Imperial (197 page)

50. Prac tically Self-Suppor ting in Three Years (1865-20 04)

Epigraph: “But this is tremendous!”—Wells,
The First Men in the Moon
, p. 37.

“There is no escaping the stereotype of an ideal agrarian world . . .”—Spencer Museum of Art, p. xi.

John Steuart Curry’s “Valley of the Wisconsin”—Ibid., plate 18.

“Many of our old neighbors toiled and sweated . . .”—Muir, pp. 106-7 (
The Story of My Boyhood and Youth
, 1913).

The undated stock photo which strangely resembles Nazi homeland propaganda—California State Archives. Olson Photo Collection. Accession #94-06-27 (238-387). Box 2 of 7. Folder #94-06-27 (331-343): Farms and Farming. Photo #94-06-27-0336. “Flax harvest.”

Advertisement for Illinois lands, 1865—
Harper’s Weekly
facsimiles, p. 256.

Los Angeles per capita acreage figures for 1880—California census (1880), pp. 2, 8, 1 (note that page numbers repeat in this document according to enumeration district).

The first President Roosevelt: “The object of the Government . . .”—Quoted in Smythe, p. 285.

“The Reclamation Act forbade the delivery of water on any government project . . .”—James,
Reclaiming the Arid West
, p. 30.

1917 advice to “experienced men with small means”—Packard, p. 15.

Judge Farr: “Imperial County was settled in a large part by those who did not have a large amount of capital.”—Op. cit., p. 187.

Mention of Wilber Clark’s grapes and dates—Ibid., p. 465.

Mr. Reider: “What the hell can I do with ten acres?”—California State Archives, Department of Food and Agriculture, Bureau of Marketing, marketing-order files, 1941-1971, Box 1 (State of California. California Department of Agriculture. Public Hearings—May 2, 1967. Location: Coachella, California. Joan E. Smith, certified shorthand reporter [Rialto, California], p. 95).

Statement of Richard Brogan—Interviewed by WTV, Calexico, April 2004. Terrie Petree was present.

Footnote: Chávez at Riverside Church—César Chávez, p. 113 (“At Riverside Church,” spring 1971).

Footnote: Average farm size at the beginning of the twenty-first century—
California Agricultural Directory 2004- 2005
, p. 108, figures for 1997-2002.

Paul S. Taylor: “The Reclamation Law provides for tremendous subsidies for water development . . .”—UC Berkeley. Bancroft Library. Paul S. Taylor papers. Carton 4. Folder 4:11: “Fight For Water.” Typescript: “HEARINGS BEFORE THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON URBAN PROJECTS, Volume 2, Testimony of Paul S. Taylor, July 5, 1967, San Francisco.” Page number cut off on Bancroft’s photocopy.

Señora Teresa García—Interviewed on 19 February 2004. Terrie Petree interpreted.

The proprietress of the small restaurant—Señora Socorro Ramírez, interviewed on the same day. Terrie Petree interpreted.

Footnote: “A community of farmers . . .”—UC Berkeley. Bancroft Library. Paul S. Taylor Papers. Carton 5. Folder 5:17: “National Reclamation in the Imperial Valley: Law vs. Politics, Final Draft, 1981.” Page 4. 1918 refinements to acreage limitation—California Board of Agriculture (1918), pp. 8, 10.

Advertisement for Calipatria lots
—Imperial Valley Press
, vol. XIV, no. 8, Thursday evening, May 14, 1914, p. 3.

Harry Chandler as part owner of Calipatria townsite lands—Tout,
The First Thirty Years
, p. 348.

Acreage of IID directors Rose and Aten—Statements of these two individuals, in Senate Committee on the Colorado River Basin (1925), pp. 255, 265.

“These Lyons boys,” Dave Williams, Harry Van den Heuvel—Farr, pp. 51, 52, 53.

Farr’s acreage—Howe and Hall, p. 159.

Alice Woodside’s remarks—Interview of February 2004, Sacramento. On the subject of large holdings she said: “Being a real estate agent, and as somebody who’s gone out and bought a lot of property here in Sacramento, you know, residential real estate, and I think, more than any of my contemporaries, I had that drive to do that. I’ve been willing to go out and gather pieces of property and work with them. If you’re willing to go out and work really hard . . . of course it’s all right. But I’ve never had that water issue.”—I asked her: “For the sake of argument, if the government subsidized reclamation and one man took control of all the reclaimed acres, how would you feel about it?”—She agreed that that would be wrong.

The fable of Seabrook Farms—
Quick Frozen Foods
, vol. XVII, no. 4, November 1954, p. 129.

Judge Farr: “As has already been learned by the reader of this volume . . .”—Op. cit., p. 60.

“Between 1910 and 1920 there began for the first time . . .”—Mott and Roemer, p. 7.

