was thrust, out of the waters of the Pacific. Again a day or so in nature passed, and this rock became smoother and the clinging things on its top died, until when the first white man saw it, Morro Rock was as stark naked as it is today. This rock, rising 576 feet out of the water at the entrance to Morro Bay, is one of the most distinctive landmarks on the Pacific Coast.
Most of the fishing in the county used to be centered in Morro, where the bay offers a refuge for the fishing boats. Morro Bay is the only land-locked body of water in the county, and being so, it will some day, no doubt, become famous as a harbor or refuge for ships.
Back again inland.
The mountains are only parts of the vast cattle ranches of the county. As they approach the sea the land, in some cases, flattens out for grain, dairying, orchards, and garden spots. In passing through the mountains I saw frequent canyons running back for several miles. These bottom lands are rich and well watered by mountain streams.
Besides the cattle ranching and dairying, market gardens play a prominent part in the agricultural life of the county. On these small farms they grow for the market peas, beans, and other vegetables. Flowers are also extensively cultivated for their seeds, and fruit orchards thrive.
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no trick at all for a man to go out fishing in the morning. I agree with him in that, because anybody can go out fishing in the morning if they are of a mind to, and there is no trick required. But what Grainer meant to say was that it was a simple matter to catch a nice mess of haddock, rock cod, smelts, or to walk along the sandy beach at Pismo and dig a big dinner of clams. Clams thrive in abundance at Pismo, but your little Ana Belle failed to find any clams among the citizens of the county when it came to stating facts and figures about the county.

UNCLE WALNUT SANTA BARBARA OF SANTA BARBARA COUNTY
Much mustard, beautiful beaches, rugged mountains, nuts, golf. Of such is the principality of Santa Barbara.
WHEN, AFTER TRAVELING for nearly one hundred miles through the county, I arrived at the city of Santa Barbara, I found Uncle Walnuti Santa Barbara (hereinafter referred to as Wal) had been called away to inspect his oil properties near Summerland. Uncle Wal had left word for me to join him there, and I did so. When I found him, he was standing on the sea shore looking at oil derricks out in the Pacific Ocean. He was about ready to go when I found him and so we did not linger at these ocean-going oil wells.
HOT STUFF
Have you ever eaten corned beef? I mean when it is nice and hot, and lightly spread with mustard? If you never have, then take it from me, you have missed a treat. Do so at once, and when you pick up the mustard pot think of Lompoc in Santa Barbara County. Around this little city and throughout that part of the county there seems to be nothing raised but mustard. Mustard! Mustard! A cultivated field of mustard looks similar to a field of wild mustard: yellow flowers on stems as tall as a small boy.
As the county unfolds it displays a generous array of products. From the oil at Santa Maria and in the ocean, to the walnut trees around the Santa Barbara inland valleys; from the ultra expensive Golf Club at Montecito to the Municipal Links at or near Santa Maria, the changes take place.
Great fields of grain grow on the sloping mountain sides, and in the higher mountains cattle thrive. The Santa Barbara mountains are high, steep and without much water. They do, however, afford splendid grazing places for the hardy California cattle. These animals will feed over a wide territory until they find water, and then having drank their fill they feed back again, and so on every day of their lives.108
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SANTA BARBARA CITY
Perhaps the best way to cause you to understand the atmosphere of the city of Santa Barbara, is to tell you about the Samarkand Hotel. It is of Persian architectural construction, yet to me it typifies Santa Barbara better than anything else, and still Santa Barbara was settled by the Spanish, constructed by Americans, and is today liberally peopled with Mexicans!
This city bears the impress of four regimes: the Indians came first, then the Spanish, followed by the Mexicans, and lastly the Americans.
While the union of England and Scotland was being formed in 1602-3, Santa Barbara was mapped and named by a party of Mexican explorers. Later Padre Junípero Serra selected it as a site for a central mission, because of “the wonderful salubrity of the climate, the transcendent beauty of location, and the fertility of the soil.”
