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The J.C. Forkner Fig Gardens (1883–1981) was an early 20th-century real estate development in Fresno, California, that combined home ownership with fig farming. ==History== In 1919, Kansas real estate developer Jesse Clayton "J.C." Forkner arrived in California's San Joaquin Valley with a vision for creating a development where homeowners would each have enough land for a small but profitable orchard.〔(Honeyman, Kirsten. "Fig Gardens: Fresno's 'Fig King'." ''Pacific Horticulture'', Winter 2014. )〕 He got a one-year option to purchase of undesirable land from the Bullard Company in what is now northwest Fresno, between the city center and the San Joaquin River. 〔(Hattersley-Drayton, Karana. "Garden of Eden." Presentation, 2012 )〕 Forkner consulted with a number of California experts about the possibility of fig farming, including University of California, Berkeley, professor Edward J. Wickson and local fig grower Henry Markarian. He later hired another UC professor, Ira J. Condit, as project horticulturist. Forkner expanded his holdings to and began preparing the land for his "Fig Gardens." The ambitious scale of the project can be seen in the fact that the development encompassed a streetcar line, over of streets, and an irrigation system with a -long main canal and some of side ditches. To move ahead rapidly, Forkner assembled a mix of horse-drawn Fresno scrapers and over 100 Ford tractors, at one point owning more Ford tractors than anyone else in the world.〔 Planting the figs required blasting holes with dynamite through a top layer of hardpan to reach the underlying soil. Forkner eventually planted some 600,000 fig trees, of which 9 in 10 were edible figs and the remainder ornamental figs.〔 The figs came out of an adjacent nursery stocked in part with cuttings obtained from Markarian, and landowners were permitted to choose among different varieties. The majority of trees planted were Calimyrna figs, with significant acreage also devoted to Kadotas.〔Vandor, Paul E. ''History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present.''. Vol. 1. Los Angeles, CA: Historic Record Co., 1919. 〕 By 1920, some 500 families were living in the development on individual fig farms averaging apiece.〔Rehart, Catherine Morrison. ''The Valley's Legends & Legacies IV''. World Dancer Press, 2002. 〕 Despite this early success, the Fig Gardens project collapsed when J.C. Forkner went bankrupt during the Great Depression. The development was named the "J.C. Forkner Fig Gardens" in early promotional literature, and in 1919 Forkner published a pamphlet entitled ''The J.C. Forkner Fig Gardens Recipes: How to Serve Figs in the Home''. That same year, Forkner and local businessman Wylie M. Giffen subdivided the section of land nearest to Fresno into smaller one-acre and half-acre plots. The Forkner-Giffen section was renamed Old Fig Garden, and it survives today as a census-designated place entirely surrounded by the city of Fresno. Other acreage from the original project has been merged into other sections of Fresno, including the unincorporated community of Figarden. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「J.C. Forkner Fig Gardens」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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