USA > California > Glenn County > History of Colusa and Glenn counties, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the counties who have been identified with their growth and development from the early days to the present > Part 13
USA > California > Colusa County > History of Colusa and Glenn counties, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the counties who have been identified with their growth and development from the early days to the present > Part 13
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Mallon & Blevins started their first rice project in 1914. They leased forty-four hundred acres west of I. L. Compton's residence, put in a ditch system with the pumping plant on the river bank just back of the Packer schoolhouse, and subleased the land to rice-growers. That was the first rice project on the
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west side of the river. In 1915 the rice acreage of the county had increased to twelve thousand acres. On January 23 of that year a twenty-three-car train loaded with rice was sent out of Colusa, with large banners on it annonneing its identity; and it gave the county great prominence as a rice-growing center. San Fran- cisco and the rest of the state were greatly excited over the mar- velons stories of rice profits, and dozens of men came every week to Colnsa to investigate the new industry. The Moulton people had taken the rice prizes the year before at the Butte County Rice Exposition at Gridley, and that fact had its effect. Land that could have been bought the year before for fifteen or twenty dollars an acre jumped to eighty dollars an acre, and today there are many owners of "goose land" who wouldn't take one hundred dollars an acre for land which they would have been glad to sell in 1912 for eight dollars an acre.
The one great drawback in the rice business was the uncer- tainty in getting the crop harvested ahead of the rains. Up to this time the varieties planted had been of a slow-maturing kind that did not ripen till late in October or in November. The fall rains in an ordinary season were apt to catch much of the rice unent. Efforts were being made to find or develop earlier varie- ties; and in 1915, with this object in view, the Monlton people planted one hundred acres of Italian rice. They finished har- vesting it on September 23 that year; and there was much joy among the rice men, for they felt that the industry would soon be relieved of its greatest handicap, a late-maturing crop. Mnch progress has been made along this line since then. A total of 450,000 bags of rice was produced by the Moulton Irrigated Lands Company and the California Rice Company in 1915. The latter company had twenty-six hundred acres planted, and got from fifty to sixty-five sacks per acre. In the fall of 1915 Mallon & Blevins sold thirty-two hundred acres of their first project to the Rice Land & Prodnets Company for $250,000, and that winter devel- oped a new project on fourteen hundred acres at the west end of Mrs. Clara Packer's ranch. Last year they added twenty-one hundred acres to this project, and now they are making prepara- tions to add sixty-five hundred aeres more to it, making it ten thousand acres in all.
Another great rice project is that of the Cheney Slough Irrigation Company, organized in December, 1915, through the efforts of Phil B. Arnold. This project covers ten thousand acres, and is supplied with water by three pumps located at the river, about six miles north of Colnsa. The ditches extend to the O'Hair ranch, south of the Colnsa-Williams highway. The direc-
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tors of the company are W. H. Ash, Phil B. Arnold, R. M. Hardin, J. P. O'Sullivan and W. F. Klewe.
There were many smaller projects and many individual growers in the county this year and last, but not all of these can be mentioned. A considerable acreage under the Sacramento Valley Irrigation Company's ditch in the vicinity of Maxwell has been planted to rice during the past two years, and that little town has become quite a rice center. The total acreage planted in the county this year was about thirty thousand acres. Today the demand for rice land is tremendous. One can hardly walk a block on the street withont being asked for rice land. Every owner of suitable land has from a dozen to fifty applications for it. Land that was rented for a dollar an acre three years ago now brings ten dollars an acre. The industry seems to be only in its embryonic state as yet. What the future will bring, no man can tell with accuracy.
Alfalfa
The great forage crop of this county is alfalfa. I have been unable to learn definitely just when and how it got into the connty ; but it came many years ago, at least forty years. The acreage has kept steadily increasing since its introduction, so that today there are abont twenty thousand acres in the county devoted to alfalfa. The alfalfa fields of the county may be divided into two classes: those under irrigation, which grow only hay and pasture; and those not irrigated, which grow a crop of seed each year, in addition to hay and pasture. Five or six crops of alfalfa are eut from irrigated lands, each erop making from a ton to a ton and a half per acre. Unirrigated lands produce three or four crops, the last of these being threshed for seed. It was reported that the alfalfa on the Sherer ranch near College City produced two tons of hay and six hundred pounds of seed per acre in 1912. The hay sold for eleven dollars per ton, and the seed for sixteen cents per pound, making the total returns one hundred eighteen dollars per acre. The hay from this same ranch sold this year for twenty-seven dollars per ton, which would make the income one hundred fifty dollars an acre if other couditions were the same as in 1912. Most of the alfalfa grown in the county is fed to dairy cows and other stock. Up till the year 1912 irrigation meant alfalfa; but now rice takes much more water in this county than alfalfa does, although alfalfa will probably always be the main standby of the small farmer and home-maker.
