try villas. What a transformation has been
wrought here may be appreciated when it is said that 150 families now
produce $400,000 a year on the same land which twenty years ago
supported but one family, which had a return of only $35,000 from
wheat. The history of this one colony of six sections of old wheat
land is the key to Fresno's prosperity. It proves better than columns
of argument, or facts or figures, the immense return that careful,
patient cultivation may command in this home of the grape. Near this
colony are a half-dozen others which were established on the same
general plan. The most noteworthy is the Malaga colony, founded by
G.G. Briggs, to whom belongs the credit of introducing the raisin
grape into Fresno.

Fresno City is the center from which one may drive in three directions
and pass through mile after mile of these colonies, all showing signs
of the wealth and comfort that raisin making has brought. Only toward
the west is the land still undeveloped, but another five years promise
to see this great tract, stretching away for twenty miles, also laid
out in small vineyards and fruit farms. Fresno is the natural railroad
center of the great San Joaquin Valley. It is on the main line of the
Southern Pacific and is the most important shipping point between San
Francisco and Los Angeles. The new line of the Santa Fe, which has
been surveyed from Mojave up through the valley, passes through
Fresno. Then there are three local lines that have the place for a
terminus, notably the mountain railway, which climbs into the Sierra,
and which it is expected will one day connect with the Rio Grande
system and give a new transcontinental line. Here are also building
round houses and machine shops of the Southern Pacific Company. These,
with new factories, packing houses, and other improvements, go far to
justify the sanguine expectations of the residents. There has never
been a boom in Fresno, but a high railroad official recently, in
speaking of the growth of the city, said: "Fresno in five years will
be the second city in California." This prediction he based on the
wonderful expansion of its resources in the last decade and the
substantial character of all the improvements made. It is a pretty
town, with wide, well-paved streets, handsome modern business blocks,
and residence avenues that would do credit to any old-settled town of
the East. The favorite shade tree is the umbrella tree, which has the
graceful, ro