The scene changes again as the cars carry us through the foothills, along the bed of creeks, or across lagoons connected with the sea, or over gaping chasms. We look down deep into the valleys below, where shady sycamores and white cottages mark the farmers’ homes, and where vine-clad hills offset the native brown of the country. I am surprised to see how the grapevines thrive so luxuriantly so very close to the shore. In some places there are fine and thrifty vines within a stone’s throw of the breakers, only protected by a slight undulation in the ground from the most direct wind. Of course, grapes on those vines cannot be expected to be very sweet; it is wonderful enough that they are there at all.
The water supply of this part of San Diego county has been very much underrated. The railroad crosses perhaps a dozen different creeks, all showing living water, and which are far from being entirely dried up. With a Supreme Court more enlightened, and with proper legislation as to the needs of the country, San Diego county may yet be able to store water enough to irrigate very large areas of land, where colonies of thrifty farmers may create and maintain prosperous orchards and vineyards as a support and backbone to the many pleasure resorts.
But we are out of the hills. Smiling and glistening in the evening sun lies San Diego Bay, with the elevated Point Loma, the ever-present breakers on the bar, and away out on the low peninsula the gigantic and turreted pile of the Hotel del Coronado, to say nothing of San Diego itself, with its miles of marked town lots and villas. But I shall not endeavor to describe this town and its bay and climate. The latter may possibly not be excelled anywhere; the former lacks a most essential thing,—an abundance of trees and vegetation. Still, with the water that has lately been brought here the trees and flowers will come soon enough we hope, when green lawns, bananas and palms will be ready to tell the tale, and young plantations will be seen on the hills and around roadway homes. But I forget I am bound for El Cajon and its raisin vineyards, and must catch the train.
EL CAJON.
The country lying between San Diego and El Cajon does not at this time of the year present many attractive features. The little train, consisting of a locomotive, tender and a passenger car, wriggles itself between brown, rolling hills, over small cañons, dry and sandy, without any other vegetation than grass, and here and there a few evergreen shrubs. Close to San Diego we pass along the Chollas valley and creek, where an attempt has been made at colonization, as we understand it in the San Joaquin valley. The land is divided up in ten and twenty-acre tracts and dotted over with small and unpretentious cottages, as well as with fine and expensive mansions. Young orchards of pears, olives, prunes, oranges and figs are seen wedged in between vacant and unbroken land. In the river bottom are Chinese gardens, with windmills, and patches of cabbage, corn and small truck. Much of this land is irrigated with water from the Sweetwater dam, some twelve miles away on the Sweetwater river. On the bottom land there are a few Muscat vineyards, for the supply of the San Diego market. I noticed the grapes there. They were of the Muscat of Alexandria variety, very large and fine both as to bunch and berry, and very sweet. I have seen no finer Alexandrias anywhere.
But we have hardly time to observe this cultivated spot before we are out again among the rolling hills. The engine pants heavily, and we are constantly ascending. The same low hills everywhere,—no settlers, no gardens, no plantations of any kind. The soil is brown adobe mixed with gravel and small boulders; in fact there is nothing to see and admire. For twenty miles there are two or three small stations, but there were no station houses to be seen nor any settlements around. The railroad is apparently made to tap a better country in the interior. But even in this uninhabited country the boom started to penetrate in earnest. Large signs announcing the sale of town lots, wide streets once plowed up across each other at right angles, square blocks which are plowed around or otherwise mapped out, here and there a white post with a number and a name, and we have a good idea of a town where the lots sold for $250 apiece or more.
