Around Chino Valley there are some very old oak trees, leading to speculation as to their age. It was suggested to me that some may go back 150 to 200 years.
I was skeptical. Chino Valley historically has been classified as semiarid, and I didn’t think that near-desert conditions were friendly to the development of mighty oak trees. Furthermore, I have never come across a reference to oaks in the historical material I have read about our valley.
Old photographs of our area show very little in the way of trees. Those that were here, except for willows, sycamores and cottonwood that lined the water courses, were brought in by settlers. It is interesting that the city chose sycamores for its new Shady Grove Park on east Chino Avenue, which won’t become shady until the trees grow.
I found reference to orchards planted by the San Gabriel Mission Indians who first developed the agricultural resources of our valley in the early 19th century. But these died from lack of care. Don Antonio Maria Lugo, who received the Chino land grant and many others from Spain and Mexico, planted 1,000 fruit trees within a fenced area near his ranch house located near the site of the present Boys Republic. These also died out from neglect over the years. As during the mission days, the emphasis at the pioneer Chino ranch was on livestock, and not crops other than those planted to feed the animals.
When Don Lugo’s son-in-law Isaac Williams took over the management of the ranch in the 1840s, he planted a small portion of the land with orchards again.
A front page article in the New York Herald of March 11, 1850, written from Chino the previous December by a writer identified only as “T.F.,” paints a picture of the ranch as a Garden of Eden, with vast green acres of lush soil, beautiful scenery, wild fowl in abundance and clear and often mild weather. He obviously visited here at the right time.
Richard Gird, who bought the Chino ranch from the heirs of Isaac Williams in 1881 started the succession of trees that we now enjoy in Chino Valley. He imported exotic species of trees which he planted around his ranch house on the present driving range at the Los Serranos Country Club. Unfortunately, all have fallen victim to disinterest despite an attempt at one time by Cal Poly to tag them for posterity.
Mr. Grid encouraged and helped new land buyers and tenants to plant trees as early as 1888 after he subdivided 20,000 acres of the ranch into small farms and town sites.
Some of the pioneer farmers planted eucalyptus trees as windbreaks, and in 1901, the Chino Land and Water Company and the American Beet Sugar Company planted 30,000 of the gums on the east side, on land that had previously been sand dunes and tumbleweeds.
Mr. Gird convinced the University of California to establish an agricultural experimental station here, on 15 acres he provided just south of the present Phillips Boulevard between Ramona and Norton, and ten acres west of his town core, on land close to Chino Creek, where artesian wells were found. This station evolved into the UC citrus experiment station at Riverside in 1906, forerunner of UC Riverside.
On north Central Avenue in 1891, Mr. Gird planted four rows of olive trees, one on
each side and two in the center divider. Walnut, chestnut, hickory and almond were also provided in that area.
Sunflowers were prolific in the valley, and grew as tall as a horse and rider. Farmers cut up the arm-thick stalks for firewood.
But oak trees over 150 years ago?
Quenstionable. Oaks can live for 500 years or more, are drought and disease tolerant and fire resistant. The young trees have tap roots that reach low into the earth for moisture, until a network of horizontal roots can spread out to provide stability. The main danger to the trees in domestic settings is overwatering.
According to Eugene C. Broderick, a direct descendent of Don Lugo, the front door of the Lugo adobe ranch house here was made of oak, and always open to travelers.
Copyright 2008 Champion Newspapers - March 29, 2008
0 comments:
Post a Comment