DATE GARDEN RANCH: JAMES PETER READ AND HIS COACHELLA VALLEY OASIS

Except for the middle names of my grandfather Lloyd Magruder Read and young cousin Michael Magruder Read, the name “Magruder” drifted off my immediate family tree when Sallie Magruder, daughter of Lloyd Magruder and Caroline Pelham Magruder, married James Peter Read on September 27, 1867, in Marysville, California.  And this single paragraph contains enough Magruders to qualify as a reunion.

James Peter Read (JPR) was born in Newark, New Jersey, April 28, 1836, to John Read and Louise Moore Read, both born in Ireland.  They came to this country soon after their marriage; JPR’s year of birth suggests his parents may have been Famine immigrants.   Future research will attempt to trace their birthplace in Ireland; for now, I rely on the article written about JPR in the July 1912 issue of Out West magazine.

“Up to his fifteenth year the growing lad was sent to school and there gained all the school education he was ever to receive, for when the Gold Rush of 1849 came, he ran away from home, hurried to New York, succeeded in getting aboard a vessel going to the Isthmus of Panama, which he crossed, and eventually landed in San Francisco. 

“Here he spent two or three weeks and then hurried to the mines at Potts Bar of the Yuba River.  Then began a roving life which lasted for several years, life itself being his stern monitor and experience his teacher.  Tired at last of the roving life, he learned the carpenter’s business in Butte County, and soon had a good business—house-building, mill-building and the like.  Forty-three years ago (1869) he built a quartz mill in Brown’s Valley, Yuba County, and there he has occupied every position from the lowest to the highest.” 

Tiring of the roving life might also have been influenced by meeting Sallie Magruder, a young teacher.  She was 19 and he 30 when they married and settled in Brown’s Valley, near Marysville, where their four children (two survived) were born in quick succession.  Their eldest daughter, Nora Chandler Read, died in 1874, five days after her fifth birthday.  Carrie Louisa (named after both of her grandmothers) was born in 1869.  Maurice died at age two and a half.  Last was my grandfather Lloyd, born January 30, 1872. 

Brown’s Valley was an early stagecoach stop and mining town with five hotels and 24 saloons (!).  Freight wagons and mule trains loaded with supplies came up from Marysville destined for the mines and lumber camps in the high country.  In its heyday in the 1860s it had more than 3,000 residents and was known as “Little Washoe.”  I visited Brown’s Valley several years ago and it appeared to the place time forgot, waiting for inevitable development.

JPR, Sallie, Carrie and Lloyd moved to San Bernadino in 1876, perhaps so that JPR could pursue mining interests in the desert mountains.  From Out West:  “Prospecting for gold has always been his chiefest lure and every summer he has gone out into the mountains seeking for the precious metal.”  Still a young woman of 36, Sallie died January 31, 1884, the day after Lloyd’s 12^th birthday.  JPR farmed out the two children and drifted for many years.  From Out West, 28 years later: 

“Ever since his wife died … he has felt he has had no home; hence, when some friends … asked him to come down to the Colorado Desert to prospect for oil, he yielded to their persuasions and came.  He has a good outfit and made a thorough search for what his friends hoped to find.  He entered the desert from San Diego by way of the Carrizo Creek and struck the Coachella Valley just about the time of its first boom.  In spite of its desert appearance, he was attracted to the country and seemed instinctively to recognize its marvelous horticultural possibilities."

In 1905 JPR acquired 160 acres of desert land, 4.5 miles northwest of Mecca.  That year was a semi-millennial course change of the Colorado River that flooded the region and filled the Salton Sea with fresh water.  With plentiful water, irrigable land and the rail system in place, settlers came for farming opportunities and the curative properties of the hot, dry desert air.  Communities sprang up along the rail lines:  Coachella, Thermal, Arabia and Mecca. 

Fan palms had grown for centuries in the desert, and US Government experts and scientists, recognizing the similar conditions to the Middle East, established experimental date farms at Mecca in 1904, sending to Egypt and the Persian Gulf for date offshoots.

Out West:  “(JPR) visited the experimental farm and became so interested that he wrote to Dr. Walter Swingle, head of the experimental department of plant life at Washington, DC, and asked if he would send him a variety of date shoots, all of which he would plant, carefully tend and experiment with.  Accordingly, seeds of 26 different varieties of edible dates were sent to him, all of which were planted with unusual care.  Nearly all of them came up and thrived, but after five years’ experience. Read is devoting the major part of his attention to the seedlings of but three varieties:  the Deglet Noor, the Menaker and Talifot.”

By now JPR enjoyed a good relationship with his children, judging from a letter to them published in the Coachella Star July 1910: 

" ... this is a new country, different in all respects from any other.  Its previous record as a burning desert, the home of the rattlesnake and the graveyard of prospectors, 130 in the shade, 200 feet below sea level, and not a drop of water within miles, encased with a crust of alkali, warning the home-seeker of its perils, until a few years ago, yes, very few indeed, someone introduced artesian water, it was found with proper drainage the alkali soon passed off, leaving the land, the one time sink of the Gulf of California, the most productive of any in this great State, or in the  United States," he wrote.


