building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

Settlements, such as Vineland (1861), New Jersey, Anaheim (1857) [Figure 58],
California and Silkville Prairie Home (1870), Kansas, which Nordhoff defined as
“colonies not‐communistic”, were also of a certain interest.
In Anaheim in particular, the Los Angeles Vineyard Society appointed George
Hansen, an engineer of German origin as manager of the enterprise. Hansen
implemented a series of hydraulic works to guarantee the supply of water during
the hot Californian summers, thus radically modifying the landscape [Figure 59].
Together with 50 men 131 he committed to the enterprise of improving the 1,165
acres of land purchased in the neighbourhood of Los Angeles:
It was agreed to divide the eleven hundred and sixty‐five acres into fifty
twenty‐acre tracts, and fifty village lots, the village to stand in the centre
of the purchase. Fourteen lots were also set aside for school‐houses and
other public buildings. With the first contribution the land was bought.
The fifty associates had to pay about fifty dollars each for this purpose.
[…] Mr. Hansen, editor’s note, employed Spaniards and Indians as
laborers; and what he did was to dig a ditch seven miles long to lead
water out of the Santa Anna River, with four hundred and fifty miles of
subsidiary ditches and twenty‐five miles of feeders to lead the water
over every twenty‐acre lot. This done, he planted on every farm eight
acres of grapes and some fruit‐trees; and on the whole place over five
miles of outside willow fencing and thirty‐five miles of inside fencing.
Willows grow rapidly in that region, and make a very close fence,
yielding also fire‐wood sufficient for the farmer's use. All this had to be
done gradually, so that the payments for labor should not exceed the
monthly contributions of the associates, for they had no credit to use in
the beginning, and contracted no debts. When the planting was done,
the superintendent cultivated and pruned the grape‐vines and trees,
and took care of the place; and it was only when the vines were old
enough to bear, and thus to yield an income at once, that the
proprietors took possession. At the end of three years the whole of this
labor had been performed and paid for; the vines were ready to bear a
crop, and the division of lots took place 132 .
131 “The Anaheim associates consisted in the main of mechanics, and they had not a farmer among
them. They were all Germans. There were several carpenters, a gunsmith, an engraver, three watchmakers,
four blacksmiths, a brewer, a teacher, a shoemaker, a miller, a hatter, a hotel ‐ keeper, a
bookbinder, four or five musicians, a poet (of course), several merchants, and some teamsters. It
was a very heterogeneous assembly; they had but one thing in common: they were all, with one or
two exceptions, poor. Very few had more than a few dollars saved; most of them had neither cash
nor credit enough to buy even a twenty‐acre farm; and none of them were in circumstances which
promised them more than a decent living” in NORDHOFF, Charles, The Communistic Societies of the
United States, from personal visit and observation, London, John Murray, 1875, p. 362
132 Ibid., p. 362‐363
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