CHAPTER III 

 THE EVOLUTION OP SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 



THE most valuable lessons in all the romantic history 

 of California may be found in a trivial corner of the 

 great commonwealth. Upon a clear day the eye may 

 readily scan its entire length from the San Tirnoteo 

 hills to the shining sea. Between its parallel mountain 

 ranges the width of the district seems but two or three 

 miles, though in reality it is from ten to twenty miles. 

 Ignoring the nomenclature of local districts, this is the 

 San Bernardino Valley. It is upon this narrow terri- 

 tory that to a great degree the fame of California climate 

 and productions rests. Here institutions have been 

 created in the last thirty years which are destined to ex- 

 ert a powerful influence upon the future of the AVest. 



What Holland was to the life of Europe in the four- 

 teenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, southern Cal- 

 ifornia is to the life of the Pacific coast at the end of the 

 nineteenth century. The industrial impulse which the 

 men of the Netherlands caught from their conquest of the 

 sea, the men of the southern valleys caught from their con- 

 quest of the desert. " Curbing the ocean and overflowing 

 rivers with their dikes," says one of the closest students of 

 Dutch history, " they came to love the soil, their own cre- 

 ation, and to till it with patient, almost tender care." So 



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