Salad Bowl of the World · Episode 5 of 14 · 20 min
Wheat and the Iron Horse
After flood and drought killed the cattle, the Salinas Valley went under dry-farmed wheat and barley, sold on a grain exchange in Liverpool. The Southern Pacific reached Salinas in 1872 and decided which towns would exist, while farmers and David Jacks built a narrow-gauge line to fight its rates and lost. The pattern was already clear: a crop grown here, moved by someone else's carrier, priced elsewhere.
Who's who
- Isaac FriedlanderSan Francisco's "Wheat King" who supplied the Liverpool trade
- David Jacks+1 more episodeWealthy Monterey landowner who pushed the railroad south, funded the narrow gauge
- Carlisle S. AbbottMarin dairyman turned grain grower; president of the narrow gauge
- Samuel HamiltonIrish blacksmith and homesteader near King City; John Steinbeck's grandfather
- Charles MossSea captain who built the Moss Landing wharf in 1866
- Cato VierraWhaler who helped build the 1866 Moss Landing wharf
Where it happens
- Moss Landing, California+3 more episodesWharf at the river mouth where sacked grain shipped out
- Salinas, California+7 more episodesRailhead of 1872; became county seat and incorporated city
- Soledad, CaliforniaRailroad stopped here for thirteen years
- King City, CaliforniaRose on the railroad's 1886 extension south
- Gonzales, California+2 more episodesWheat grown on a commercial scale nearby from 1874
Timeline
- 1866Charles Moss and Cato Vierra build a 200-foot wharf at the river mouth.
- November 1, 1872The Southern Pacific reaches Salinas.
- 1874Salinas City is chartered, and the Monterey & Salinas Valley narrow gauge opens.
- August 1879The Southern Pacific buys the failed narrow gauge at foreclosure.
- 1886The railroad resumes south of Soledad, and King City rises.
- 1890Samuel Hamilton's 375-foot well near King City finds no water.
Still debated
Sources disagree on when the railroad reached Salinas and Soledad, with some popular accounts giving 1868, the year of the town plat. The wheat collapse is attributed both to exhausted soil and to falling prices, and the claim that most grain went to Liverpool rests on a single local source.