Plus he had remarried, after 28 years, Caroline Thompson in 1912 and was enjoying the fruits of his labor along with becoming a noted authority.  Here he is, with Caroline, looking very much the desert rat.  And at the start of this post, cleaned up quite nicely for what I guess was his wedding day when he was 76.

He must have hoped his son would take over the ranch.  Lloyd had run away to sea when he was 16, not to be heard from for 20 years.  He did return in 1911 to help run the ranch for a time, but apparently couldn’t stand being on land and only stayed long enough to meet and marry Bess Turner and have their first two children before returning to commercial shipping as a sea captain out of Oakland, California, in 1916. 

This photo is Bess and Lloyd's wedding day, March 14, 1914, at Date Garden Ranch.  JPR is at center, Lloyd to his left and Bess seated before him.  JPR’s second wife Caroline, in hat, is standing above Lloyd.  At the top is Frank Turner, Bess' brother.  Bess, Frank and their mother Julia (second from right, first row) relocated from Kansas to the desert to cure Frank of Tuberculosis.  He died at 28.

Daughter Carrie had married and moved to Oregon but returned to help her father and step mother in their old age.  The couple retired to Banning and the ranch was sold.  They died, 3 weeks apart, in April-May 1921.  Their heirs’ land was also sold.  JPR’s contributions to the development of the date and desert agriculture today seem pretty much forgotten. 

 ~~~ 

In the Out West article JPR is given the title “Hon.,” and I wanted to learn what that meant, plus see the land, find his grave and resurrect his reputation.  He was, after all, a published authority on desert agriculture and can be credited with popularizing dates in this country.

So for my 2016 birthday trip, October 9, 10, 11 and 12, I visited the Colorado Desert, armed with the Out West article and instructions supplied by the county assessor’s office on the exact location of JRP’s date ranch. 

On a personal note, I was accompanied by John Geever, a fellow traveler in my life from 45 years ago, with whom I recently reunited.  I was also intent on enjoying my first date shake.  Of course, Claggett was along for the ride. 


Our first stop was at the Banning library, where we lucked out right away, finding his death notice in the Banning Record on microfilm: “Death Calls Aged Resident.”  It gave me the shivers to read that he “reared one of the choicest male Deglet Noor date palm trees in the world.”  Before the trip I had contacted the Banning cemetery and heard the thrilling words, “Yep, we’ve got him!” so next was a stop up the hill from the library to the town graveyard. 

It was Columbus Day, however, and the office was closed so there was no way to find him on our own.  We assumed his grave would be in a scruffy and untended area due to its age, and I started to imagine enlisting my cousins to help install a headstone and tidy the place up.  However, when we returned two days later and were directed to the grave of JPR and Caroline, it was very well tended, set in a bright green lawn and with a handsome granite headstone.  Kudos to great aunt Carrie for taking care of business.  Still, I had the rewarding feeling that I was the first descendent in a long, long time to pay a visit.

Our next foray was to find the spot where the desert bloomed into Date Garden Ranch long ago. 

 

The assessor’s map directed us a few miles northeast of Thermal, approximately at the junction of Fillmore Street and 63^rd Avenue.  You can Google it (!) and see a puzzling domino pattern from the bird’s eye view. 

 

We ignored several NO TRESSPASSING signs to be rewarded with a barren landscape, devoid of the luscious date palm trees right across the street, and with lots of shell casings strewn about.  Also a foreboding gated industrial area with moderate security and signage that bore the legend:  COACHELLA VALLEY WATER DISTRICT MID-VALLEY WATER RECLAMATION PLANT 4. 

Sigh.

Next stop:  date shakes!  We’d contemplated driving the loop around the Salton Sea, but the heat and slight disappointment over the sad but practical fate of Date Garden Ranch put a damper on further excursions that day. 

We did stop at the north shore where there was a strong smell of dead fish and the feel of an abandoned planet.  I am pointing to the water while Claggett is pointing to back to the car.

John and I stayed just outside Joshua Tree National Park, in a lovely VRBO accommodation.  On Wednesday we visited the park where a high elevation lookout takes in the entire Coachella Valley--JPR’s stomping grounds--and a glimpse of the Salton Sea glittering on the horizon.  I love the desert, and this trip confirmed that it left a notch on my DNA.

About that Hon., I think I have to chalk it up to the gushing journalism of George Wharton James, author of “In and Around the Grand Canyon,” “The Wonders of the Colorado Desert,” and the seven-page article on JPR from Out West, “Date Growing on the Colorado River." That's definitely worth a read, and I am happy to send to anyone who wishes a copy. 

I will follow JPR’s own advice about the Hon., from Out West:  "While I have learned a good deal, I know there is still much more to be learned," said my great grandfather.  "When I first began I used to ask a great many questions and paid careful attention to the answers, but experience has taught me that it is a foolish and dangerous business asking for information from those who don’t know.”

JPR and Worker, Date Garden Ranch, ca 1912

Stay tuned for future posts:  Captain Lloyd Read and the fated Ohioan; The Pelhams of Boston, Arkansas, and Williamsburg; and my father's side of the family's roots in Aclare, County Sligo, Ireland.