manner and made a success of it. From that time, not over ten years
ago, the growth of the industry has eclipsed that of every other
branch of horticulture in the State, and the total value of the
product promises soon to exceed the value of the orange crop or the
yield of wine and brandy.

It required a good deal of nerve for the pioneers of Fresno County to
spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in bringing water upon what the
old settlers regarded as a desert, fit only to grow wheat in a very
wet season. In other parts of the State the Mission Fathers had dug
ditches and built aqueducts, so that the settlers who came after them
found a well devised water system, which they merely followed. But in
Fresno no one had ever tried to grow crops by irrigation. When Fremont
came through there from the mountains he found many wild cattle
feeding on the rank grass that grew as high as the head of a man on
horseback. The herds of the native Californians were almost equally
wild. The country was one vast plain which in summer glowed under a
sun that was tropical in its intensity. As late as 1860 one could
travel for a day without seeing a house or any sign of habitation. The
country was owned by great cattle growers, who seldom rode over their
immense ranches, except at the time of the annual "round-up" of stock.
About thirty years ago a number of large wheat growers secured big
tracts of land around Fresno. At their head was Isaac Friedlander,
known as the wheat king of the Pacific Coast. Friedlander would have
transformed this country had not financial ruin overcome him. His
place was taken by others, like Chapman, Easterby, Eisen and
Hughes--men who believed in fruit growing and who had the courage to
carry on their operations in the face of repeated failures.

The great development of Fresno has been due entirely to the colony