Advertisement for “Garden Tract Sites”
—Fresno Morning Republican
, Sunday, March 21, 1920, p. 18B.

Roosevelt on Subsistence Homestead Program—Watkins, p. 448, quoting Joseph Lash,
Eleanor and Franklin
.

“No boy should be deprived of the experience of harvesting . . .”—Sloane, p. 159.

Home Brand orange label—McClelland and Last, p. 8.

51. The
Ejidos
(19 03 -2 0 0 5)

Epigraph: “A calpulli or chinacalli . . .”—Zorita, pp. 105-6.

Description of the view from the cemetery in Islas Agrarias—As seen in April 2004.

Definitions of
ejidos
and
colonias,
and their numbers in Baja and Tijuana in 2004—Augustín Pérez, reporter for
La Frontera
(Tijuana). Interviewed in English in a restaurant in Tijuana Centro, July 2004. Terrie Petree was present. I have interpolated approximate numbers of
ejidos
for Mexicali and Tijuana from Baja California’s
VII Censo Ejidal
of 1993 (p. 13), whose figures seem close to Señor Pérez’s.

“A colonial-era term that had been used to describe indigenous communities’ common lands . . .”—Boyer, p. 75.

Varying interpretations of indigenous land tenure—Zorita, pp. 298-300 (translator’s note 19).

Zapata leaves it up to each village to decide the form of property distribution of its
ejido—
Womack, p. 234.

Luis Cabrera: “rights established in the epoch of the Aztecs”—Joseph and Henderson, p. 345 (
The Restoration of the
Ejidos).

The 1912 bill for “the reconstitution of the
ejidos
”—Womack, p. 155.

Extracts from the Plan de Ayala—Womack, pp. 402-3. The entire Plan appears there as an Appendix.

Calles’s attitude toward the
ejidos
—Kerig, pp. 245-46.

“Almost from the start, the
ejidos
bore the taste of salty tears.”—DeBuys and Myers, p. 143.

José López—Interviewed in English in Mexicali, 2004.

Mexicali’s 1915
ejido
proposal—Kerig, p. 165.

Don Carlos Cayetano Sanders-Collins and his wife—Interviewed in Morelos (southwest of Algodones, in the Mexicali Valley), October 2003, Terrie Petree interpreting.

The restaurant proprietress—Señora Socorro Ramírez, interviewed on 19 February 2004 in her restaurant. Terrie Petree interpreted. Re: creating
fraccionamentos,
I asked her: “If a man does that, is that against the spirit of the reform of Cárdenas?”—“Yes, it goes go against his idea, but I’ve read that he got that idea from Germany.”

Footnote:
Ejidos vs.
ranchos—Kerig, pp. 317, 373, 432.

PART FOUR

FOOTNOTES

53. What I Wish I Knew About Meloland (1907 -1998)

Epigraph: “Half way between El Centro and Holtville . . .”—Tout,
The First Thirty Years
, p. 362.

Paragraph on Meloland, 1907-1909—
Desert Farmer
, Imperial Valley, May 1909, pp. 180-81 (“Meloland Ranch”).

“MELOLAND SOCIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK”—
Imperial Valley Press
, Friday, May 7, 1926, p. 2.

Califonia state road map—State of California. Department of Transportation. Transportation Library, Sacramento. Single item: State of California, Department of Engineering, California Highway Commission. Road Map of the State of California, Austin B. Fletcher, Highway Engineer, 1916.

Population figures for Meloland—Berlo, “Population History Compilation,” pp. 326-27.

The many races of Meloland children—As seen in a 1939 ICHSPM photograph, uncatalogued as of 2002. White faces and brown faces likewise grimace or smile from the 1947 Meloland Elementary School class photo (
Imperial County: The Big Picture
, p. 43).

“Actively developed, highly improved, and is becoming thickly settled.”—Same
Desert Farmer
article.

The veteran Imperialite—Kay Brockman Bishop, interviewed December 2006. Terrie Petree was present.

Types of soils in the Imperial and Mexicali valleys——Munguía, p. 11 (Francisco Raúl Venegas Cardoso).

54. San Diego (1769 -1925)

Epigraph: “San Diego is wedded to her lethergy [
sic
] . . .”—Hendricks, unnumbered p. 10; no date given but must have been in or before 1907, and obviously after 1901.

Acreage of San Diego County, and “the area covered by the Colorado River Desert . . .”—McPherson, pp. 60-61.

Helen Hunt Jackson’s description of the Pacific coast north of San Diego—Op. cit., p. 227.

Governor de Neve’s report—Nunis, p. 59 (No. 89: Troops, 27 February 1777).

Acting Governor Arrillaga’s description of San Diego—Op. cit., p. 98 (27 October 1796).

