Virtual Tours
Living
on the Land
Page 4
Pismo-Oceano Vegetable Exchange
13 - Oceano: From Highway 101 southbound: At Pismo Beach take Hwy 1
south 3.8 miles to Railroad Street, turn right across the tracks and
proceed 0.2 miles to POVE at 1731 Railroad Street. Or, from Hwy 101
northbound: At Arroyo Grande take Halcyon Rd. south 1.7 miles to Hwy
1, turn right and go 1.2 miles to Railroad Street. Turn left and
proceed as above.
It would be easy to overlook the unassuming,
panel-clad Pismo Ocean Vegetable Exchange (POVE) building as an
important agricultural history site, but it stands as a monument to
the grass-roots cooperative tradition in American agriculture. Close
by the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks, POVE anchors a complex of ice
plants and coolers, vegetable brokerages, packing sheds and shipping
carton facilities. Dating from the 1970s, the structure replaced the
original wooden POVE building on the same site.
Local growers launched POVE in an effort to improve
their position in the fresh produce market. In 1927 about fifty
members of two older Japanese-American marketing cooperatives, the
Pismo Pea Growers Association (1922) and the Arroyo Grande Pea Growers
Association (1925) combined their resources to found POVE. Looking
ahead, they built their packing shed conveniently close to both rail
and road transportation — directly across the tracks from Highway 1
and the Southern Pacific depot (the latter since moved a few hundred
yards north). When rail shipment of fresh produce declined in the
1970s and the SP freight office closed, POVE was already a
well-established refrigerator truck terminal. POVE shut down between
1941 and 1945 when war jitters prompted the internment of area
Japanese-American families. After the war many of the displaced
returned, reclaimed their farms, revived and modernized POVE. Now 3.5
million crates and cartons of SLO fresh produce pass through each year
on their way to national and international markets. The cooperative is
the world’s largest grower and shipper of Napa (Chinese) cabbage.
The Carrizo Plain
14 - Carrizo Plain: From 101 at Santa Margarita take Hwy 58 east 52
miles to California Valley. Turn right on Soda Lake Road, go 15 miles
south to the Guy Goodwin Education Center (open seasonally). The
National Monument is open year-round, but dirt roads may be impassable
in wet weather. There is no water or gas available on the Carrizo, and
only occasional portable toilets.
The Carrizo Plain is a vast, arid, treeless basin between the
Caliente and Temblor ranges in east San Luis Obispo County. The
climate resembles that of the Mojave Desert. Runoff feeds Soda Lake,
the remnant of a much larger alkali wetland. The plain derived its
Spanish names from its native plants: Llano Estero (salt marsh
plain) and Carrizo (after the reeds that grow around Soda Lake).
Today the Carizzo Plain National Monument embraces 180,000 acres of
this haunting landscape, sometimes called “California’s Serengeti. " Native
Americans occupied the plain for millennia. Early Spanish, Mexican
and American ranchers replaced much of the native vegetation with
European grasses to feed vast herds of cattle, sheep and horses. In
the mid-1880s homesteaders introduced dry land grain farming. Large
scale, mechanized “bonanza” farming began about 1912 and
dominated Carizzo agriculture for decades.
Visible relics of these former days include the old
wheat-threshing combine behind the Guy Goodwin Education Center on
Soda Lake Road, and the faint plow lines visible along the foothills
bordering the plain. Other notable Carizzo sights are wildflowers in
the spring, visiting Sand Hill cranes during the winter, free
ranging antelope, dramatic stream offsets tracing the path of the
San Andreas Fault along the Temblor Range, and spectacular native
American ceremonial artwork at Painted Rock.
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County
Map of Areas and Sites on This Tour