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Corn
Four kinds of corn are grown in the county, Indian corn, Egyptian corn, broom corn and sorghum. There isn't enough of the last-named, however, to bother abont. It was first grown in the fifties by a settler who wanted some syrup for his own nse, and it has been grown to about that extent ever since. Indian corn has never been raised to any great extent either. The plains are too dry for it, but it grows Inxnriantly along the river. Because it takes some rather tedions enltivating and hoeing by hand, it has never become popular with the farmers of this county, who like to spread their efforts over wide areas. Egyptian corn, used for stock and poultry food, is grown principally on the over- flow lands along the river. It is a summer erop; and where irrigation can be had, it is sometimes planted after a crop of barley has been harvested. Broom corn is also grown chiefly on overflow lands, and both it and Egyptian corn are largely grown by Chinese and Japanese. There was a fortune in broom corn this year; for the erop was good and the price went up to two hundred seventy-five dollars a ton, whereas there is a good profit in it at sixty-five dollars a ton, the nsnal price in the past. In 1914, George F. MeKenzie, a broom corn grower from Illinois, came to this county, rented some land from the Moulton Irrigated Lands Company, and pnt ont a crop of corn. He enred it in the shade instead of in the sun, and got one hundred seventy-five dollars a ton for it instead of sixty-five dollars, as the Chinamen had been getting. Since that time the quality of broom corn pro- dneed hereabonts has greatly improved, and the acreage has more than doubled; but the industry is still largely in the hands of Japanese and Chinamen.
Beans
Beans follow the American wherever he goes, or, more prop- erly, go with him. There probably wasn't an immigrant wagon to California without a liberal supply of beans among its stores. My guess, therefore, is that beans first came to Colusa County in 1850, the year the county was first settled, although their coming was not recorded, because there was no newspaper in the county at that time, nor for thirteen years thereafter, to record the event. For years beans were grown in this county only for home consumption; but after a time it was found that the sandy, friable lands along the river were ideal bean lands, because they were easily cultivated and because they held moisture remarkably well. Overflow land that is of such character that it can be worked into a fine mulch on top cannot be beaten for beans; and
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thus land that is useless for most other purposes becomes the most valuable land in the county when devoted to this crop. In Monterey County, from eight to ten sacks is regarded as a good bean crop. There are hundreds of acres of bean land in this county that produce forty sacks or more per acre. The center of the bean industry in this county is on the lower end of the Moulton ranch, where there are some of the most productive bean fields in the world. When beans were from two to five cents a pound, their production made no great commotion in Colusa County agricultural circles. But when, three or four years ago, they went up to ten and fifteen cents a pound, bean land came into great demand. Today hardly an acre of good bean land can be had for love or money. A man told me a few days ago that he had canvassed the territory along the river from Knights Land- ing to Red Bluff, and he couldn't get a piece of bean land of any kind. Of course this situation is natural, in view of the enor- mnous profits that have been made in the last three or four years. Among the varieties most commonly planted in this county are the Lady Washington, or small white, the pink, and the blackeye. In 1913 Lady Washingtons were selling for three cents a pound, pinks for two dollars and sixty-five cents a hundredweight, and blackeyes for two dollars a hundredweight. In 1915 whites sold for six dollars and seventy-five cents and pinks for four dollars and seventy-five cents. Within the past year the small whites have sold for fifteen cents a pound, wholesale, with the other varieties two or three cents lower. Here again, as with corn, a great deal of land is farmed by Orientals; and thousands of dol- lars of Colusa County's bean money are now in China and Japan. Of course, prices cannot always stay up as they are now, making fabulous profits possible ; but there will always be money in beans along the Sacramento River.
