Why California Needs Thirsty Alfalfa

In the early 1860s Henry Miller and Charles Lux, a pair of German immigrants1432324304558 who had established themselves as butchers in San Francisco, began buying land along the San Joaquin River in the Central Valley1432324414257 about 100 miles (as the crow flies) southeast of the city. They assembled large herds of cattle on the property, and from time to time vaqueros drove the creatures out of the Central Valley and over Pacheco Pass to a ranch near the town of Gilroy, where they could be loaded onto the train to San Francisco when needed.

Miller, who ran things in the field while Lux stayed in the city, also began digging irrigation canals to drain swamps and divert river water to pasture for grazing and fields of alfalfa for hay. As University of California-Irvine historian David Igler tells the story in his book “Industrial Cowboys,” the Miller & Lux partnership grew into one of the nation’s 200 largest businesses, with 100,000 cattle grazing on 1.25 million acres of land in California, Nevada and Oregon and control of meat sales along the Pacific coast.