The Sierra Nevada Mountains form a massive wall along the border of California and Nevada while lower coastal ranges parallel the Pacific Coast. In between is California’s great Central Valley, one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world. Lesser known, but equally productive, is the Salinas River Valley which runs northwest from Paso Robles through Salinas and into the Pacific Ocean at Monterey Bay.
Paso Robles is in the upper reaches of the Salinas River Valley and as we leave Paso Robles our path heads northwest into the valley.
An unexpected reminder of California’s role as a leading energy producer is the sudden appearance of an extensive oil field with over a hundred pump jacks dotting the compact oil field.
As the Salinas River grows closer to Monterey Bay (still 40 miles in the distance) the valley abruptly drops down onto a wide coastal plain with the Santa Lucia Mountains rising between us and the Pacific Ocean to the west.
The coastal plain that surrounds Monterey Bay is a rich agricultural area (known as the “Salad Bowl of the World”) with its center on the town of Salinas.
Salinas
The area had long been settled by natives and when Spanish missionaries arrived in the 1700’s they heralded the initiation of the cattle industry but did not settle inland, preferring the port of Monterey for their capital. It was only later, in the 1854, that a post office named Salinas was established at a local stage coach junction about 18 miles inland from Monterey. At the time most of the coastal plain along Monterey Bay was swamp land but in the last half of the 1800’s Chinese immigrants provided the labor to drain the swamps (at the time Salinas had the second largest Chinatown in California after San Francisco) and convert the marshes to productive crop land. The advent of irrigation lead to the planting of row crops and the area agricultural boom was on. Major vegetable producers built their headquarters in Salinas and by 1924 Salinas was a very wealthy city. Today Salinas is still prosperous city, home to around 175,000 people. South Main Street, the historical center of the city, is bustling with life on a Sunday morning in April.
Anchoring the north end of the city center is the National Steinbeck Center, a museum and memorial to Salinas’ most famous citizen, John Steinbeck.
National Steinbeck Center
The National Steinbeck Foundation was formed in 1983 and the museum opened in 1998. In 2016 the California State University-Monterey Bay purchased the building in partnership with the foundation. John Steinbeck was born in Salinas in 1902 just blocks west of the current museum and lived in Salinas until he graduated from high school and left to go to college at Stanford. While he lived with an upper middle class family with educated parents (his mother a former school teacher and father the treasurer of Monterey County) Steinbeck knew intimately that life in the fields surrounding Salinas was often one significantly different than his experience in the city. The life of the workers in the fields and their world was frequently documented by Steinbeck in his novels and writings as he developed into one of the most significant American writers of the 20th Century.
The museum was a fascinating journey through Steinbeck’s life as documented in his writings.
Steinbeck wrote 33 books and numerous other writings, many of them set in the area around Salinas. I know you can’t read the details but each circle on the map below denotes a setting included in one of Steinbeck’s novels.
Once in the museum one walks in roughly a clock-wise manner through vignettes from Steinbeck’s most important works woven in with details of his life.
During World War II Steinbeck served as a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, wrote a training manual for the Army Air Forces and wrote a novel, “The Moon is Down” about a small Northern European town taken over with little resistance by an unnamed enemy force at war with England and Russia. In the novel the citizens of the town gradually realize the danger their occupiers represent and begin a secret rebellion. While the Germans were not explicitly named as the enemy the parallel between the novel and the current situation in Northern Europe was such that the novel was translated into numerous languages and smuggled behind German lines in an effort to help support resistance to the Nazis.
There are many other displays but the end of our journey through Steinbeck is marked by a powerful quote that embodies the philosophy behind Steinbeck’s writings.
Stepping out of the museum I am again greeted by the view south down Main Street.
The cross street directly in front of the National Steinbeck Center is Central Avenue. As it runs west from the center Central is lined with Victorian houses built in the early 1900’s. One of those is the Steinbeck House where John Steinbeck was born in the front left room in 1902.
Leaving Salinas and heading east I pass through the eastern edge of the “Salad Bowl of the World” before entering the foothills of the Gabilan Mountains, which separate the Salinas Valley from the Central Valley of California.
Here, twenty miles east of Salinas, I again find one of the early Spanish missions along the Camino Real, San Juan Bautista.
San Juan Bautista
San Juan Bautista is a small town set right on the edge of the San Andreas Fault, sitting above the valley floor to the east. A state historic site, the town has preserved and continues to use many of the original buildings from the 1800’s along Main Street while a block away the old town plaza fronts the mission. Imagine yourself standing in the old town plaza (now a grassy park) and looking all four directions.