“Hides are plenty in the Pueblo . . .”—D. Mackenzie Brown, pp. 10-11 (John C. Jones, Bark Volunteer, San Diego, to Alpheus B. Thompson, Santa Barbara, November 7, 1833).

Richard Henry Dana, Jr., on San Diego—Op. cit., p. 143.

William Hartnell’s description of San Diego—Op. cit., p. 25 (diary, May 27, 1839).

Most of the Missions’ Indians have fled to Los Angeles in search of food and clothing—Information from Ryan, p. 60 (diary, July 14, 1839); p. 36 (letter to the Prefecture of the Second District—Los Angeles, June 11, 1839).

A British adventurer describes San Diego . . .—Ryan, vol. 2, p. 357 (this vol. orig. pub. 1851).

Population 2 decades after the British adventurer (actually 1873), and “it has a large park . . .”—McPherson, p. 63.

Dana on San Diego in 1859—Op. cit., p. 481.

Description of old ranch near Mission San Diego—After an anonymous photo in Kurutz, p. 78.

Date of first transcontinental train and of Sweetwater Dam, and “We may say that San Diego has a population of 150,000 . . .”—Dumke, pp. 137-38.

First reservoir; dams of 1918-24; capacity of county reservoirs, 1925—Pryde, pp. 105, 108.

“Where do the fine fruits come from . . .”—McPherson, p. 64.

55. In Memoriam, Imperial Hazel Deed (1905-2002)

Epigraph: “. . . we realize that California at its worst . . .”—
Fresno Morning Republican
, Sunday, March 21, 1920, p. 5, “Blessed California.”

Birth preeminence of Ruth Reed—Tout,
The First Thirty Years
, p. 172.

Birth of Imperial Hazel Deed—Ibid., p. 178.

“The birth of a daughter to Mr. and Mrs. A. H. Rehkopf . . .”—Loc. cit.

Oren Deed’s name I obtained from his daughter’s death certificate. His birthplace is confirmed as Kansas.

Findings of my hired genealogists on the Deed family—Zollinger-Peterson reports. The fact that Imperial’s ancestors were likely not native Californians is borne out by the
California 1870 Census Index
, Volume I, A-K (p. 380), which lists only an irrelevant Alexander Deede, aged 40, in San Francisco.

Non-appearance of the Deeds in the county indices—California State Archives. Microfilmed Imperial County records, 1851-1919. Roll #1433101.

The marriage of Samuel Dees and Uloa Harlan—Ibid. Index to Marriages, Men, v. 1-2; 1903-1923.

California Death Index
entry for Hazel Deed—Op. cit., 1905-1929, vol. II (C-E), p. 2607.

“Eggplant, Imperial Valley, nominal”—
Fresno Morning Republican
, Sunday, March 21, 1920, p. 16, “Commercial News.”

The citrus column—Ibid., Saturday, March 27, 1920, p. 20, “Commercial News.”

“PHONE 3700 FOR THESE SPECIALS TODAY . . .”—Ibid., p. 24.

56. Stolid of Face and Languid (1901 -2003)

Epigraph: “Mexican women turned their tortillas . . .”—Tout,
Silt
, p. 2.

“Potentially . . . the most valuable land in the United States”—House of Representatives (1907), p. 46 (testimony of Mr. Newell).

One study: Migrant farmworkers are “by any reckoning . . . the poorest . . .”—Dunbar and Kravitz, p. 2.

Same study: “Throughout much of the area, Mexican Americans were reduced . . .”—Ibid., p. 10.

Mr. Philip Ricker’s letter to the editor—
Imperial Valley Press
, vol. 103, no. 22, Thursday, June 5, 2003, p. A4, “Voice of the People” column (“Farmers losing their grip on I.V.”).

“Picture a man in desert garb . . .”—Tout,
The First Thirty Years
, p. 199 (Tout’s eyewitness description of the murals written for his
El Centro Progress
).

Re: Waves of laborers of different ethnicities—The Riverside Municipal Museum, pp. 10-11, gives the following chronology for its locality: 1870s, Cahuilla and Yuma are orange workers in Riverside. 1880s-end of century, Chinese from Guangdong replace the Indians. 1893, Geary Act replaces Chinese with Japanese. 1910-onward, mostly Mexican immigrants.

“Suppose, for instance, that every Chinaman is driven out of the Santa Ana Valley . . .”—The Great Basin Foundation Center for Anthropological Research, vol. 1, p. 82 (citing
Rural Californian
9:4:85).

“You know, maybe when I was a kid . . .”—Alice Woodside, interviewed in Sacramento, February 2004.

57. The Days of Lupe Vásquez (2003)

Epigraph: “The Imperial Valley’s fertile soil . . .”—Imperial Irrigation District, “Fact Sheet: Imperial Valley Agriculture 2001,” unnumbered first page.