EVOLUTION OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 



lars and a half an aero, for which he gladly sold them. 

 But Judge North and his friends had two well-defined 

 ideas in their brains. One was irrigation; the other, 

 oranges. To the natives the first seemed impracticable,, 

 because of the expense; and the other ridiculous, be- 

 cause no one had ever raised oranges there upon a com- 

 mercial scale. 



The Santa Ana river rises in the Sierra Madre moun- 

 tains, drawing its volume from a multitude of springs 

 and canyon streams. It flows southwesterly for a dis- 

 tance of seventy miles, where it empties into the ocean. 

 Riverside is about twenty miles from the source of the 

 stream, and lies on the bluffs along its eastern bank. 

 The conditions did not present such opportunities for 

 the cheap and easy diversion of the waters as the Mor- 

 mon pioneers found in Utah. In later years, as the de- 

 mand for irrigation grew constantly larger and more 

 insistent, it became necessary to resort to the very high- 

 est type of works for the distribution of water, and even 

 the earliest canal required a cash outlay of fifty thou- 

 sand dollars. Fortunately the capital was available, and 

 thus the work of development went forward without fal- 

 tering. The original canal was completed in the spring 

 of 1871. 



The enterprise had resolved itself into a private stock 

 company, owning both the land and the water. The 

 land was now sold to the colonists for twenty-five dollars 

 an acre. This included the right to purchase a certain 

 amount of water, for which there was an extra charge in 

 the form of an annual rental. At the beginning this 

 amounted to about one dollar an acre, but it rose with 

 the demand for water, and the need of costly improve- 



