
Owens Valley once was lush from the waters
of the Sierra Nevada. Irrigation ditches built in the late 19th
century by early pioneers on both sides of the Owens River watered
pastures, dairy ranches, apple, peach and pear orchards, fields
of alfalfa and corn, along with grape vineyards. In the mid 19th
century Lone Pine had been called El Pueblo de las Uvas or the
town of grapes by its Mexican setters. Mary Austin wrote a beautiful chapter in
her Land of Little Rain that tells that story. Another settlement
was called Manzanar, Spanish for apple orchard. Game
abounded, such as deer, bighorn sheep, rabbits, quail, pheasant
and other small game animals. In the early 1900's fish, such
as golden and rainbow trout, had been transplanted from the western
streams of the Sierra Nevada and were flourishing in the eastern
mountain lakes, Owens River and its tributaries.
(Excerpt
from "Desert Padre: Life and Writings of Father John J.
Crowley" by Joan Brooks) |