Santa Barbara is, I think, very apt to remain about as it is—a small city. The valley containing it is too small to enable the construction of a metropolis. I hope it never does grow up. It is delightful just as it is, and anyone who has ever been there will corroborate this. There is one everlasting puzzle in connection with Santa Barbara:
The names of streets.
Suppose you got married and moved to Santa Barbara. You would be glad to engage a fine little flat on, let us say, Micheltorena street. Then you kissed your new wife tra-la and went out to buy some ham and eggs, and potatoes and things. You found a grocery store down town and asked to have them delivered to the aforenamed street.
“What street did you say?” the grocery boy might ask.
You repeat the name.
“Spell it,” says the grocery boy.
You can’t, but you repeat, this time in a loud voice the name Micheltorena.
The grocery boy shakes his head sadly. “I have only been in town ten years,” he might say, “and I never heard of the street. What is its name?”
“Micheltorena Street.”
You likely end up by doing two things: Carrying home the groceries and moving to a new address on Main Street.
But even so, Santa Barbara is a city of perpetual recreation, amidst the beauties of nature, grouped on a marvelous panorama of mountains, sea and islands. It is comparable with the most beautiful and famous resorts and wonder spots of the universe, and that’s no jolly, either; even if the best garage is located on Cannon Perdidio Callé.Up-Down and All Around California	109
COUSIN BEANY VENTURA OF VENTURA COUNTY
Land of hills and valleys, fields and ocean shore—
Ventura.
IT WAS JUST NINETY YEARS to the month from the time the Mission was founded (March, 1782), until Ventura County
was created (March, 1872).
What happened in the world while the old Spanish Mission was growing and expanding, and then crumbling into decay ? What happened while the slow growth of the district steadily brought it to a point worthy of being named an individual unit—a county?
THE GROWTH OF A MISSION
The Missions were built stoutly of adobe and tile. Far and wide the Padres roamed to gather the Indians of the neighboring valleys into their kindly care.
At first the Indians only visited the distant (or close by) missions to barter with the priests and then hastened away with the spoils of their trades. To the uncivilized savages of California, such a Mission or trading post appeared as a dream of beauty and luxury. They asked eventually to be allowed to live close to its walls, to see the wonderful sights, when the Fathers celebrated Mass. Gradually they left their tents and built small huts around the Missions. In this way the Missions grew into a central meeting place for all the Indians of the entire neighborhood, and as their interest and confidence returned, the Fathers, with their devout and kindly treatment, taught them the arts of industry and about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
While all this was going on, I asked Cousin Beany what else occurred in the world, and found that he had given it some thought.
In 1783, the Treaty of Versailles was signed acknowledging the Independence of these United States. George Washington became president in 1789, served for eight years, and soon after ending his second term, died. The war of 1812 was fought and won. The first passenger railroad in the United States was operated in 1828. Morse invented the telegraph in 1837. The United States had a war with Mexico in 1846, and a year or so later California became a part of the United States, and a state on September 9, 1850. President Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. The Union Pacific Railroad was opened for traffic in 1869, a great fire occurred in Boston in 1872, and in the same year Ventura, once only a little Spanish Mission, became a county in a great state.
Today, Ventura County is the leading bean producer in the State of California. I saw thousands of acres of these beans growing along the seaside boundary. Inland, toward the cities of Santa Paula and110
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Fillmore, there are great and thriving orange groves, as well as fields, farms and pasturage.
Along the coast, and running back somewhat into the hill country, Ventura has excellent concrete highways. More are building, and some day when you go to Ventura you’ll likely ride the entire journey on roads paved as slick and smooth as any you ever saw.
Many millions of years ago a part of Ventura County was a swamp. In it grew giant ferns several feet in height, as well as countless other varieties of semi-tropical vegetation. Centuries passed, and this swamp was gradually filled in with new earth. More centuries passed, and then in 1868 some man started to fool around on his ranch. He had a pick and shovel and was doing a bit of digging. He encountered a black substance which made it hard for him to dig. So he knocked off work for the day and went to town to tell about this sticky substance and maybe to swap yarns with the citizens on the First National Bank corner. Some of the sticky stuff was on his shoes, and so other men saw it. The result of the ensuing argument about the dirt on the man’s shoes was that oil was discovered. Within the last twenty years this oil has been rather well developed, but Ventura has not yet produced oil in noticeable quantities, when compared to Orange and Kern.
