SAN JOAQUIN RIVER COMMERCE 



J. M. EDDY 

 Secretary of the Stockton Chamber of Commerce 



THE San Joaquin River as a commercial highway has been one of the 

 most important factors in the development of interior California. For 

 more than half a century this waterway has been regularly navigated 

 between San Francisco and Stockton and the people of the latter 

 city have devoted their public energies and their private fortunes more 

 directly and persistently toward the maintenance of open waterway connec- 

 tion with San Francisco Bay than to any other avenue of development. 

 The lines of steamers plying daily between the wharves of Stockton and 

 San Francisco have always been in competition with railroad traffic, and 

 have been concededly potent in the regulation of rates and fares, not only 

 from Stockton to the Bay, but from and to all intermediate points and on 

 the many connecting waterways navigated by smaller craft. 



The distance from Stockton to San Francisco by water has been short- 

 ened in recent years by cut-offs made by the State and Federal governments, 

 and is now stated as 104 miles, not materially differing from the distance 

 by rail. In addition to this main waterway, affected by the ebb and flow 

 of the tides, and daily navigated by passenger and freight steamers, the 

 San Joaquin River is navigated by lighter craft during many months of the 

 year for upwards of one hundred miles above Stockton. 



The utility of this tidal waterway is greatly enhanced by a maze of 

 navigable affluents, sloughs, and canals interlacing the rich delta lands of 

 the lower San Joaquin basin between Stockton and Antioch, constituting 

 a system of commercial highways five hundred miles in length, thus afford- 

 ing the cheapest and most convenient means of transportation for one of 

 the most productive regions on the American continent. The passengers 

 carried by river steamers is estimated by the navigation companies at 

 70,000 annually. 



The Stockton Chamber quotes the report of the State Board of Trade 

 to the effect that more than one fourth of the shipments of fruit of all kinds 

 from the State to Eastern points is credited to the Stockton terminal, thus 

 exhibiting the important bearing of the San Joaquin waterway on railroad 

 shipments and rates. 



It is justly claimed in behalf of the improvement and canalization of the 

 San Joaquin River that it differs from most California streams in being 

 a tidal channel instead of being torrential in its character, and the sweep 

 of the tides from the Golden Gate to the wharves of Stockton afford a 

 perpetual guarantee of preservation of a deepened channel. 



The rich delta lands of the San Joaquin, which are below the ordinary 

 level of the water in the river, and the fact that as late as August the stage 

 of water at the bridge near Lathrop is fifteen feet above low-water mark, 

 are potent arguments framed by nature itself in favor of a waterway which 

 will permit navigation by vessels drawing fifteen feet. 



Stockton claims to be the only interior city of the continent where four 

 transcontinental railroads have entered her corporate bounda/ies and sought 

 waterfront privileges. The Central Pacific, by way of Ogden, the Southern 

 Pacific, by the Sunset Route, the Santa Fe, and the Western Pacific are here 

 to meet the tides and to aid in the world distribution of marvelous output 

 of choice food which the rich valley produces. 



The policy of the national government should be to encourage and 

 facilitate commerce by all reasonable efforts to extend safe and convenient 

 navigation to the farthest points possible from the oceans into the continent. 

 The development of the resourceful interior of California, the wonderful 

 strides in production made by the great San Joaquin Valley, where the 

 value of both the agricultural and manufacturing outputs have doubled in 

 seven years demand that prompt measures be taken to place the region in 

 touch with the world's commercial energies. 



