Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Information
Red Bluff Chamber of Commerce
(
530-527-6220;
www.redbluffchamber.com
; 100 Main St;
8:30am-4pm Mon, to 5pm Tue-Thu, to
4:30pm Fri)
To get your bearings and a stack of brochures, find this white building just south of down-
town.
Getting There & Away
Most visitors pull into Red Bluff to take a break from the busy I-5. By highway, the town
is three hours north of San Francisco and 15 minutes north of Sacramento.
Amtrak
connect it with other California cities via bus.
SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY
The southern half of California's Central Valley - named for the San Joaquin River -
sprawls from Stockton to the turbine-covered Tehachapi Mountains, southeast of
Bakersfield. Everything stretches to the horizon in straight lines - railroad tracks, two-lane
blacktop and long irrigation channels.
Through the elaborate politics and machinery of water management, this once-arid re-
gion ranks among the most agriculturally productive places in the world, though the profits
often go to agribusiness shareholders, not the increasingly disenfranchised family farmer.
Some of the tiny towns scattering the region, such as Gustine and Reedley, retain their
Main Street Americana appeal while slowly embracing the influence of the Latino labor
force that work these fields.
This is a place of seismic, often contentious, development. Arrivals from the coastal cit-
ies have resulted in unchecked eastward sprawl - some half a million acres of prime farm-
land have been paved over as subdivisions in the last decade. What were once actual cattle
ranches and vineyards are now nostalgically named developments: a big-box shopping
complex named Indian Ranch, a tidy row of McMansions named Vineyard Estates. More
green lawns appear as the irrigation systems drain dry. Water rights is
the
issue on every-
one's minds.