Beets :
The sugar beet is not by any means a stranger to Colusa County, but it has never succeeded in becoming a leading crop. Many efforts have been made to get it established, but most of them have failed. In 1895 an effort was made to establish a beet sugar factory at Colusa, but it came to nothing. In April of that year John Boggs planted forty acres to beets as an experi- ment, and they did well, but not well enough to convince farmers in sufficient numbers to supply a sugar factory with beets. The next year the Spreckels Sugar Company agreed to erect a sugar factory if the farmers would plant even one thousand acres to beets. The farmers wouldn't, and Spreckels kept his factory or
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put it somewhere else, and the matter rested for ten years. But in 1905 another earnest, even desperate, effort was made to get a sugar factory for Colusa. One hundred thousand dollars was subscribed toward the enterprise; but again the farmers were reticent about the beets, and the factory eluded us. The next move toward beets was made in 1911. On January 31 of that year a group of men connected with the sugar factory at Ham- ilton City met with a number of farmers in Colusa to try to induce them to plant three thousand acres of beets, which, they said, would insure the building of the Colusa & Hamilton Rail- road. The required acreage was fully, or nearly, subscribed, and work on the road was started a year or two later; but it isn't finished yet, and the beet industry is still in a languishing con- dition. The sugar company itself leased several hundred acres from J. W. Browning at Grimes about that time, and has raised several crops of beets on it; but aside from that, not a great deal has been done at growing beets. The delay in getting the Colusa & Hamilton Railroad into operation to Hamilton City and the temporary suspension of activities at the sugar factory, said to be dne to tariff uncertainties, have conspired to retard the spread of beet-growing in this county, but it seems to be about to take on new life. An agent of the sugar company was in the county last year signing up acreage, and the next few years will no doubt find Colusa County with several thousands of acres of sugar beets.
Other Crops
Potatoes have, of course, been grown here since the begin- ning, but never in sufficient quantities to disturb the potato mar- kets of the world. In fact, most of the potatoes that are eaten in the county today are shipped in. Some of the lands along the river are well adapted to potato-growing, when the season is favorable; but small patches have been the rule, and not many even of them. Twenty-four years ago D. H. Arnold raised fifty tons of potatoes near Colusa, and that is the largest crop of which I have found any record.
The year 1874 was a cotton year in Colusa County. A wide- spread discussion of the merits and possibilities of the crop was going on at that time. W. S. Green sent for fifty sacks of seed to be distributed among the farmers, and offered a prize of twenty-five dollars for the best bag of cotton raised in the county. The most enthusiastic grower was Andrew Rutland, of the east side. He brought in the first sample of cotton, grown on the McConnell farm on the east side. He had fifty acres planted to cotton, and figured his profits at six hundred eighty-two dollars.
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He said that if there had been no overflow and two weeks more of good weather, his profits would have been doubled. For two or three years more he experimented further with cotton, but finally gave it up. About 1890, J. W. Bowden was experi- menting for several years with cotton. He finally came to the conclusion that cotton could not be grown at a profit on land worth one hundred dollars an acre; but that on low-priced land, with cheap labor, it would pay about thirty dollars an acre, gross. Apparently that wasn't enough profit to tempt the agricultural fortune-lmnters of Colusa County, for cotton-growing never got beyond the infant stage.
Sweet potatoes and peanuts are both grown to a very limited extent on the sandy lands along the river, but not in sufficient quantity to supply the home demand.
A novel agricultural product has been furnished by the low- lands along the Trough for several years past. It is grandelia robusta, or rosin weed, which grows in a wild state, is cut and baled like hay, and shipped to an Eastern drug-manufacturing concern to be made into some sort of drug or medicine. It brings the shipper thirty-five dollars a ton usually, and affords a good profit at that price, as two men can gather a ton of the weed a day. One firm ships from twenty-five to fifty tons of rosin weed from Colusa each season.
I have made no attempt to make a complete list of the agri- cultural products of the county, but have mentioned some of the more important ones, and especially those that have had an influence on the development of the county, and on the industrial life of the people.
CHAPTER XI
HORTICULTURE
Horticulture, according to Webster, means the culture of gar- dens and orchards. In Colusa County it means the growing of fruits and nuts. Commercially, as applied to this county, its mean- ing may be even more restricted; it means the growing of prunes, raisins and almonds, for these are the only fruits and nuts that are grown in the county on such a scale as to be considered com- mercial products. By that I do not mean to say that prunes, raisins and almonds are the only Colusa County products that those unfortunate enough not to live here ever have a chance to taste. Not by any means! Oranges, lemons, apples, pears, figs, 7
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plums, table grapes and walnuts are shipped to a very limited extent; but there are less than a half dozen growers of each of these products, so that they add no great burden to the channels of commerce.
