Portal:California Central Valley/Previous Selections
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Previous Selections for the various sections of the Central Valley Portal.
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[edit] Article
The Grapes of Wrath is a novel about the migration of poor Oklahoma farmers fleeing the Dust Bowl to work as migrant labor in California.
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- March 7, 2006
The Kesterson wildlife refuge is an artificial wetlands environment, created using agricultural runoff from farmland in California's Central Valley. The runoff contained high levels of pesticides and trace minerals, especially selenium. In 1982, hundreds of dying birds and deformed or stillborn embryos were discovered at Kesterson Reservoir. Wildlife in this region suffered deformities due to Selenium poisoning, drawing the attention of news media and leading to the closure of the refuge.
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- March 8-12, 2006
Future Candidates
International Ag Expo in Tulare
Japanese Museum in Hanford
Old Tower Theatre in Fresno (Used in 2006 Oscars)
Tule Elks and Sand Hill Cranes (Sanctuary in Los Banos)
Kaweah Colony
[edit] Biography
Joaquin Murrieta, also called the Mexican Robin Hood or the Robin Hood of El Dorado, was a legendary figure in California during the California Gold Rush in the 1850s. He was either an infamous bandit or a Mexican patriot, depending on one's point of view. Whatever the truth of the matter, his name has, for some political activists at least, symbolized resistance against Anglo-American economic and cultural domination in California. It is said he first went to California in 1850 to seek his fortune in the California Gold Rush. Instead of opportunity, he instead encountered racism and discrimination. Unable to make a living legally, like many Californios, Murrieta became one of the leaders of the band called The Five Joaquins, who were responsible for the majority of cattle rustling, robberies, and murders that were committed in the Mother Lode area of the Sierra Nevadas. They are credited with stealing more than $100,000 in gold, over 100 horses, killing 19 people (mostly Chinese mine workers), and having outrun three posses, killing three lawmen.
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- March 12 - April 2, 2006
Don Pedro Fages Beleta or in Catalan, Pere Fages i Beleta (1734–1794), and nicknamed El Oso, was a Catalan soldier, explorer, and the second Spanish military Governor of New California and, later, Governor of the Californias. In 1767, lieutenant Fages left Spain with the Catalan Volunteers for New Spain, to serve under Domingo Elizondo in Sonora. After Portolà left California in 1770, Fages served as the somewhat independent military governor of New California (California Nueva, later Alta California), with his headquarters in Monterey. During this time, Fages explored, among other landmarks, the San Joaquin River, and surrounding areas.
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- March 8-12, 2006
James G. (Jim) Boswell, II, is a wealthy farmer and developer with large land holdings in California's Central Valley. His company, J.G. Boswell Company, is the world's largest cotton and tomato grower in the world. His holdings are estimated at 150,000 acres in the U.S. and another 50,000 acres in Australia.
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- March 7-8, 2006
- Future Candidates
- Gary Soto -- Poet and writer
- Maxine Hong-Kingston -- Writer
- Bidwell -- Property Owner
- Henry Miller -- Town of Gustine is named for his daughter
- John Muir?
- Richard Rodriguez -- Writer
- Jose Montoya -- Poet and Performance Artist
- Luis Valdez -- Writer, Playwright
- Luis Omar Salinas -- Poet
- Mark Arax -- Fresno journalist
- Ceser Chavez
- Dolores Huerta -- Labor Activist
- Gerald Haslam -- Writer
- Luther Burbank
- John Fremont
- Joaquin Murrieta -- Bandit in Hornitos
- Burnie Sisk -- Congressman who got the Los Banos Reservoir
- Gordan Winton -- Responsible for legislation allowing teachers to organize
- Huffman (Miller and Lux)
[edit] Current Events
[edit] Picture
Looking down on the Valley from the shuttle Columbia.
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- March 7-9, 2006
The 2004 USPS stamp depicting Cesar Chavez, farmworker and labor leader who took part in his first strike in Delano.
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- March 9-15, 2006
The California Aqueduct as it passes through Central California.
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- March 16 - April 2, 2006
Florence Owens Thompson, subject of Dorothea Lange's famous photo: Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two.
