AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT 



was begun in Lower California in 1697; and, in 

 1769, Junipero Serra and his Franciscan associates 

 coming from Lower California established their first 

 mission at San Diego. Thence the padres proceeded 

 northward along the coast and established their 

 twenty-first and last California mission in Sonoma 

 valley, north of the Bay of San Francisco in 1823. 

 At all these missions agriculture was invoked as a 

 sustaining industry. They grew a large variety of 

 fruits, made wine in such quantities that exports 

 thereof were made to Mexico from one of the Lower 

 California missions in 1707 thus establishing the 

 export trade in California wine. In addition to 

 fruits and their products, the missions produced 

 vast quantities of grains and accumulated verv large 

 herds from which hides and tallow went to Europe 

 in trading ships which combed the California coast 

 of such properties, following the visit of Sir Francis 

 Drake to San Francisco Bay in 1759, until the force- 

 ful advent of Americans in 1849 when California 

 was really born to the world, with a golden spoon 

 in her mouth. 



Many of these missions still remain in good con- 

 dition and are very interesting to tourists, but their 

 agriculture practically disappeared with the secu- 

 larization of their properties by the Mexican gov- 

 ernment in 1834. The large field properties then 

 passed from the ownership of the padres but the 

 gardens attached to their churches remained in 

 their possession and these still contain a few wor- 

 shipful fruit trees and grape vines which are ven- 

 erated as the pioneer plantings of the million acres 

 of fruits which are now growing in California. 



The Spanish occupation of the southwestern dis- 

 trict of the United States, whether parochial or secu- 

 lar in its character, was not widely significant in the 

 subsequent agricultural development of the region. 

 It is chiefly interesting historically. The animals 

 and plants they introduced were probably good, ac- 

 cording to the Spanish standards prevailing when 

 the missionary expeditions departed from Spain 

 early in the eighteenth century; but the agriculture 

 established with them was too distant and isolated 

 to profit by later European improvements and it was 

 not at all affected by the progress made by the colo- 

 nials and early citizens of the American republic. 

 The local agriculture had become anachronistic be- 

 fore the American occupation and nothing was 

 learned from it except the very important sugges- 

 tion of the wide adaptation of California to fruit 

 growing. All the plants grown by the padres have 

 been abandoned except one variety of grape which 



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