Fruit-growing for Domestic Purposes
Fruit-growing in this county began, of course, as a domestic proposition, many of the settlers planting out orchards of many varieties of fruits for family use. And what an opportunity for variety they had! I am sure there isn't another section of the whole wide world where the husbandman could have "his own vine and fig tree" in so many different shapes and forms as here. Oranges, lemons, grape fruit, limes, apples, peaches, pears, apri- cots, plums, prunes, nectarines, grapes of a dozen kinds, cherries, figs, pomegranates, quinces, almonds, English and black walnuts, pecans, olives and many kinds of berries can be had in rich abund- ance and with a minimum of effort. But notice that I said in the first sentence of this paragraph that "many of the settlers" planted orchards. That is true; but it is also true, sad to say, that many others did not. Many of the early settlers gave no time to the minor comforts of life, and many of the later settlers have fol- lowed closely in the footsteps of these improvident ones in this respect, with the lamentable result that today there are not a few ranches in the county without a fruit tree or a vine growing on them. This class of farmers, raising barley, raised nothing but barley; raising wheat, they raised nothing but wheat; raising hay, they bought the vegetables for their tables; raising cattle, they raised nothing but beef cattle, and bought their butter. Conse- quently the people of the county ship in more fruit of many of . the varieties than they ship out. This is true of apples, grape fruit, limes, peaches, apricots, cherries, pecans, olives and berries of all kinds. But this chapter is concerned with fruit-growing as a commercial industry rather than fruit-growing for home con- sumption.
Grapes
College City has the honor of being the pioneer community in the matter of producing fruit for shipment. College City spe- cializes in raisin grapes, and did so from the beginning. It is now one of the raisin centers of the state, with a raisin history going back almost to 1874. In that year I. N. Cain, father of T. D. Cain (present county clerk and recorder) and a pioneer who had come to Grand Island in 1851, moved to College City, and shortly thereafter set out one thousand Muscat grapevines. They
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thrived and bore well, and became the nucleus of the raisin in- dustry of College City. At first Mr. Cain had no idea of market- ing them, but gave them away to all the neighbors for miles around. This would have been a convenient way of disposing of them if there had been enough neighbors; but there weren't, for one thou- sand vines in the College City section will produce an amazing quantity of grapes. So Mr. Cain was compelled to dry some of them, making the first raisins in Colusa County. His neighbors followed his example, and soon made the College City country famous for its raisins. In 1891 William Calmes, of College City, got fifty cents more per box for his raisins than any other man in the state. His returns that year from a twenty-seven-acre vine- yard were five thousand dollars. The same high quality has always been maintained.
Throughout the eighties there was a steady growth in vine- yard acreage, not only at College City but also in some other sec- tions of the county. Colonel Moulton, for example, set ont a vine- yard, and on January 7, 1891, sold thirty thousand pounds of raisins to J. K. Armsby. Vineyards were planted at Williams and Max- well also. The industry has never made much headway at those towns, although one of the finest vineyards in the county is the Brim vineyard, located abont six miles west of Williams. The raisin industry has made a greater growth in the last ten years than it did. in all the years of its existence before. The county statistician gave the acreage for 1905 as three hundred fifty acres. Today there are one thousand four hundred thirty acres in raisin grapes, the greater part about College City. Most of the bearing vineyards are in Muscats, but last year nearly everybody planted the Thompson Seedless. There are also one hundred sixty acres in wine grapes; but this industry is not in a very flourishing con- dition at present, owing to the threatened destruction of the liquor traffic in the state.
The Arbuckle-College City section also grows a few table grapes, principally Tokays. Arbuckle has had the honor for the past several years of sending East the first car load of Tokay grapes to leave the state; but the territory planted to Tokays is small, probably not over seventy acres in the whole county.
The net returns from raisins have averaged high. There have been seasons, of course, when slender crops and sluggish markets have reduced profits almost to the vanishing point; but for the past two or three years it has been no uncommon thing for growers to realize three hundred dollars an acre, gross, from their grapes, especially the Thompson Seedless. One hundred and fifty dollars an acre may be said to be a fair average return.
