Vanishing Landscapes

Book excerpt: Now no longer well known or clearly recognizable as a region, the Tulare Lake Basin also once supported the densest non-agricultural population in North America. This population, of Yokut Indians, caused little change to the wild oasis environment. Today, however, the Basin bears the rigid imprint of the past two centuries of technological progress, culminating in the complete domination of the land and landscape by large-scale, corporate farming. Natural landmarks and boundaries are subordinate to cultural creations, and the identity of the region has waned with its assimilation into the uniform landscape of international agribusiness and with the gradual demise of the lake itself. After describing the geological processes that created the lake and basin, William Preston considers the values, attitudes to the environment, and aims and technologies that have characterized successive stages of human habitation, leaving their mark upon the land. Using innovative research techniques, and with insight derived from extensive personal knowledge of Tulare and its environs, he reconstructs the physical and cultural realities of each technological period: the Yokut subsistence culture and its disruption by Spanish, Mexican, and American settlers; early sheepherding, cattle ranching, and agricultural experimentation; the arrival of the railroad and of bonanza wheat farming in the late nineteenth century; the small farms stil lin existence during his own youth in Tulare; and, finally, the corporate, "world" farms of today. Integrating ecological and historical perspectives, Preston describes the concrete effects of cultural change upon the land and the land's reciprocal impact upon culture. Rather than just the story of this region, we are given the case history of its physical transformation by forces that have shaped all the Central Valley and California's large urban centers as well. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1981.