One of the most interesting places in San Diego county is the famous Sweetwater dam. It takes only two and one-half hours to visit it and return, and a trip to it will repay the trouble. We start out southeast and cross to National City, only a few miles from San Diego, and really a suburb of that town. National City is decidedly new, an attempt at something grand, which it will take sometime to finish. The most interesting thing there, in a horticultural sense, is the olive orchards of Kimball Brothers. They are scattered in two or three places, and comprise about fifty acres altogether. The trees are as large as good size apple trees, bushy and silvery, and are heavily laden with fruit. The land around each tree was checked up, each tree having a little square for itself, and a Chinaman with a hoe was busy irrigating. In one corner of the orchard was a large circular reservoir five or six feet high, and perhaps twenty feet across, to facilitate the irrigation. The train starts from here directly in among the hills, following the bed of the Sweetwater river. The bottom land is now being settled up by farmers and gardeners, who were busy taking their first lessons in irrigation. The plantations of course are very young, the irrigation works having been finished quite recently. At Sunnyside there are a few older orchards of oranges and olives, but, as a whole, the country is uncultivated.
Five minutes more and we are at the dam. There is no station, except a little wooden platform, and we had to scramble over a rough hill to get down to the dam. The gorge there is probably one hundred feet wide and several hundred feet deep, with almost perpendicular sides. There is no other vegetation visible than grass and a few low shrubs scattered around. It is a most excellent place for a dam. The Sweetwater dam is built almost entirely of masonry and cement, and, both as regards construction and size, is one of the very best in the world. It is built in the shape of an arch, with the convex part up stream, and gives an impression of solidity and safety not always found in structures of this kind. The masonry dam is forty-six feet wide at the bottom, at the top twelve feet. The length of the top is 340 feet, and at the bottom of the cañon the base of the dam is about one hundred feet, while the height is about ninety feet in the center. At one end of the dam is a wasteway and gates for letting the water out in case of a flood. The gates slide on an inclined plane, and consist simply of three-inch boards with pegs in each end, which are caught by a hook when they are to be raised. The capacity of the wasteway is said to be fifteen hundred cubic feet per second, or as much as the Sweetwater river is ever likely to carry, even during flood time. For one who is accustomed to headgates and waterways in the Fresno canals, this waterway looks very small indeed. But the engineers say it is large enough, and we suppose they must be right. The water is delivered through a large iron pipe thirty-six inches in diameter, covered for some distance down the cañon with masonry. For 29,807 feet, this pipe line runs down the valley or on the mesa lands adjoining it. It will deliver fifty million gallons of water per day, and can now irrigate ten thousand acres of land. The whole cost of construction was $502,000, and the time consumed in building was two years.
The reservoir, as it now stands, is a magnificent sheet of water with tributary watersheds of 186 square miles, and a water surface of about three and one-half square miles. It is a grand illustration of the enterprise of the San Diego capitalists, of the skill and success of the California engineers, and of what may possibly be accomplished on nearly every stream in San Diego county. It is a structure of which any country might be proud, and which has few equals and no superiors anywhere in the world.
On our way back we meet a picnic party of schoolgirls, who with their teachers have spent the day in the country. They fill the cars with smiles and chat, with flowers in bouquets and garlands, in baskets and by the armful. We are treated to flowers and to beautiful Muscat grapes culled from the vineyards,—enormous bunches and berries almost as large as plums. These grapes are a revelation to me, grown here within the reach of the fogs of the ocean, and irrigated with water from the dam or flume. Verily, I have never seen choicer grapes anywhere, and I am satisfied that they could not be surpassed by any for raisins. What a fertile country this will be when irrigation is better understood and more practiced. Could we but see it when that time comes.
RIVERSIDE.
There is no place in Southern California where the effects of a close and intelligent study of horticultural matters are so visible as in Riverside. Money alone may build villas and mansions; but the intelligent and ever watchful horticulturist alone can, out of climate, soil, water and capital, produce a Riverside. It is charming beyond description; it must be seen to be realized. The best time to get a full and good view of Riverside is early in the morning, just at sunrise, and there is no better place to view it from than the hill on which the Hotel Rubidoux was to have been built. I arose before sunrise, and struggled up the steep hillside. It well repaid me for the trouble, as few more beautiful views can be had. The whole settlement can be taken in at a glance,—the town close by imbedded in orange groves and vineyards, and the dense verdure of the country stretching for ten miles down the valley, and almost connecting with the yet farther off South Riverside. On the eastern side we see the San Bernardino Mountains, with the “Old Greyback,” and between the mountains and the settlements a lower range of steep hills appear, which in a continuous range either bar the way or like isolated islands shoot boldly up from the mesa land.
