200 RURAL CALIFORNIA 



Year Acreage Pounds of Hops 



1860 60 



1870 625,064 



1880 1,119 1,444,077 



1890 3,974 6,547,338 



1900 6,890 10,124,660 



1910 8,391 11,994,953 



1919 11,000 17,875,000 



1920 12,000 20,000,000 



seemed to indicate that there would be a greater 

 demand for hops. In this latter respect, however, the 

 hop did not share the experience of the grape, for 

 hops were only valued at 35 cents a pound, less than 

 half the price of the previous year. 



Although notable achievement in cotton-growing 

 in California was reached very recently and rapidly, 

 it was preceded by more than half a century of experi- 

 mentation. The entry of achievement was not, how- 

 ever, an outgrowth of such apprenticeship, because 

 large commercial production was ultimately attained 

 in a district of the State not covered by the first 

 forty years of trial culture, in fact, in a region which 

 during that period was considered of no discernible 

 agricultural value whatever, because it had no rain- 

 fall of practicable significance and was not then 

 looked on as capable of irrigation. The district of 

 first successful demonstration was in the extreme 

 southern extension of Eegion 4, as described in 

 Chapter I, and as this includes the great central 

 twin valley of the interior, where early cotton-grow- 

 ing reached its greatest production, it not only dem- 

 onstrates the immense area of the State available for 