In Riverside County (you remember that county of course), I told you something about Ramona, the California girl who married Alessandro, the Temecula Indian. Well, here in Ventura County, I saw the original ranch home where Ramona lived and where she first met Alessandro.
4• 4• 4•
HAIL, MARY OF THE ANGELES !
People! Automobiles! Buildings! Orchards! Farms! Oil! Ships! Factories! Climate! Fast stretches of undeveloped land! Mountains! Resorts! The ocean! Ah! Los Angeles.
NOW I AM BACK HOME again and the long journey throughout California is almost at an end. But not quite, because I have not yet told you about Los Angeles County, nor the coast line, which comes after Los Angeles.
Come with me to the top of Mount Wilson, a peak near the little city of Sierra Madre. This mountain overlooks several of the great valleys of Los Angeles County; those we cannot see we can imagine.
The road up Mount Wilson is steep and winding, but roads mean nothing to your Ana Belle any more. If it gets too steep, I simply turn around and go up backwards, as I did on more than one occasion in Alpine, Mono, Del Norte, and other counties.
Here we are at the tip-top of Mount Wilson—now look around.
CITIES AND TOWNS AND VALLEYS
Off toward the ocean is the city of Los Angeles. In the early eighties Los Angeles was another sleepy little California community,Up-Down and All Around California
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given over to ease and siestas. Then people, of their own accord and without apparent urging, began to come in. These newcomers were enterprising and soon began to tell other people about the climate and the opportunities in and around Los Angeles. These people came, saw and liked it, and stayed and so more and more people came until today Los Angeles, as you can see, is the most sought after spot in the United States, if not the entire world.
Climate may have had its influence in the beginning, and it may even exert that influence now, but Los Angeles offered many other things to the newcomers, and today Los Angeles has hundreds of attractions beside climate.
This city is located in about the center of a great valley, some twenty miles from the Pacific Ocean on two sides. The city actually extends in a narrow shoe-string strip to the Harbor of San Pedro. Its location gives it a large territory for expansion toward the sea, while the back country contributes largely and loyally to the resources of the city. With the exception of one range of high mountains, nothing is to prevent the city from growing for miles and miles in every direction, and this range of mountains is easily circumvented. These mountains should, perhaps, be called hills of dirt. There are practically no huge boulders or rocky ledges in them. They are mostly huge piles of adobe soil, very fertile under the influence of water, and easily adaptable to the building of homes.
There are so many varied attractions (outside of prosaic business) in and around the city of The Angels, that your little Ana Belle hardly knows which to mention and which to leave out. She will, therefore, consider that discretion is the better part of valor, and paint you a picture of something you cannot possibly see elsewhere on the North American Continent.
In a secluded spot, surrounded by a high board fence, the tourist may imagine himself to be in Australia, because it is here that the ostrich farm is located, and the birds are raised on a commercial bash for their feathers.
SAN GABRIEL AND POMONA
Turn now and gaze to the south and east.
You see the rich valley of San Gabriel. This valley (almost a part of Los Angeles city) is given over to small farms, oranges, poultry, golf links, and the Mission with its famous Mission Play.
San Gabriel valley was one of the earliest of the California settlements, but the logical place for the big city was some fifteen miles southwest.
Beyond San Gabriel Valley is Los Nietos Valley, home of producing oil wells, the Quaker City of Whittier, and of truck gardens and orange groves. Then, to the left again, beyond Puente, is the broad sweep of Pomona Valley. This, together with several smaller flats, is given over largely to agricultural and horticultural pursuits. Pomona112
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means Goddess of Fruit, and anyone viewing the Pomona Valley, will agree that it deserves the name.