A block to the west a weathered downtown area is a small town collection of shops and restaurants.
One block off the main street is actually the walled in back of one of the historic buildings on the plaza in front of the mission and it contained several of the largest prickly pear cacti that I have ever seen (not, of course, that I am an aficionado of prickly pear cacti!). Several were easily more than 8’ tall.
The Old Mission San Juan Bautista is an active parish and the mission complex fronts on the old town plaza. Founded in 1797, the mission was built in the traditional quadrangle design though only the front wing and main chapel remain. The church was in the early process of being built during the great earthquake of 1812 and (completed in 1817) so was not severely damaged. The main altar and some of the side niches were designed and built by a sailor who jumped ship in Monterey and painted them in exchange for room and board. Interesting twist to the history of the mission: after the Mexican government took over the mission in 1835 it passed into private hands, including the Breen family who survived the Donner Party disaster of 1847 (group of pioneers who got caught in the Sierra Nevada snows on their way to California and resorted to cannibalism to survive). San Juan Bautista is physically the largest of the California mission churches. The width limitation seen in the southern churches (dictated by the size of trees available during construction) was not as strict here because of access to larger trees plus a series of thick arches down both sides of the main church allowed for additional space on both sides of the main chapel.
Behind the main altar is a small chapel which survives intact from 1812. Used as the temporary chapel while the main church was being built and now restored, the Guadalupe chapel is currently used for daily mass rather than the much larger main basilica.
The inner courtyard is surrounded by the museum wing and the church on two sides and a low wall to the west. This picture faces the back of the museum wing with the side wall of the church on the left. The side walls of the main church were actually severely damaged by the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and were only recently restored in 1976.
Once through the Gabilan Mountains I descend into the Central Valley, one of the most productive agricultural areas in the world due to the wonders of irrigation. Most of California is in the midst of a severe drought and as I descent to the valley floor, the highway hugs the shore of San Luis Reservoir. Note how low the water is and how long it has been that low. The original reservoir shore is the dark line that runs across the center of the second picture.
The Central Valley of California is virtually flat as it stretches in a plain that is roughly 40-60 miles wide and nearly 450 miles long from Redding in the north to Bakersfield in the south between the Coastal Ranges and the Sierra Nevada. More than seven million acres of land, formerly semi-arid desert and scrub, are now under cultivation due to the benefits of an extensive irrigation system of reservoirs and canals.
Our journey takes us up the Central Valley to Lodi, a small city of approximately 70,000 people between Stockton and Sacramento on the eastern edge of the delta region.
Lodi
The Central Pacific Railroad was lured to the area near the Mokelumne River in 1869 by local settlers who offered to donate land for a train depot in the middle of the proposed town site. Initially called Mokelumne the settlement was officially incorporated in 1906 as Lodi. The rich soil of the region is well-watered by the creeks and rivers at the eastern edge of the California delta region where the San Joaquin River from the south, Sacramento River from the north, and numerous tributaries like the Mokelumne flowing down from the Sierra Nevada all come together in San Francisco Bay. In addition night time moisture from the Pacific flows in as fog and mist. All of the conditions are conducive to the growing of grapes, first planted by settlers in the second half of the 1800’s. Early immigrants grew fruit and grapes on the flat lands east of the delta around Lodi and in 1933 one of their sons, Robert Mondavi, graduated from Lodi Union High School and headed off to Stanford University. Once he graduated from Stanford he returned to Lodi and became one of the pivotal figures in the transformation of the California wine industry into an international force. When most people think of California wine the Napa Valley immediately comes to mind, but in fact the region around Lodi is by far the largest California wine region with over 100,000 acres of vines under production.
The actual town of Lodi was originally a railroad town and in 1907 an arch was built at the entrance to the downtown area next to the railroad station for the first Lodi Tokay Carnival, now known as the Lodi Grape Festival.
The compact city core consists of tree lined streets sheltering boutiques, restaurants and wine tasting rooms.
Today most visitors come by car from the interstate about five miles to the west and a newer arch welcomes them to the city center.
But, again, it’s all about the wine. Vineyards and wineries surround Lodi on all sides, sprawling across the flat valley floor.
My visit to Lodi ends and I head northwest around the San Francisco Bay metropolitan area towards the Napa Valley, the acknowledged crown jewel of California wine regions.
Next up: The Napa Valley
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