The Riverside colony forms a continuous settlement along the mesa, skirting the river, the deep green of the orange orchards harmonizing splendidly with the lighter green of the vineyards. At close intervals there are houses in every direction, with the bluest smoke rising straight up from their chimneys, and thence carried in long, tiny bands and columns down the valley just level with the tree tops. It is a pity the hotel on this hill was never finished—a great many more would then have enjoyed the almost unequaled view. An extension of the main business street in town leads up to this hill. On both sides of the street there are fine orange orchards and neat houses,—real country homes, sidewalks of cement where rows of fan-palms take the place of regular shade trees along their sides. The business portion of Riverside is confined to two streets crossing each other at right angles. If we stand in the center of this crossing we take it all in, the houses extending a block and a half in the four different directions. Some of the houses and brick blocks are very large and expensive, while many again are smaller, but all are costly and elegant, with new and perhaps startling ornamental designs. Whatever Southern California does, it does well, and even the cheapest structures have an air of character and taste which can hardly be too much admired.
When one speaks of Riverside he means the whole settlement that is irrigated, and to live in Riverside may mean to live in town, or it may mean a suburban residence ten miles away. In the latter locality the benefits of the country are happily combined with the luxuries of city life. Street cars run from the center of the business part of town down to the end of the settlement. It is a cheap way to view the settlement to board one of these early cars. You can see as much as any one may care to see, but of course cannot stop and examine. The whole drive is one not to be matched anywhere else. From the moment you leave town you pass orchards and vineyards separated from each other by only a road or cypress hedge. Every foot of ground is taken up. The main effort of all the settlers appears to be to make everything attractive, from the very sidewalk to the elaborate garden and the villa. Nearer town, every street has sidewalks of cement, and bordering them are continuous hedges of cypress trimmed in various styles, and in front of every house are lawns and plats of shrubbery and flowers, as neatly kept as if visitors were expected day or night. Some of the villas partake of the character of mansions, with towers, balconies and painted windows, while here and there in some of the finest orchards are yet seen some of the first houses built, small and unpretentious. The individual tastes of the owners are clearly discernible. One has a row of palms running along his sidewalk, another has palms and grevilleas, while others prefer the pepper and gum. The manner of trimming the hedges is charming; it has here become quite an art. Some hedges have square, others roofed tops, and at every corner there is a little pillar of cypress with diamond or globular top, not at all artificial or stiff.
The vast majority of the plantations consist of orange groves. The color of the trees is splendid, every leaf being bright and shining, and there is no sign of smut or scale. The large and upright Seedlings are easily distinguished from the smaller but bushy Navels. The tendency is now to plant mostly the latter, and most of the old Seedling trees are being budded over. The original Navel tree, which is the prime cause of the prosperity of Riverside and of the fame of its oranges, is yet standing by a modest cottage, which appears not to have kept pace with the times. The tree is small, perhaps twelve feet high, having been constantly cut back for buds. From this tree have sprung all the rest. No other Navel tree imported from Brazil or Australia resembles it in quality of fruit or in bearing capacity. It is probably a chance “sport” originally imported by the Agricultural Department at Washington, its companion trees being different in the most essential points which make this variety so valuable and so famous. This beautiful and choice orange, now generally known as the “Washington Navel,” is slightly oblong or egg-shaped, and the skin is very smooth, with no ridges at the poles, the latter being characteristic of the other Navel varieties. The crop of Navels this year is good. Many growers expect from three to four boxes to the tree, and, as each box brings from three to four dollars, it is evident the business pays. The valuable and permanent improvements everywhere show this to be the case; the account books of the grower need not be searched to demonstrate it. Here and there we also see a lemon orchard with its larger trees of a different green. A few years ago many lemon orchards were dug up, as no one understood the secret of saving the lemons till the warm season, when alone they can bring a good price. But at last one of the growers wrung the secret from Nature, and now buys up all the young lemons he can find and stores them away to be used from six to ten months later, just when they are most in demand. In company with that courteous horticulturist, the editor of the Riverside Press, E. W. Holmes, we visited this gentleman, G. W. Garcelon. To him is due much credit for having discovered the process. He presented us with lemons of the small and proper size that had been picked green eight months ago. They were equal to the best imported, both as to smallness of size, acidity, thinness of skin and quality of juice. These lemons bring now five dollars per box, at which price lemon culture proves more profitable than that of the orange.
The only variety that should be planted is the Lisbon lemon, the Eureka having too bitter a peel, and the much recommended Villa Franca being round and thus unacceptable. We passed several vineyards, the Muscat vines being large and the vineyards well kept. The grapes are just ripening, but it will be some two weeks yet before they are ready to cut. The only variety grown here is the Muscat of Alexandria, the real Gordo Blanco being unknown, or at least not generally planted.