TtiE IRRIGATION AGE. 



191 



1,400 feet, has recently been started La Virginia, an orange planta- 

 tion, (the largest in Mexico) with an assortment of deciduous and 

 other fruits, whose results so far have been most gratifying and 

 whose future appears quite bright. 



With the advent of the M. & M. G. R. R., giving direct connec- 

 tions with the vast interier and the United States, there came pros- 

 pective investors into this old settled, but undeveloped, district, who 



found a rich calcarious 

 soil, in places red with 

 iron, which produces 

 such fine flavors and 

 colors in fruit, and an 

 a b u n dance of water 

 from a stream that 

 headed far back into 

 the towering mountain 

 range near by whose 

 waters had been used 

 for irrigating for 200 

 years on vast fields of 

 corn and sugar cane. 



In the numerous gar- 

 LA VIRGINIA-ROSE AVENUE. dens, surrounding the 



quaint, white adobe houses were many old orange trees of the ad- 

 vanced age of 75 years, which were still bearing crops of 1,000 to 

 4,000 oranges each, of a fine texture and most delicious flavor these 

 were seedling trees whose origin had been Spain many, many years 

 ago. They showed they had had but little care or cultivation and in 

 producing such crops of fine fruit, proved this to be a true orange 

 district hence the decision to locate La Virginia at this place some- 

 thing over four years 

 ago. The first orange 

 trees were brought 

 from California and 

 planted on lands that 

 had grown crops of 

 corn for ages, and at 

 once La Virginia began 

 to assume life and 

 shape under the new 

 regime. Today there 

 are fifteen thousand 

 orange trees, standard 

 varieties from Cali- 

 fornia and Florida and 

 six thousand peach, HEADQUARTERS AT MR. TAYLOR'S. 



