INTRODUCTION

Citrus groves are long associated with southern California's history. Images of vast rows of the evergreen trees and snow-capped mountains rising in the background tantalized the world during the late nineteenth century and into the early and middle part of the twentieth century. These same images are treasured today on preserved orange crate labels. The city of Riverside, at one time one of the largest producers of Washington navel oranges in the country, played an important role in this citrus history. It's history is an example of how a semi-arid landscape was converted to a lush irrigated paradise of citrus groves.

This thesis examines the history of the landscape on which citrus was cultivated in Riverside. To understand how this landscape came to support this semi-tropical fruit, knowledge of the native landscape is necessary. This thesis begins with a discussion of the native landscape: its topography, geology, climate, hydrology, native vegetation, and wildlife. Then, human interaction with these processes is discussed, including how and why indigenous groups used the Riverside landscape, and how subsequent use by the Spanish missions and Mexican land grants differed from the indigenous uses. This thesis then focuses on how the Americans manipulated and converted a semi-desert landscape into a vast acreage of citrus. The American occupation of the land is the focus of this thesis. The rise and decline of the citrus landscape are examined, and an examination of the land uses, with a focus on the remaining citrus groves of today completes the analysis of Riverside's landscape history. This thesis concludes with a comparison of land use and occupation of the four cultural groups that inhabited the land through history, and draws conclusions about what can be learned from this particular landscape history.

As its name suggests, Riverside is located along a river, the Santa Ana. This river flows to the north of Riverside, approximately sixty miles east of Los Angeles, in the semi-arid San Bernardino Valley of southern California (See Fig 1). This valley is enclosed by three mountain ranges: the San Gabriel Mountains to the north, the Santa Ana Mountains to the west and south, and the San Bernardino Mountains to the northeast and east. Riverside covers approximately 77 square miles (49,280 acres), and is 847 feet above sea level. It is a semi-arid landscape that averages ten or less inches of rain annually, and is characterizes by hot, dry summers, with temperatures many times above one hundred.

Citrus acreage in Riverside reached its largest extent in the early 1940s at 12,000 acres and has declined dramatically since that time. Today, approximately 2500 acres of citrus remain within city boundaries. On average, the city lost 190 acres of citrus per year for the last fifty years. Riverside's population increased with the citrus acreage, but increased even more quickly as the acreage declined. Riverside's population increased from 3000 in 1883 (Holmes 69), thirteen years after the settlement's founding, to approximately 247,800 residents today (Census 1990). Suburbs, and light and moderate industrial uses predominate in Riverside's landscape today.

Definitions/Assumptions/Importance

A landscape history examines the relationships between the landscape and those who inhabited it through time. "Landscape" includes the physical expression of nature and culture and its underlying natural and cultural processes. A landscape includes natural processes, such as geology and subsurface hydrology, which produce natural features, such as mountains and rivers; and cultural processes, such as economics and politics, which create human-made features such as citrus groves, a downtown business district, and the homes of grove owners and workers. Landscape also includes climatic features such as wind and temperature.

A landscape history focuses on how the landscape influenced its inhabitants and how habitation patterns affected the landscape. This landscape history is different from strictly ecological or social histories, which focus on natural history and human history, respectively. Landscape history focuses on the human-land relationships and interactions. This landscape history examines ecology, geology, hydrology, vegetation, climate, geography, as well as types of land ownership and land use, and the social histories of the land's inhabitants. Information from each of these fields was used to compile Riverside's history of human-land relationships.

Landscape history not only identifies landscape changes, but explores by whom and why changes were made. It traces successive changes or interactions with the landscape over time. Examining the landscape and how its inhabitants used and/or altered it provides a fuller understanding of the landscape itself and its inhabitants. Landscape reflects culture, and indeed culture and landscape are inextricably connected. Examining the who and why means studying the social history of the groups that occupied, worked on, and changed the land. This social history will include analysis of various groups and their reasons for coming to Riverside, the laws that governed the land and the labor, and values of those who occupied the land.

This thesis assumes that the relationship between humans and the landscape is interactive. Hurnans do not simply act upon the land. Floods, drought, earthquakes are explicit examples of how the earth acts upon people. Climate, soils, and vegetation are more subtle landscape features that continuously affect human settlement and use of the land. Interaction means that actions by both people and the earth have implications for the other. As William Cronon states:

"Environment may initially shape the range of choices available to a people at a given moment, but then culture reshapes environment in responding to those choices. The reshaped environment presents a new set of possibilities for cultural reproduction, thus setting up a new cycle of mutual determinations." (13).