All at once the engine whistles, the area widens and we see in front of us a large, flat valley, apparently almost circular, from four to five miles across, bounded by lower and higher hills, behind which a few higher peaks look down gray and solemn. This is El Cajon. We step out on the platform of the station, and the view is fine. The valley lies below us, the bottom is apparently flat, but in reality slightly undulating and somewhat sloping towards the center. Rows of vines begin at the station, and from here vineyards stretch in all directions for miles and miles, sometimes in large blocks of regular shape, then again in irregular patches among otherwise cultivated lands half way up on the lower hills. Dotted all over the valley are farmhouses in all styles, elegant and tasty or plain and simple, enough only to keep out the rain and the sun. Around every such cluster of buildings there is a little plantation of eucalyptus and cypress, and a few ornamental plants. Here and there at long intervals is seen a row of gums, black and somber, as if they were on duty as shields from wind and fog. We are soon in the bus on the way to town. The roads are straight and well kept, bordered with young eucalyptus and cypress, and with vineyards on both sides with the rows of vines remarkably distinct; we can follow each one of them distinctly for several miles over the undulating ground until they end on the steeper slopes of the hills, or run into the little cañons bordering the valley. El Cajon has no pretentions to being a town; it is an unassuming and quiet little village, whose inhabitants, when they speak of “town,” always mean San Diego, twenty miles away. El Cajon has a dozen houses, all told, one of each kind of the most necessary stores and shops, but Wells, Fargo & Co. have not yet discovered this quiet place. Nevertheless, it has two hotels, one small and unassuming, which runs a bus to the station, and where everybody seems to meet; the other, large and pretentious, both as to bay-windows and name,—Corona del Cajon, but apparently void of much internal life. The railroad to El Cajon was finished only some eight months ago. If it had been running three years ago during the Southern boom, the valley would perhaps to-day be rivaling Pasadena and Riverside in thrifty farms and residences.
El Cajon is the most important raisin-producing district in San Diego county, and so exclusively and to such an extent have the raisin grapes been planted here that we hardly see anything else. Vineyards as far as we can see in all directions; vineyards in the rolling bottom of the valley; vineyards also on the steeper slopes of the hills; nothing else than Muscats of Alexandria for business, and only a few other vines around the cottages for home use. A drive through the valley brings us in close contact with what we saw from the more elevated station. One vineyard joins the other, with only a road between, and there are no rows of poplars and only very rarely a row of eucalyptus or cypress. The view is open on every side, and from every point we can see over the valley and the low hills surrounding it. The vines have at this time of the year left off growing and have assumed a dark green color, not relieved by any young and more vividly colored shoots. The grapes hang ripe under the branches, and the trays are in many places distributed in piles over the field. There are two packing-houses in the valley; the one now under way is 40 by 130 feet, being built of redwood, and apparently most carefully put up. I see no sign of irrigation anywhere, and every one tells me that it is not required. But I cannot help thinking that a little water judiciously used would have kept the vines growing much longer, and would have naturally increased the crop, which now only averages two and one-half tons of green grapes per acre. There are many very beautiful mansions in the valley, surrounded by very praiseworthy attempts at landscape gardening, but the absence of water for irrigation makes itself felt everywhere, both in regard to the size of the plants and their color. Water can be had in abundance at a depth of from only twelve to eighteen feet, and windmills and reservoirs would do much towards a substitute for ditches. As we drive through the valley and up the divide between El Cajon and the Sweetwater valley, the view is very attractive indeed,—on one side the many well-kept vineyards of El Cajon, on the other, way below us, the narrow and winding valley of the Sweetwater.
The Sweetwater valley, or rather continuation of valleys, is much smaller than El Cajon, perhaps only a quarter or half mile wide, but it is more favorable to raisins, grapes or vegetation of any kind. Olive orchards of good size trees, vineyards with large and yet growing vines, cornfields and pastures, and the winding and shaded little creek in the center of the valley, give the latter a freshness and beauty not surpassed anywhere.
On our way on the railroad as well as through El Cajon valley, we have frequently passed alongside of or under the now famous Cuyamaca flume, carrying water to San Diego and Coronado. This flume is a fine structure, running sometimes in the ground, sometimes again on elevated trestle-work over the ravines, or spanning the gaps between lofty hills. The whole length of the flume is thirty-six miles, and the cost of construction was $112,000. Its size is five feet, ten inches wide, and sixteen inches deep, but by an addition of two more boards the depth of the water can be increased to three feet, ten inches,—a large body of water for this country, where water is comparatively scarce. The flume heads in a magnificent dam at the head of San Diego river, and it would suffice to irrigate quite a large stretch of country if the people were only willing to use the water. But the farmers here have been so repeatedly told that the land absolutely needs no irrigation, and indeed would be ruined by the same, that the most of them now fully believe this to be the case. The water is therefore not diverted anywhere along the route of the flume, and even in El Cajon and other places, where the crop of almost every kind of fruit would be doubled by judicious irrigation, no effort to use the same is made. I could find no one who irrigated, and as a consequence the company that owns the flume have not yet put in the extra boards that would more than double the carrying capacity of the flume.