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There are thousands of acres in the county now devoted to barley that would make as fine grape land as there is in the state; and if prices remain high, as at present, there will be a great development in grape-growing in the next few years.
Prunes
Prune-growing as an industry in Colusa County began in 1884, when J. B. DeJarnatt set out a small prune orchard on his Brent- wood farm north of Colusa. California was just finding itself as a fruit-growing state, and the air was full of excitement over the possibilities. Scattered trees in family orchards here and there along the river had demonstrated that this valley is the natural home for the prune, and a number of progressive farmers were ready to try their luck growing the fruit. A. S. Me Williams, who at that time owned the land adjoining Colusa on the north- west, closely followed Mr. DeJarnatt with a small orchard. In 1888 Colonel Moulton set out the orchard at the north end of the Colusa bridge; and therein he acted wisely, for that orchard has returned many thousands of dollars to its owners since then. P. V. Berkey, Henry Ahlf, D. H. Arnold, Richard Bayne and Dr. Gray were among the early prune orchardists; and not long afterwards John Boggs set out forty acres on his ranch south of Princeton. The Poirier orchard, on the east side, was also among the early ones set out.
In the ten years following 1884, there was great interest in the county in fruit-growing in general, and in prune-growing in particular. In 1888 the Colusa County Horticultural Society was formed, with Colonel Moulton as president and Frank Willis as secretary. A board of horticultural commissioners was appointed, with J. R. Totman, Sr., as president and Frank Willis as secre- tary. F. M. Johnson was the other member. These bodies were both active, and in 1891 the horticultural society received a pre- mium of five hundred dollars for its exhibit at the State Fair. Many orchards and vineyards were set out in various parts of the county, and many experiments were made along horticultural lines. Prunes proved to be the most certain and the most profitable crop, and they outdistanced all other fruits in acreage, as well as in record of profits.
In the spring of 1894, P. V. Berkey, J. W. Bowden, J. C. Bedell and Joseph Boedefeld set out forty thousand prune trees on the east side of the river. Take the Boedefeld orchard as an example of what these orchards have done and are doing. It consists of forty acres situated on the overflow lands two miles back from the river. It ordinarily produces about one hundred forty tons of
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prunes, which this year sold for seven cents a pound, on an average, or one hundred forty dollars a ton. The Berkey orchard did as well or better. In 1911, W. C. Roberts got eight hundred eighty-five dollars and five cents from two acres of prunes. The same year six thonsand three hundred eighty pounds of prunes from a half acre on the Laux place on the east side sold for three hundred dollars. Last year the Strickland prune orchard of six acres produced three thousand one hundred dollars' worth of fruit, which explains why the Strickland ten-acre ranch recently sold for eight thousand dol- lars. These figures also explain why four hundred fifty thousand prune trees have been set out in the county in the past four years. In 1914, W. A. Yerxa imported two hundred fifty thousand young prune trees from France, and had them all sold before they arrived. The prune industry seems to have "arrived" in this county. There are a number of orchards in the county containing from two hundred to three hundred acres each.
Almonds
Of all of its horticultural products, Colusa County is best known for its almonds. And speaking of almonds, one thinks of Arbuckle; not because Arbuckle produces all the almonds grown in the county, or produced the first ones, but because it is an almond center, and because it advertises. The way Arbuckle got started in the almond business reads something like this: C. H. Locke was a Montana miner transplanted to Arbuckle. His periscope and other observation apparatus being of good quality and in good working order, he observed that the oak trees about Arbuckle bore immense crops of nuts, sometimes known as acorns. From this he reasoned that the Arbuckle country must be a good nut country. In fact, it was he who discovered that Arbuckle is the home of the nut, a discovery that his successors in interest have made much of. In 1892, Mr. Locke, acting upon the above-men- tioned theory, planted twenty-one acres to almonds, which grew and thrived and bore heavily. Under such circumstances the neigh- bors generally follow suit, sometimes so quickly that some of them think they did it first, and claim the credit. But Mr. Locke's neigh- bors didn't rush matters. In the next fifteen years after he showed them how, they put out only seventy-five acres of trees, including . his twenty-one acres. Then 1907 came, and the Reddington ranch was subdivided and put on the market. The next year fifty acres of trees were set out, and the almond boom was on. In 1910, D. S. Nelson struck the town, and the almond boom at once increased its speed. Mr. Nelson organized the Superior California Fruit Lands Company, and proceeded to make almond history. The
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