TURN AROUND
Now, turn around, and imagine you can see over the hills to the Glendale and Burbank country. Glendale (some eight miles from the the Los Angeles City Hall) is called the fastest growing city in the world, while Burbank is becoming a manufacturing place of importance. They are located in the same valley, which is well watered and productive of fruits and poultry, and there are many dairy cows and swine, as well as truck gardens.
Beyond Burbank is the San Fernando Valley.
Until the coming of irrigation, this was mostly a barren region. Now if you go there you will find it highly cultivated, and within its borders are several flourishing towns, as well as Universal City, the town given over exclusively to the production of moving pictures.
Now look further still—over beyond the distant mountains.
The road takes you through wide fields of grain, and upland, oak-covered meadows, where pigs, cattle and chickens thrive. If you follow this paved highway long enough you will come to the Ridge Route which lies partly in Kern County. You will agree that it is one of the most stupendous feats of road building engineering ever yet attempted in the world.
Before reaching the Ridge Route proper, look to the south and you will see Antelope Valley. As yet this valley (some fifty miles remote from Los Angeles City) is largely barren land. There seems to be a lack of water. My brother, who was over there just a week or so ago, tells me that irrigation is commencing in Antelope Valley. When it reaches a comprehensive stage Antelope Valley will become a second San Fernando.
BACK AGAIN
Now we will have a last look at the more populous valley directly below us toward the sea.
Westward, on the shores of the ocean, are the cities of Santa Monica, Ocean Park and Venice. These were once seaside sand hills or bluffs, and of no consequence. Now they are famous seaside resorts, as well as thriving business cities. My brother, who is in the piano business, tells me that Santa Monica uses more pianos than does any other city of its size in the county. That means that Santa Monica has indeed become a home city, and is no longer simply a summer or winter pleasure resort. Further along toward the sunset, are El Segundo, Redondo, San Pedro, and Long Beach, with many smaller places scattered between them.
The oil wells owned by the city of Long Beach may make it a taxless city, because they may produce sufficient revenue to run the government without resorting to taxation. San Pedro is at the endUp-Down and All Around California
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of a strip of land which connects it with the city of Los Angeles, and thus affords the larger city a harbor. Ships from the ports of the world come to San Pedro.
The products of this vast County of Los Angeles are as varied as is the county itself. They range from chickens to alligators, from corn to avocados, from millionaires to clerks and bootblacks, from actresses to dish washers, from motor trucks to ocean going steamers. Nearly everything is raised or grown or manufactured in this home county of mine, and, perhaps best of all, the county is large enough to accommodate many times the number of people it now has.
APRIL 16. 1850
Before we leave the top of Mount Wilson to descend into the lovely valley of Pasadena, let me read you the following report submitted to the Senate of the State of California, on the derivation and definition of the names of the several counties of California as they existed in 1850. In this report General Mariano G. Vallejo had the following to say about Los Angeles County, which at that period included part of the lands now known as Ventura and Orange Counties.
Listen now to the General in the legislative halls of the State of California:
LOS ANGELES: This county derives its name from the city of Los
H	Angeles, which was founded in the latter part of the year 1781, by order of
the Victory of New Spain, Bailio Frey Antonio Bucareli y Ursua, and is situated on the right bank of the “Porciuncula” River, which copiously waters the highly fertile plains whereon the city stands. Invited by the genial climate, the inhabitants have converted a large portion of this plain into a delightful garden, which is covered with all sorts of native fruit trees, but especially the
id	vine, which is cultivated with care and extraordinary success.
This beautiful and extensive valley, famous for its excellent wines and
liquors, contains within its limits the ex-missions of San Juan Capistrano (now in Orange County), San Gabriel and San Fernando, which, to within the last few years, constituted the best and richest establishments of the kind. In 1832, including the environs, they numbered very nearly half a million head of cattle.
i I	From the reasons above mentioned, as well as from its extent and natural
advantages, the County of Los Angeles is destined to become the most populous of any in the south, and doubtless many men of business, both public and mercantile, tired of their avocations, will retire there to enjoy a life of angels.
