CHAPTER IX.
RIVERSIDE.
"Knowest thou the land where the lemon trees bloom, Where the golden orange grows in the deep thickets' gloom, Where a wind ever soft from the blue heavens blows, And the groves are of laurel and myrtle and rose ?" Yes, that describes Riverside, and reads like a prophecy.

If Pasadena is a big garden with pretty homes scattered all through its shade and flowers, then Riverside is an immense orange grove, having one city-like street, with substantial business blocks and excellent stores, two banks, one in the Evans block, especially fine in all its architecture and arrangements, and the rest is devoted by the land-owners to raising oranges and making them pay.

You will see flowers enough to overwhelm a Broadway florist, every sort of cereal, every fruit that grows, in prime condition for the table ten months out of the twelve.

Three hundred sunny days are claimed here out of the three hundred and sixty-five.
They are once in a while bothered by a frost, but that is "unusual." Before 1870 this was a dusty desert of decomposed granite.

What has caused the change?
Scientific irrigation and plenty of it.