Abstract This paper discusses Modesto, California. It discusses the general geography and make-up of the San Joaquin Plain or Valley, which is home to the cities of Fresno, Bakersfield, Stockton, Modesto and Visalia. The paper provides a general history of the settlement of California and of the San Joaquin Plain, in particular. It then goes on to describe the current make-up of the area and some of the politics that surrounds it.
From the Paper "Migrants during the Depression era in the early 1900s from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas and Kansas abandoned the nearly unviable southern Great Plain and moved Chicago, Kansas City, Detroit and then fast-growing Los Angeles (Wikipedia 2006). Those who remained had to bear the drought of the late 1920s and the Dust Bowl. Those who fled took Route 66 to Barstow or Los Angeles and there began new lives as fruit and vegetable pickers in truck farms in San Joaquin Valley. There they exchanged relative independence for peasantry. Many of them lived in dirty agricultural camps, in economic distress, domestic disputes, crime, riots and even suicides. The majority of the Okies and Arkies left San Joaquin during World War II, mostly for Los Angeles and San Diego to work in war businesses. Those who remained eventually ended up in Bakersfield, noted as an oil production center when major Southern California wells, like Signal Hill, began drying up (Wikipedia)."