The white population of the county is from 12,000 to 15,000.
y ,
Not to be irrelevant, your little Ana Belle would answer the General by saying that today there are more than 15,000 movie-struck
i,	girls in Los Angeles alone, not counting the industrious inhabitants.114
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PAPA LIGHTHOUSES
On many high points along the California shore are government lighthouses to warn the ships of danger. Off the coast there are three interesting groups of islands.
THE STUDY OF NAVIGATION is always intensely interesting and frequently mysterious to us land lubbers.
There have really been two great men in the history of the world. The first truly great man was the prehistoric individual who first refused any longer to swing from tree to tree with the help of his long, strong tail, and who began to walk on his feet; or who later first used a stick as a lever to move a large rock, for he was the forerunner of all our civilization.
The next genius seems, to your Ana Belle, to have been the man who first set sail in his rude log dugout and went to explore the distant horizon.
These individuals were brave fellows, and the first pioneers.
Perhaps their relatives and friends thought them crazy for doing things no one else had ever done, but the pioneer feels unhappy. He wants to explore and see for himself. So, one fine day, he leaves his safe home and goes away. Maybe he is killed or maybe he comes back to tell about what he has seen. In either event there are unknown terrors awaiting him.
Always the worst terror has been the distant horizon, and for centuries after man had built his first clumsy boats, he remained within sight of the friendly and familiar shore.
Then a bold fellow went out, or was blown out, and lost sight of land. His necessity, then, was the first demand for lighthouses, and as the world progressed and navigation improved, mariners have always looked for signal lights when approaching shore at night.
CALIFORNIA LIGHTHOUSES
If Madam California has performed such prodigious wonders within the state, then surely Papa California is the one who has provided the lights for the ships at sea.
On my journey I encountered no less than twenty-two strong lighthouses, built at dangerous points along the 1,097 miles of California coast.
These houses flash their intermittent lights through the hours of darkness, and each house has a separate and distinct signal for the captain on the bridge of his ship far out on the dark water. I understand they are operated by the United States Government, and are individually in charge of capable and trustworthy men and women, who see to it that the light does not cease to burn, nor the signal cease to flash, through the dark hours of every night. Rain or storm, moon-Up-Down and All Around California
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light or cloudy weather, these lights send their message to the mariner as his ship bravely ploughs its way along the trackless ocean.
ISLANDS
Just off the coast of San Diego County (in Old Mexico waters) are the Coronado Islands. These are the personal property of Mexico, and so I know little of them, except that they are excellent fishing harbors.
Two hundred miles or so to the north I found a group of three islands. These are a part of Los Angeles County, and include Santa Catalina, San Clemente and Santa Barbara. The first named of the group is the famous pleasure resort which the whole world knows about, but the others are not yet developed. Still further north are the Santa Cruz Islands, which belong to Santa Barbara County, and San Miguel. Of this group, I think Santa Cruz is the only one inhabited, and on it a family (which owns it) have a home and large ranches, truck gardens, and the like. There is also a small island or two off the Ventura coast, but these are scarcely more than rocks in the ocean.
All is clear now until we reach the Farallon Islands, which are part of San Francisco County. These are small places which seem to act as guards for the harbor behind the Golden Gate. They are used for havens for fishing boats and for passengers of ocean liners to cheer as the first evidence of California, when they are finishing their trip out of the South Pacific.
Off the coast of Del Norte County are a few rocks which, however, can hardly be termed islands.
THE COAST GUARD
The United States Government maintains a fleet of revenue cutters and coast guard ships to protect the California Coast. The same source supplies the lighthouses to guide the ships at night, and lastly, should the necessity arise (which I hope it never will), the good old parent government can furnish a few airplanes in case of necessity.
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“And now, I have come to the end of my narrative,” said Ana Belle, “and should any one doubt the tale I have told, they may verify the facts by doing as I did. And for those who learn something of interest about Madam and Papa California, and all their family, relatives and friends, I say: ‘Adois, Hasta La Vista.’
“Yours truly,
“ANA BELLE.”
“P.S.—Ask a policeman what that means.”