Modesto

Paper Summary:

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)."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Cowan, Tadlock. California's San Joaquin Valley: a Region in Transition. CRS Report for Congress, 2005. http://www.nunes.house.gov/documents/San_Joaquin_Valley_CRS_Report.pdf
• Internet 5 Consulting. The Bidwell-Bartleson Party of 1841. Virtual San Joaquin, 2000. http://www.virtuallodi.com/history/BidwellBartleson.asp
• Santos, Robert LeRoy. Chronology of Stanislau County History through 1912. California State University: Stanislau University Library, 2002. http://www.library.csustan.edu/bsantos/chronology.html
• Union of Concerned Scientists and Kirsch Foundation. Air Pollution in San Joaquin Valley: a Bigger Killer than Homicide. Union of Concerned Scientists.com an Kirsch Foundation.com, 2004. http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/clean_vehicles/SJV_Health_impacts.pdf
• Wikipedia. San Joaquin Valley. Media Wiki, 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Joaquin_Valley

More papers on Modesto:

• Essay # 105678 : "Modesto, California"
• Essay # 137169 : "La prodigiosa tarde de Baltazar"
• Case Study # 147574 : "Presumed Guilty": Scott Peterson"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: