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<br /> <br />Before California became a state, there was little activity in the <br />Central Valley, and the most higWy developed ranch in the area was <br />John Sutter's New Helvetia, which is now Sacramento. The mining <br />boom in 1849 and 1850 dramatically increased the need for agricul- <br />tural produce and livestock and prompted the fIrst attempts to grow <br />wheat. Dry farming was initially used for many of the necessary <br />grains and hay, although irrigation was utilized for truck crops.24 Dry <br />farming was accomplished by deep plowing after rains. The runoff <br />entered the subsoil, and a dust blanket created by a machine that <br />pulverized the surface prevented evaporation.25 The fIrst water devel- <br />opments in the Central Valley were earth ditches conveying the <br />summer nows of local streams and later abandoned mining ditches. <br />The population growth caused by the gold rush brought about <br />the fIrst attempts at farming in the Central Valley, and wheat was <br />the fIrst major crop. Not only did California produce more wheat <br />than any state in the nation in 1874 and 1875, but during those <br />years irrigation became a commercial enterprise in the Central <br />Valley. Throughout the 1870s, extensive irrigation of tens of thou- <br />sands of acres occurred. In 1877, the legislature adopted the Wright <br />Act, which allowed the formation of public irrigation districts. Its <br />constitutionality was litigated for nine years, primarily by riparian <br />interests which did not want to see water distributed throughout the <br />valley. Once the Act's legality was established, irrigation districts <br />were at the forefront of great agricultural expansion, and from 1900 <br />to 1920 the irrigated land in the Central Valley almost tripled. <br />The development of the centrifugal pump allowed deep wells to <br />he drilled, and thousands of Central Valley farmers took advantage of <br />the new technology. By the mid-1920s, California had surpassed Iowa <br />as the richest agricultural state in the country.26 It has heen estimated <br />that when groundwater pumping began almost 750 million acre-feet <br />of water was present in the aquifers under the Central Valley. Over <br />the past 70 years groundwater pumping has dramatically decreased <br />this amount, and the current overdraft (the defIcit between the water <br />pumped from a groundwater basin and the long-term recharge) in the <br />Central Valley is estimated to be slightly under one million acre-feet <br />per year. By the 1930s, the negative effects of groundwater overdraft <br /> <br />24 Bulletin "10. 2, page 149. <br />25 Hundley Jr., Norris, The Great Thirst, 1992, page 88. <br />26 Lloyd J. Mercer and '\T. Douglas Morgan. "Irrigation, Drainage, and <br />Agricultural Developments in the San Joaquin Valley" in The Economics <br />and Management of Water and Drainage in Agriculture, 1991, page 11, <br />15, 18, 20, 22. <br /> <br />The gold rush and consequent population <br />growth was the stimulus for commercial <br />agriculture in the Central Valley. <br /> <br />The Wright Act, adopted in 1877. opened <br />the way Jor the formation o/public irriga~ <br />tion districts and extensive agricultural <br />expansion. <br /> <br />Chapter 1 A Brief History 17 <br />