FLORICULTURE OF SAX FRANCISCO PAST AND PRESENT. 119 



FLORICULTURE OF SAN FRANCISCO, PAST AND 

 PRESENT. 



BY MRS. A. R. GUNNISON. 



To California, the "Golden State, Cal-y-for-no, the land of lime- 

 kilns," belongs the honor of being the home of the Yosemite Valley, 

 one of the eleven wonders of America.* This state, eight hundred 

 miles long by one hundred and fifty in width, has also the honor of call- 

 ing its chief city San Francisco, the great, the only San Francisco. 

 Gold was discovered in 1848, which brought a rush of immigration dur- 

 ing the following year, and on September 9, 1850, it became one of 

 the United States. 



The first horticultural work was done by and under control of the 

 missions, vineyards and some trees being planted. Nothing was known 

 of this work outside the missions. To the world California was known, 

 in 1850, only for its gold. 



San Francisco's Mission, on Dolores near Sixteenth Street, is about 

 125 years old. In a "Chronicle" of October 4, 1896, is the following: 

 "Along the western wall is a very old cemetery where many of the 

 celebrated personages of old California days lie buried. The faith- 

 ful who died in those dim years are buried here under tombstones 

 that lean slantwise, smothered in a rioting mass of roses and jessamine, 

 Avhich grow wild." 



People from everywhere, coming in with the gold fever, formed a 

 cosmopolitan community, the same impulse binding men of all nation- 

 alities together in one common brotherhood. 



For ten or twelve years after the gold excitement, the great expense 

 of bringing food across the continent and around the Horn, and its 

 cost after arriving, induced a few to try agriculture. Flour and beans 

 were $50 per sack, apples and oranges $1.00 each, and must be kept 

 and looked at before eating as long as possible. 



The early planting was done in a haphazard manner, and our 

 farmer could use no rules in vogue at the east. He learned by experi- 

 ence that, with irrigation, more than one crop of vegetables could be 

 raised during the year. He had no need here of storing his products 

 in cellars, banked in earth and sawdust as a protection against frost. 

 Time proved that, besides its mineral wealth, California possessed for 

 the agriculturist a wide field. 



*The name California originated in a popular Spanish romance published as 

 early as 1520, in which it was applied to a fabulous island near the Indies, and also 

 near the Terrestrial Paradise. Mrs. L. O. H. 