In his ecological history of New England, Cronon writes that his goal is to examine a history that "extends its boundaries beyond human institutions - economies, class and gender systems, political organizations, cultural ritual - to the natural ecosystems which provide the context for those institutions" (Cronon vu). I use his main idea of examining the social and landscape histories to better understand why the citrus landscape was created and sustained as it was. The citrus landscape in Riverside will "provide the context" for the social history. Cronon points out:

"Different people choose different ways of interacting with their surrounding environments, and their choices ramify through not only the human community but the larger ecosystem as well. Writing a history of such relationships inevitably brings to center stage a cast of nonhuman characters which usually occupy the margins of historical analysis if they are present in it at all." (Cronon vii)

Methods

As stated previously, this thesis incorporates information from a variety of sources. Geologic, hydraulic, earthquake, climate, and native vegetation maps provided information on the state of the natural landscape of Riverside. To document the interaction of Riverside's social and natural landscape history, historic maps from 1871, and written histories from as early as 1902, were consulted. Early written histories tell the story mainly of the person writing and the culture to which he belongs. Recent histories are more comprehensive and objective as they uncover and draw information from archeological excavations, and extensive examination of local newspapers and citrus industry publications. To document the characteristics of the natural environment as various groups inhabited the landscape, state water reports, census data, and climate reports were consulted. Books and articles on California migrant agricultural workers, immigration law and public policy provided specific information on the citrus workers' conditions.

Inspirations

I was inspired to conduct research on this topic by my years growing up in suburban Southern California. I remember as a child the drives my family took along rural roads in Orange, San Bernardino, and Riverside counties. Driving perpendicular to the rows of citrus trees, the groves would zip by in large green blurs. I always tried to concentrate and "stop" a row from moving and remember what I saw. Looking directly at a perpendicular row of trees, only the first tree was fully visible. As we drove along the perimeter of the grove, the next row of trees could be seen, their trunks evenly spaced. The leaves of each tree blended seamlessly with those of their neighbors, creating the impression of a long single crown.

Growing up in the 1970s and 80s in Southern California, I also heard many stories of the former extent of citrus cultivation in southern California. My father told me that when he was young, in the 1950s, his parents would drive the family from where they lived in San Bernardino to Disneyland in Anaheim. Citrus groves flanked the entire 45 mile journey. I've also heard about the view during a California Angels game, of endless citrus groves that could be seen over centerfield beyond the stadium.

While conducting research for this thesis, I met many local people in Riverside. These included librarians and local historians. After explaining my thesis topic, the eyes of many lit up and smiles spread across their faces. They quickly started to tell favorable stories about their relationship with citrus groves. They themselves had lived among them, or their families had owned and worked a grove. Some remembered the sweet scent of the orange blossoms. Like me, they remembered driving through endless rows of evergreen trees. Every story ended with a long sigh and a sullen look. They would always add a negative comment about the air pollution, freeways, and suburban sprawl that had destroyed the groves.

My curiosity was piqued by the strong imagery the citrus groves held for so many people. Nevertheless, I doubted from the beginning the romantic interpretation of the groves, but wanted to uncover evidence to prove or disprove my own theories about the realities and ideals of this fascinating landscape. This thesis weaves together the history of human settlement and the use and manipulation of this landscape's inherent characteristics over a period of nearly 200 years.

Organization

Chapter two begins with an account of the natural history of Riverside and its surroundings. It begins with the topography of the area, and continues with geology, hydrology, native vegetation, climate, and wildlife. Chapter three discusses the land occupation and use by indigenous peoples, and subsequently by the Spanish Missions and Mexican land grant systems, and then by American settlers. Chapter four describes the establishment of the citrus landscape in Riverside and the influences of this new industry on the land. Chapter five examines the residential and business settlement patterns used by those who owned and worked the land. Chapter six describes the pinnacle of citrus success in Riverside: how this happened, and why and how the Americans manipulated the landscape and the implications of this development on the land. The reasons for the decline of the citrus industry in Riverside are discussed in Chapter seven. Chapter eight describes land use patterns and natural features of Riverside today. The final chapter presents concluding remarks about this landscape's history and peoples' interactions with it over time.