In the Garden of the Sun: California’s San Joaquin Valley

VAF 2008, Fresno, May 7th-10th, 2008

California’s San Joaquin Valley has a distinct historic and cultural landscape, a vestige of the Central Pacific railroad, agricultural colonies, the lacework of canals, and tree-lined boulevards of the late 19th century. Beginning in the 1870s a diversity of ethnic and religious groups immigrated to this area seeking a “place in the sun.” The image of “The Garden of the Sun” in fact continued to serve as a promotional slogan through the 1930s to advertise the area to prospective farmers.
The region’s vernacular building record from both the 19th and early 20th centuries reflects styles and types common throughout the United States with some definite adaptations due to climate, ethnicity and location and includes American foursquares, rural and urban tankhouses, the “Rooshian” backhaus, courtyard housing (bungalow courts) and the indigenous use of adobe and hardpan.

Fresno, the market center for the richest agricultural county in the United States, currently has a population of about 500,000. The 2008 VAF Annual Conference was sponsored by the City of Fresno’s Planning and Development Department in cooperation with the Fresno City and County Historical Society. The conference organizer was Karana Hattersley-Drayton.

Select reading list:
Gerald Haslam (in) The Great Central Valley: California’s Heartland, University of California Press, 1993.

Norris Hundley, Jr. The Great Thirst: Californians and Water, 2nd edition. University of California Press, 2001.

Leon S. Pitman, “Domestic Tankhouses of Rural California,” Pioneer America 8 (1976): 84-97.

Wallace Smith, Garden of the Sun, A History of the San Joaquin Valley: 1772-1939 (second edition), Fresno: Linden Publishing Inc., 2004.

David Stark Wilson, Structures of Utility, Berkeley: Heyday Books, 2003.