LITMIR.BIZ

      Geographically considered, California is far from being a unit. It presents with its immense sea-coast stretch and its great breadth, traversing interior wide valleys, desert wastes and high mountain ranges, geographical conditions in remarkable variety. When in their variety in turn, the land surface features, climates and productions, the latter ranging from those of the temperate to the subtropical and the arctic zones, are further borne in mind. California may well be classified as an empire itself.

      California's great interior San Joaquin Valley, an empire in itself, is the keystone in the arch of the state's wealth. The Mother Lode poured its millions of gold into the world's lap. Its plains were the public range during the cattle raising era of the boundless pasturage ground. It was once one of the world's granaries in the days of the vast grain ranch period. It is a leader today in the products of the intensive and diversified culture of the small, irrigated orchard and vineyard farm. The oil industry confined to the Coast Range is an overshadowing one, and the San Joaquin valley has become the state's oil producing region. Irrigation has transformed Fresno from a desert to an annual producer of over thirty millions.

      Its potentialities are boundless almost. It is no dream that in the cultivation of rice and cotton as the latest taken up enterprises of the soil with demonstrated successes in the experimental efforts, California and its great interior valley are preparing to furnish the world with more surprises. Such an eminent authority as George C. Roeding has declared that Fresno must wake up and teach the world that "here in the central portion of the Golden State there is an empire worthy the attention of the man with the dollar." And there is a wonderful past to substantiate him.

      The history of Fresno, and for that matter of the great interior valley also, was little influenced by the Spaniards or the Mexicans in so far as leaving imperishable impress upon the region that the gold seekers brought to the world's knowledge. There was no Spanish sub-stratum with the pictured life and customs as at the coastal mission establishments, so suggestive of medievalism and even feudalism, to give the quaint and picturesque setting for the American superstructure to follow and to recall the days before the Gringo came.

      Of the Spanish and Mexican rule there is no lasting memorial, save perhaps in the melodious nomenclature of landmarks, and in the foreign words grafted on the English language. The name "Fresno," from the Spanish meaning "ash tree." was applied because of the abundance of the tree in the mountains of the county. It was first given to identify the river tributary to the San Joaquin and once embraced within the county, but now in Madera. It was so applied before Fresno County was organized, and even before the territory now so named had distinctive appellation as a part of Mariposa County. It was so appropriated to name the first big trees discovered by James Burney of Mariposa and John Macauley of Defiance, Ohio, in 1849. They were in Fresno territory that is now part of Madera County. Burney was of North Carolina and the first sheriff of Mariposa, elected after organization in February, 1850. The above named and two others made the find in the latter part of October on the Fresno-San Joaquin divide while pursuing animals that the Indians had stolen. This was at a time when Mariposa embraced, as one of the original twenty-seven counties of the state, nearly the entire San Joaquin Valley, south of the Tuolumne River.