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National Geographic : 1936 Mar
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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE Photograph by Laval Co., Inc. LIKE A TOY ARMY'S TENTS, PARCHMENT "FROST CAPS" PROTECT THESE CUCUMBERS FROM FREEZES San Joaquin Valley grows winter vegetables. When young plants come up, these white covers shield them from any frost, and during sunny middays act as hothouses. Though snow may still lie in Eastern city streets, housewives find in market fresh cucumbers, peas, beans, and other green vegetables, shipped from California. Into Sutter's Fort (now Sacramento), in 1841, drove the first immigrant wagon train to cross the Plains. From here men went, in 1847, to rescue the Donner party, snowed in and fighting starvation. Sutter's hired man, digging to build a sawmill, found gold at Coloma in 1848, and started the great stampede. This lawless horde robbed and ruined Sutter; he died poor. Others held the fort, and traded furiously. They charged $64 to shoe a horse; $2,000 a ton to haul freight to the mines. It cost a pinch of gold dust to buy a drink of whiskey, and only men with big hands were hired to tend bar! Dance halls never closed; even today one advertises itself as "Bon Ton Dance Hall. Beautiful Girls Galore." Miners, coming to cele brate, brought their gold in an old sock, or in yeast cans! Modern youths buy a strip of tickets, each good for a dance with a "taxi girl." California became a State in 1850. That year more than 42,000 miners swarmed through Sutter's Fort, from the East. About it a wild lawless town was growing, a town of tents and rough boards, of saloons, eating places, stores, and black smith shops. Most goods came first to San Francisco by sea, and then up the Sacramento River. Jumping from Monterey to San Jose, Vallejo, and Benicia, the State capital got to Sacramento in 1854. Many a bitter battle has been fought at this capital, none more exciting than that which once almost divided California into two States. Only the diverting advent of the Civil War pre vented this. From Missouri came the Pony Express in 1860. Next spring riders carried Lin coln's inaugural address through from "St. Joe" in seven days and seventeen hours the fastest trip on record. Then a half- 322
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