San Joaquin Valley

The eight-county San Joaquin Valley is the part of the Central Valley of California that lies south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta in Stockton. Much of it is rural, but it does contain the cities of Fresno, Bakersfield, Stockton, Modesto, and Visalia.

Culture

Politics

Culturally, the San Joaquin Valley is quite different from much of the rest of California. Among well-populated areas, the San Joaquin Valley is perhaps the most conservative in California. For example, signs can be seen around Pixley and Hanford supporting leaving the United Nations and opposing abortion. Many commentators have noted the irony of the San Joaquin Valley's prevailing "small government" philosophy, given that its farm economy is the product of more than a century of expensive federal and state government projects and that cotton, one of its most important agricultural products, is heavily subsidized. While the importance of agriculture in the area can curb environmentalism, air pollution is a serious and acknowledged problem in the area (which see). Resentment of perceived condescension by Southern Californians and San Francisco Bay Area residents is a recurring theme in the valley's politics, occasionally manifesting itself in laws such as Kern County's 2005 ban on the importation of sewage sludge from urban counties.

Related Topics:
Conservative - Pixley - Hanford - United Nations - Abortion - Environmentalism - Air pollution - Southern California - San Francisco Bay Area - Sludge

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Several prominent California politicians have come from the San Joaquin Valley. California state senator and unsuccessful 2002 gubernatorial and 2004 senatorial candidate Bill Simon hails from the Fresno area. As of 2005 Republican U.S. representative Bill Thomas, who represents the valley's southern portions as well as much of the Mojave Desert, is head of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Related Topics:
Bill Simon - Republican - U.S. representative - Bill Thomas - Mojave Desert - House Ways and Means Committee

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Ethnic and cultural groups

Mexicans/Chicanos

While the barrios of East Los Angeles are California's most famous areas dominated by persons of Mexican ancestry, both first-generation Mexican immigrants and well-established Chicanos are enormously important populations in the San Joaquin Valley. Since the onset of the bracero program during World War II, virtually all of the agricultural workers in the region have been of Mexican ancestry. Ethnic and economic friction between Mexican-Americans and the valley's predominantly white farming elite manifested itself most notably during the 1960s and 1970s, when the United Farm Workers, led by César Chávez, went on numerous strikes and called for boycotts of table grapes. The UFW generated enormous sympathy throughout the United States, even managing to terminate several agricultural mechanization projects at the United States Department of Agriculture. However, from the 1970s onward, farmers have mostly hired illegal immigrants, preferred for their willingness to work longer hours for lower pay. Today, Chicanos are somewhat better integrated into the valley's economic framework.

Related Topics:
East Los Angeles - Mexican - Chicano - Bracero - World War II - United Farm Workers - César Chávez - Strike - United States Department of Agriculture - Illegal immigrants

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European and Asian groups

The San Joaquin Valley has--by California standards--an unusually large number of European, Middle Eastern, and South Asian ethnicities in the heritage of its citizens. These communities are often quite large and, relative to Americans immigration patterns, quite eclectic: for example, there are more Azoreans in the San Joaquin Valley than in the Azores! Many groups are found in majorities in specific cities, and hardly anywhere else in the region. For example, Dutch are concentrated in Ripon, Sikhs in Stockton and Livingston, and Yugoslavs in Delano. Kingsburg is famous for its distinctly Swedish air, having been founded by immigrants from that country. Ethnic groups found in a broader area are Portuguese, Armenians, and the "Okies" who migrated to California from the Midwest and South. In recent years, large numbers of Pakistanis have settled in Modesto and Lodi.

Related Topics:
Azoreans - Dutch - Ripon - Sikh - Stockton - Livingston - Yugoslavs - Delano - Kingsburg - Swedish - Portuguese - Armenians - Okies - Midwest - South - Pakistan - Lodi

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These cultures are often the result of established ethnic communities and groups of immigrants coming to the United States at once. This is in part due to the founding of religious communes in the San Joaquin Valley: for example, the first permanent Sikh Gurdwara was made in Stockton in 1915.

Related Topics:
Gurdwara - 1915

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Okies and Arkies

The Depression-era migrants to the San Joaquin Valley from the South and Midwest are one of the more well-known groups in the Central Valley, in large part due to the popularity of the novel The Grapes of Wrath and the Henry Fonda movie made from it. By 1910, agriculture in the southern Great Plains had become nearly unviable due to soil erosion and poor rainfall. Much of the rural population of states such as Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas left at this time, selling their land and moving to Chicago, Kansas City, Detroit, and fast-growing Los Angeles. Those who remained experienced continuing deterioration of conditions, which reached their nadir during the drought that began in the late 1920s and created the infamous Dust Bowl. (Small cotton farmers in states such as Mississippi and Alabama suffered similar problems from the first major infestation of the boll weevil.) When the onset of the Great Depression created a national banking crisis, family farmers--usually heavily in debt--often had their mortgages foreclosed by banks desperate to shore up their balance sheets. In response, many farmers loaded their families and portable possessions into their automobiles and drove west.

Related Topics:
Depression - The Grapes of Wrath - Henry Fonda - Great Plains - Kansas - Texas - Oklahoma - Arkansas - Chicago - Kansas City - Detroit - Los Angeles - Dust Bowl - Mississippi - Alabama - Boll weevil

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Taking Route 66 to Barstow or Los Angeles and crossing the Tehachapi or Tejon passes, they began new lives as fruit and vegetable pickers on truck farms in the San Joaquin Valley. Having gone from the relative independence of homesteading to a condition that was essentially peasantry, many of them lived in squalid agricultural camps and were deeply unhappy with their economic plight; domestic disputes, crime, and suicide were rampant, and occasional riots broke out. New Deal measures alleviated some of these problems, albeit belatedly: by the time that The Grapes of Wrath drew public attention to the Okies' plight, many of them had already left the valley.

Related Topics:
Route 66 - Barstow - Tehachapi - Tejon - Homesteading - New Deal

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Perhaps the majority of the Okies and Arkies left the San Joaquin Valley during World War II, most of them going to Los Angeles and San Diego to work in war industries. Many of those who stayed ended up in Bakersfield, which became an increasingly important center of oil production after major Southern California wells like Signal Hill began to dry up. Their influence remains strong: Bakersfield resembles a West Texas town such as Midland or Lubbock far more than it does anywhere else in California. Country music legends Buck Owens and Merle Haggard came out of Bakersfield's honky-tonk scene and created a hard-driving sound that is still deeply associated with the city.

Related Topics:
San Diego - Signal Hill - West Texas - Midland - Lubbock - Country music - Buck Owens - Merle Haggard - Honky-tonk

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Recent changes

The California real estate boom that began in the late 1990s has significantly changed the San Joaquin Valley. Once distinctly and fiercely independent of Los Angeles and San Francisco, the area has seen increasing exurban development as the cost of living forces young families and small businesses further and further away from the coastal urban cores. Stockton, Modesto, and Tracy are increasingly dominated by commuters to San Francisco and Silicon Valley, and the small farming towns to the south are finding themselves in the Bay Area's orbit as well. Bakersfield, traditionally a boom-bust oil town once described by urban scholar Joel Kotkin as an "American Abu Dhabi," has seen a massive influx of former Los Angeles business owners, to the extent that gated communities containing million-dollar homes are going up on the city's outskirts. Wal-Mart, IKEA, and various large shipping firms have built huge distribution centers at the far southern end of the valley, lured by the convenience of Route 58 (q.v.) and the region's low wages. Further integration with the rest of the state is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

Related Topics:
Exurb - Joel Kotkin - Abu Dhabi - Gated communities - Wal-Mart - IKEA - Route 58

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