April 2 - April 26, 2006
- Future Candidates
Picture John Kennedy groundbreaking Los Banos
"Private Road" taken by Roman Loranc
[edit] Did you know...
- Tulare Lake was a 570 square mile lake in the southern portion of the California Central Valley, about forty miles south of Fresno, that existed over one hundred years ago. The lake was drained by diverting the Kaweah, Kern, Kings and Tule rivers and it occasionally reappears during floods following unusually high levels of precipitation.
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- March 7-8, 2006
The movie American Graffiti was based on the high school experiences of San Joaquin County-native George Lucus. Lucas attended Downey High School in the south-eastern Modesto. Even though the movie was based in Modesto, it was shot in Petaluma and San Rafael, both of which are in Northern California.
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- March 8-12, 2006
A single mutation in 1820 in an orchard of sweet oranges planted at a monastery in Brazil led to the navel orange, also known as the Washington, Riverside or Bahia navel. A single cutting of the original was then transplanted to Riverside, California in 1870, creating a new market worldwide. The mutation causes a 'twin' fruit, with a smaller orange embedded in the outer fruit opposite the stem. From the outside, the smaller, undeveloped twin leaves a formation at the top of the fruit, looking similar to the human navel. Navel oranges are almost always seedless, and tend to be larger than other sweet oranges. They are produced without pollination, through parthenocarpy.
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- March 12-14, 2006
In 1859, just before the outbreak of the American Civil War, the differences between the two halves of California led to an agreement that southern California would secede from the rest of the state. The vote for secession passed in the legislature in 1859. The new state in the south was to have the name "Colorado," after the river flowing along its eastern edge. Secession was also agreed upon in a popular referendum, but it left San Luis Obispo County in question. The legislature came upon a new division of the state that was acceptable to all, with the split to occur further north, above the Tehachapi Mountains, in order to integrate San Luis Obispo County in its new state. Because secession was approved by both popular referendum and the legislature, and signed by the governor, there remained only the new state's admission into the Union.
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- March 14-20, 2006
- Future Candidates
[edit] Things you can do
[edit] Quotes
A dusty little town on the road to somewhere else.
-Sam Donaldson describing Merced during the 1980 presidential campaign
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- April 2 - April 26, 2006
The Central Valley, that place you are usually driving across on your way to Lake Tahoe... that's about how most people view the Central Valley: as a place to get across.
-Jeff Mount, Geologist, UC Davis, from his lecture on the levee system of the Sacramento Delta.
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- March 10 - April 2, 2006
When I was fifteen and had quit school forever, I went to work in a vineyard near Sanger with a number of Mexicans, one of whom was only a year or two older than myself, an earnest boy named Felipe. One gray, dismal, cold, dreary day in January, while we were pruning muscat vines, I said to this boy, simply in order to be talking, "If you had your wish, Felipe, what would you want to be? A doctor, a farmer, a singer, a painter, a matador, or what?" Felipe thought a minute, and then he said, "Passenger." This was exciting to hear, and definitely something to talk about at some length, which we did. He wanted to be a passenger on anything that was going anywhere, but most of all on a ship.
-William Saroyan, Short Drive, Sweet Chariot (1966)
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- March 7-9, 2006
- Future Candidates
I wanted Yoda to be the traditional kind of character you find in fairy tales and mythology. And that character is usually a frog or a wizened old man on the side of the road. The hero is going down the road and meets this poor and insignificant person. The goal or lesson is for the hero to learn to respect everybody and to pay attention to the poorest person because that's where the key to his success will be.
George Lucas
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- March ???, 2006
Jesse Unruh
In the Great Central Plain of California, during the months of March, April, and May, was one smooth, continuous bed of honey-bloom, so marvelously rich that, in walking from one end of it to the other, a distance of more than 400 miles, your foot would press about a hundred flowers at every step. Mints, gilias, nemophilas, castilleias, and innumerable compositae were so crowded together that, had ninety-nine per cent of them been taken away, the plain would still have seemed to any but Californians extravagantly flowery.
-John Muir, The Mountains of California (1894)
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- March ????, 2006
