STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 295 



SACRAMENTO AND ADJACENT COUNTIES. 

 By Geo. W. Hancock, Director of the State Agricultural Society. 



Sacramento County is the most peculiar in its character of the counties 

 of California. Formerly it was a fine stock county, with herds of cattle 

 and bands of horses roaming at will over its plains and rich bottom lands. 

 But when these large stock interests retired before the varied branches of 

 agriculture — general farming, fruit growing, and market gardening — Sac- 

 ramento County was tried in a furnace of fire. It has never proved to be 

 a successful section for the production of cereals when compared with the 

 counties of Sutter, Butte, Tehama, Colusa, and Yolo. While it is true 

 that none of the counties named have so much first-class bottom land, it 

 is also a fact that they have an even grade or average of land that returns 

 a good profit to all who till the soil within their bounds. 



While it is also true that no other section of the State is so well supplied 

 with water readily available for purposes of irrigation, yet it has been al- 

 lowed to run idly to* the sea, except in a few instances of individual effort. 

 There is no other locality in the State where the soil will respond so bounti- 

 fully when irrigated, as the upland districts of Sacramento County, and 

 there is no other section where one system of irrigation will cover so much 

 territory with an abundant supply at so small a cost. The American and 

 Cosumnes Rivers traverse the county from the hills on the northeast, to 

 the Sacramento River on the southwest, carrying a volume of water that 

 will, if used upon the land, treble the product of every acre in the upland 

 section of the county. On the Sacramento River the land is so rich and 

 moist that irrigation has never been a necessity. Twice in the American 

 history of California it might have been applied to advantage, by placing 

 pumps on the river bank and raising the water from that inexhaustible 

 stream. By that simple means every farm could be irrigated at a cost 

 that, when considered in a fruit crop, would not be appreciable in the 

 expense account. 



Hops have been a remarkably remunerative crop in Sacramento County. 

 The hop lands border on the American, Cosumnes, and Sacramento Rivers. 

 A. Menke, on the American River, boasts of the largest hopyard in the 

 world — the annual yield of which often reaches three thousand pounds 

 per acre, and $80,000 worth have been produced from fifty acres in one 

 crop. 



Alfalfa is another crop that is exceptionally profitable as a forage crop 

 on the bottom or irrigated lands, often producing ten to fifteen tons of 

 cured hay per acre. In using the crop for pasturage it has kept fifteen to 

 eighteen head of sheep to the acre for eight months of the growing season, 

 and has been known to keep more than one horse per acre where several 

 hundred run in a band the whole year round. 



Sacramento is essentially a fruit county of the most varied capacity. 

 Strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, cherries, apricots, plums, prunes, 

 peaches, pears, apples, raisin and table grapes, nuts of every variety, figs, 

 oranges, lemons, limes, and pomegranates, all grow and produce in luxu- 

 riance and abundance. Other localities may fairly rival us in the produc- 

 tion of some of these fruits, but we produce them all in the utmost perfection, 

 and every acre of land in Sacramento County — except the swamp and 

 overflowed area — is first class fruit land, with or without irrigation. 



There is here and there a thermal belt or a fruit section, but it is one 

 grand whole, every twenty acres being capable of supporting a family in 



