How Railroads & Citrus Transformed Southern California - June 2024 - OCHS 

Dr. Benjamin Jenkins presented “Octopus’s Garden: How Railroads and Citrus Transformed Southern California” at the June 13, 2024 meeting of the Orange County Historical Society
Benjamin Jenkins’s new book, Octopus’s Garden, explains how citrus agriculture and railroads together shaped the economy, landscape, labor systems, and popular image of Southern California. Orange and lemon growing boomed in the 1870s and 1880s while railroads linked the region to markets across North America and ended centuries of geographic isolation for the West Coast. Railroads competed over the shipment of citrus fruits from multiple counties engulfed by the orange empire, resulting in an extensive rail network that generated lucrative returns for grove owners and railroad businessmen in Southern California from the 1890s to the 1950s.
Our speaker, Benjamin Jenkins, MLIS, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of History and Archivist at the University of La Verne. He teaches U.S. and California history and directs the Public History Program. He received his Ph.D. in History at the University of California, Riverside, in 2016.