Citrus Park
California Citrus State Historic Park
9400 Dufferin Ave, Riverside
The California Citrus State Historic Park occupies the ancestral and current homelands of the Iviatem (Cahuilla), Tóngva (Gabrielino), Payómkawichum (Luiseño), and Maara'yam (Serrano) peoples. The site illustrates processes of colonization that altered the landscape here and throughout California, which Native people seek to reclaim.
Located along an arroyo, the native flora in this area sustained Indigenous peoples for millenia, providing food, medicine, and materials for everyday life. Settlers in the 19th century brought single-crop agriculture and irrigation that altered habitat and diverted water from Indigenous use to feed citrus groves that consumed the landscape. A colonial plantation model industrialized the mass production of citrus, bringing together packing houses close to groves and hiring a diverse group of laborers for poverty wages who would encamp nearby. Native people were forced from their lands and into wage labor.
The new groves became contradictory spaces for Indigenous workers: sites of labor, temporary residence during harvest season, and sometimes, in the evenings, a respite. The groves offered space to speak native languages banned elsewhere, and to dance and sing, important then and now to preserve Indigenous cultures. Today the park is an important nexus where idealized portrayals of the citrus industry collide with the realities of labor, land use, native erasure, and environmental harms.
From the Archives
by A People’s History of the I.E.
Click on the images below to uncover the story.
California Citrus State Historic Park is located along the Mockingbird Canyon arroyo, which served Indigenous peoples as a source of sustenance and a migratory route. The canyon is sacred, and includes a site that was used by Luiseño and Tongva as part of religious rituals that integrated astronomy. The canyon has been desecrated by graffiti, tract housing developments, and the leveling and grading of portions, including the wash.
Bedrock mortars or metates are circular depressions used for preparing food with a pestle to grind acorns, nuts, seeds, and dried berries, as well as various plants for medicinal purposes. The proximity of the mortars on the bedrock suggests this was a social activity, likely among women. Located throughout the region (and world), these provide evidence for the location of settlements.
John Tortes Meyers, starting catcher for the New York Giants in 1902, recalled growing up in Spring Rancheria, a Cahuilla village on the northeast slope of Riverside’s Pá’Čapa (called Mt. Rubidoux by white settlers). Residents of the village formed a ready labor pool for clearing land, constructing canals, and working groves in the region. John and his childhood friends earned money by cleaning weeds from the town’s irrigation canals and learned to bud and graft navel orange trees for Riverside growers in the 1880s. By 1911, Mayor S. C. Evans’ Rivercrest Tract had completely displaced Spring Rancheria, churning up 120 barrels of human remains from nearby burial grounds.
Spring Rancheria, c. 1886, Museum of Riverside
Citrus crate labels idealized white settlement and served as both a business tool—to drive citrus sales and breed brand recognition—and a promotion for Southern California settlement. This one is loaded with symbolic meaning. At center is lady liberty (modeled on the Roman goddess of freedom) who was also used in 19th imagery as Columbia, the personification of American progress and westward expansion. The rows of manicured groves fed by artesian well water drive home the message of progress, framing land as a commodity from which to extract private wealth.
Crate label for Arlington Heights Fruit Co. (in the neighborhood of the Citrus Park), Special Collections & University Archives, UC Riverside
During hillside quarrying for rocks to complete road construction in 1895, Cahuilla living at Spring Rancheria were cut off from their source of water, effectively driving them from their land. Riverside and Arlington Heights Land and Irrigating Cos. diverted water from the Santa Ana River and aquifers that had sustained Native Californians for millenia. The moniker of the region as both a “citrus empire” and the “Inland Empire” is accurate in light of this process of Indian removal and the role of the syndicate of British investors who completed and owned the canal system that irrigated over 12,000 acres of land they developed for citrus (including the land where Citrus Park is located). The land that grove owners purchased came with the water, enabling them to form what they called mutual water companies, allowing them to share with one another but not with the Indigenous people whose ancestral homelands they occupied. Water crises today reach back to these early developments. For example, only 3% of the world’s water is fresh, and 70% of that is used by agriculture to produce food. The current use of drip irrigation at the Park and other groves around California acknowledges but does not solve this dilemma.
Zanjero directing water, c. 1897, Museum of Riverside
By the eve of WWII, Southern California led the world in citrus production, and the state supplied 60% of the U.S. market. Citrus was the number one plant commodity in the nation. With this success also came development of a monoculture of citrus that depleted the soil. Other environmental costs included widespread smudging--burning oil to create clouds of smog to keep the trees warm on cold nights--and wholesale use of pesticides. Both had a negative impact on air quality. The mass production of cyanide for the citrus industry made it an easily available form of chemical warfare as the U.S. entered the Vietnam War. Postwar chemical pesticides like DDT had their own impact on the soil and groundwater.
