And one immigrant built something unlike anything else in California. Starting in 1906, a Sicilian named Baldassare Forestiere spent forty years — with shovels, picks, and his own imagination — hand-digging an underground world beneath the hardpan: more than ten acres of rooms, courtyards, and tunnels as deep as twenty-five feet, with citrus trees growing up toward skylights and a microclimate cooler than the brutal valley summer. The Forestiere Underground Gardens, now a registered historic landmark, are still there — Fresno's strangest and most wonderful secret.
It took water to make the desert pay. The valley floor was Yokuts and Miwok homeland, hot and dry, until canal companies in the 1880s — Moses Church's Fresno Canal and Irrigation Company chief among them — began spreading San Joaquin River water across the fields. Irrigation turned the dust into one of the richest agricultural districts on earth, and grapes drying in the long valley sun made Fresno the raisin capital of the world. The crate label and the canal did between them what nothing else could: they made the plain bloom.
Why People Visit Fresno
Visitors choose Fresno for its unique gardens, family-friendly parks, and gateway convenience. The Tower District and downtown highlight history and everyday culture, and the city's central location makes regional day trips simple — most of all into the High Sierra. Travelers find year-round appeal in its parks, paths, and public spaces, where vintage farm-town California and the wild mountains beyond sit side by side in a welcoming way.
