Portal:California Central Valley

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The California Central Valley Portal

Reaching east-west from the Coast Range to the Sierra Nevada and north-south from the Tehachapis to the Cascades, the Great Central Valley is a large, primarily agricultural region of the state.

Two major highways (I-5 and SR 99) cut through it from north to south, as does the California Aqueduct.

The Valley has seen waves of immigration, from Indian tribes to Spanish explorers and rancheros, farmers from the Eastern US, Portuguese ranchers from the Azores, Dust Bowl refugees, Mexican laborers, Southeast Asians (Including Hmong, Mien and Vietnamese) to a burgeoning Sikh community, and many others.

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Selected article

The Mussel Slough Tragedy was a dispute over land titles between settlers and Southern Pacific Railroad that took place on May 11, 1880 in what is now Hanford, California, leaving seven people dead. Frank Norris' 1901 novel, The Octopus: A California Story, was inspired by this incident. The United States Supreme Court had ruled that Southern Pacific still owned its land grants, even though they were no longer going to build a rail line on the land. When four "railroad men" (including a U.S. Marshal) were rumored to be evicting settlers, a group of about twenty people left to confront them. A shooting broke out and five men died on the scene, one was fatally wounded, and one was later killed in his own home by "parties unknown".

Past selected articles: Kesterson wildlife refuge, The Grapes of Wrath

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Selected picture

An Alfalfa farm in Gustine, CA. Alfalfa is a common legume in the Central Valley. It is used as feed for many farm animals goats, cows, and sheeps.

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Did you know...

The 2006 World Ag Expo, also known as The Farm Show, took place in Tulare and saw over 112,500 attendees as well as vendors from 65 countries. First known as Tulare’s Field and Row Crop Equipment Show when it started in 1968, its name was then changed in 1969 to the California Farm Equipment Show. In 1972 it added, "and International Exposition. It finally took on the name, 'World Ag Expo in 2001 and is the largest agricultural equipment exposition in the world.

Past selections: California and the Civil War , Navel Orange, American Graffiti

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California Central Valley topics

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Web resources

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Colleges and Universities

Institutions of higher learning in the Central Valley tend to occupy the following categories:

Independent universities such as Fresno Pacific University

Technical schools such as DeVry University (campuses in Fresno and Sacramento)

California State Universities such as California State University, Chico

University of California campuses such as University of California, Merced

Community colleges such as Cosumnes River College

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Noticeable Stubs

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Current Events

Protests break out in response to a summit on immigration issues involving Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Mexican President Vicente Fox and United States President George W. Bush. The summit took place in hurricane-damaged Cancún.

Central Valley dairy farmers and environmentalists clashed over Senate Bill 700, a livestock air rule. The dispute centers on which pollutants the rule will regulate, especially Ammonia. Estimates show that dairy cattle send 315 tons of Ammonia into the air every day.

Govenor Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote a letter recently to President George W. Bush announcing “a state of emergency for the California levee system due to the imminent threat of catastrophic levee failure," and was denied a $3 billion request for federal funding.

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Selected biography

Dorothea Lange was an influential documentary photographer. Lange is best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange's photographs humanized the tragic consequences of the Great Depression and profoundly influenced the development of documentary photography.

Past selected biographies: Joaquin Murrieta, Don Pedro Fages Beleta, James G. (Jim) Boswell, II

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Quotes

In the Great Central Plain of California, during the months of March, April, and May, was one smooth, continuous bed of honey-bloom, so marvelously rich that, in walking from one end of it to the other, a distance of more than 400 miles, your foot would press about a hundred flowers at every step. Mints, gilias, nemophilas, castilleias, and innumerable compositae were so crowded together that, had ninety-nine per cent of them been taken away, the plain would still have seemed to any but Californians extravagantly flowery.

-John Muir, The Mountains of California (1894)

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