Grove owners in the early 20th century knew that on the days when the fumigation tents (pictured in this postcard) went over the trees to seal in the chemicals, pets and children needed to be accounted for lest they meet their demise after crawling inside. Ironically, the children pushing a baby carriage in this view seem free from such worries.
“Method of Fumigating Orange Orchard” postcard, private collection
Sherman Institute, founded in 1902, was an off-reservation boarding school aimed to “civilize” and “Americanize” Native youth by attempting to strip them of their cultures and Indigenous languages. Sherman students were trained in military style, as if to perform their assimilation and patriotism.
The school and its grounds were built in the Mission Revival style specified by local businessmen such as Frank Miller, who promoted Sherman as a tourist stop. It was located near Miller’s Mission Inn and at the end of the railway line he held stock in. Over a century after Spanish colonization, Sherman youth dwelled in buildings that looked like a mission, where they were not free to leave. A number of students escaped, fleeing into the groves, away from school and authorities to pursue different paths.
Sherman Institute, Riverside, Calif., c. 1910, postcard, private collection
Educators at Sherman Institute in the first half of the 20th century provided Native students courses in English, basic academics, and vocational training. Students were also expected to do all of the labor on site--farm work, laundry, cooking, masonry, carpentry, and gardening. Administrators also compelled many students to participate in the school’s “outing program” (1902-1940), which provided cheap labor to local businesses, homes, and groves. This included long days of hard work at nearby Fontana Farms and Riverside Orange Co., where they were paid less than other migrant and immigrant laborers, often without adequate bedding or housing. Despite harsh conditions, the work provided some students autonomy—and money they could bring back into their own communities.
Sherman Institute youth, plowing field, c. 1910, courtesy Sherman Indian Museum
“Each Bird Song tells a little part of the story of our peoples and our journeys…back to this land where we are today.”
—William Madrigal, Sr., Mountain Cahuilla Lead Bird Singer
From almost anywhere in Citrus Park, one sees mountains used to narrate Native American creation stories. Sacred canyon sites nearby mark the solstice. So, while the Park commemorates the citrus industry, it also connects us to times and traditions well beyond the planting of these particular groves. Bird Singing and Dancing has been an important part of Cahuilla tribes in Southern California and Arizona for centuries.
“Uncle Alvino [Siva] was always talking about when he first learned how to sing. His parents had worked in the citrus fields in Riverside. They’d work all day long but when they got off work, he’d break out that rattle he got from his dad. That’s where he learned the songs, and it still continued — that storytelling, the songs, the dancing, and so even though there was all this great pressure on Indian people, all this change around them, they still kept their songs, and it was really, the citrus groves —they allowed that solidarity.”
—Sean Milanovich (Cahuilla)
William Madrigal, Sr., and his family at Citrus Park, 2017, photo by Kate Alexandrite, courtesy Relevancy & History Project
Resources
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Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians opened in 2024 in Palm Springs and features permanent and temporary exhibitions interpreting Cahuilla life, community, activism, and artistic productions.
California Citrus State Historic Parkpreserves citrus heritage and engages visitors in learning long histories of the region.
Dorothy Ramon Learning Center (Banning) saves and shares Native American knowledge for now and in the future.
The Malki Museum (Banning) promotes scholarship and cultural awareness and encourages preservation of Southern California Indian Cultures (as well as other Indians having historical and cultural ties to Southern California) for future generations.
Mother Earth Clan is a collective of Indigenous women sharing the cultural heritage of Southern California Indian People, with an emphasis on traditional core values, practices, and arts.
Sherman Indian Museum is on the grounds of the Sherman High School, an off-reservation boarding school founded 1901, and preserves a wealth of materials related to Sherman and Native American histories and cultures.
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Pá'čapa: A Mt. Rubidoux Story is a documentary film directed by (30 min., 2024, directors: Rosy Aranda, Blossom Maciel, Daisy Ocampo, Lorene Sisquoc) is a short documentary that centers local Native perspectives (Serrano, Cahuilla, and Tongva) of what is known as Mt. Rubidoux, a mountain located in Riverside.
Sweet and Sour Citrus is a website offering exhibitions, digital essays, short videos, and teaching resources that relate especially to the histories of the Inland Empire.
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A People’s History of the I.E. Digital Archive has a number of collections with citrus-related material.
Sherman Indian Museum is on the grounds of the Sherman High School, an off-reservation boarding school founded 1901, and preserves a wealth of materials related to Sherman and Native American histories and cultures.
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