In Octopus’s Garden: How Railroads and Citrus Transformed Southern California, archivist and historian Benjamin T. Jenkins argues that the railroad and citrus industries fundamentally altered the economic, ideological, and ecological landscapes of Southern California from the 1870s to the 1950s. Pushing back on older scholarship that saw the railroads as purely extractive entities, Jenkins shows how railroad magnates and agricultural capitalists created mutually beneficial economic and political relationships. Joining a host of studies that insist on seeing economic development through a critical ecological and capitalist lens, the author maintains that these two industries changed Southern California in three ways: first, by restructuring the regional economy; second, by altering the landscape; and third, by developing labor networks and racial logics (16). These three processes eased the tensions between agricultural and industrial development in the public’s mind as it encountered the “Octopus’s Garden,” Jenkins’s term for the relationship between railroads (the octopus) and citrus (the garden) (3).

The monograph is organized around six chronological chapters. The first two trace the experiences of Spanish mission agriculturalists and Native workers alongside the transformations brought about by Mexican Independence and U.S. conquest. Jenkins then shows how the railroad and then the citrus industry took root in Southern California during the 1870s. With rail connecting them to eastern markets, growers could successfully turn a profit. Chapter three turns to the last two decades of the nineteenth century, “the boom” (83). Railroad firms and growers leveraged science and technology to lay new tracks, alter waterways, and build industrial packhouses. Yet, Jenkins writes, “[d]espite their early positive relationship, railroad and orange growers clashed over shipping costs,” leading to conflict (108). The Progressive Era, as he argues in chapter four, brought reform-minded politicians and public hostility toward monopolies. Growers took advantage of this hostility to pressure railroads to lower rates and increase the number of refrigerated rail cars. The State of California also helped citrus growers during this era by researching plant species and diseases. Although Jenkins includes commentary on citrus and railroad workers throughout the book, chapter five focuses on their labor rebellions in the 1920s and 1930s. Capitalists responded harshly to workers’ collective resistance, crushing dissent and increasingly circulating racially coded citrus labels to re-racialize and undermine the demands of nonwhite workers. The final two chapters trace the postwar “demise of the Octopus’s Garden” in Southern California alongside an examination of sites of public memory (221).

Much of this history, especially as it relates to the citrus industry, has already been well covered, but by analyzing railroads’ connections with citrus growers, Jenkins offers a fresh take on a familiar topic.Footnote ¹ For instance, in chapter four, Jenkins shows how railroad firms lobbied the California state government on behalf of the growers, helping to secure funding for the Citrus Experiment Station, a state-run agricultural research laboratory. The Citrus Experiment Station later spawned the Citrus Institute, which provided lectures and literature to growers across California touting the merits of scientific agriculture. Railroad magnates had good reason to push these policies at the state level, Jenkins argues, because “improving the agricultural techniques of farmers guaranteed the railroad a steadier supply of freight traffic” (141).

Jenkins’s book is enriched by his analysis of Native American workers, promotional literature, and sites of commemoration. Most histories of California tend to leave Native workers in the nineteenth century, thereby reinforcing the “Vanishing Indian” myth. Jenkins helps us to understand the ideological power of this myth and critique it by tracing the experiences of Native workers in California agribusiness. He examines the lives of workers at the Sherman Institute, a school for Native Americans in Riverside, California, to analyze the “productive agency of Native Americans” in the twentieth century (159). Native laborers at Sherman worked on irrigation projects as well as in the fields and packinghouses of Southern California. Jenkins argues that “Native Americans financially benefited” from the citrus industry, despite their exploitation (160). In doing so, Native workers challenged the “notion of white progress as a driving force of citriculture” (162). Moreover, Jenkins does an excellent job of analyzing how promotional material, especially citrus crate labels, became increasingly racist over time, cementing the Octopus’s Garden as “a white man’s paradise” that erased the contributions of nonwhite workers by depicting them as stuck in an exotic past juxtaposed against a modern, industrial, and white future (179). These images and narratives, Jenkins argues, shaped popular perceptions of nonwhite workers in the region. Finally, Jenkins presents a fascinating analysis of commemorative sites and their impact on collective memory. Museums, murals, and historical parks continue to tell the story of citrus and railroads in Southern California. Some, like the Gluck Gateway mural in Riverside, which depicts the history of the city up to the twenty-first century, tell a complex story. The mural includes images of Native American workers and scholars, citrus experiment stations, and railroads carrying citrus to market, suggesting the settler colonial underpinnings of both industries. But by erasing nonwhite workers from public history, other commemorative sites continue to uphold the whitewashed narratives these industries presented, then and now, in promotional material. This public history angle offers a fresh and welcome analysis of regional memory.

Octopus’s Garden greatly contributes to our understanding of the relationship between industry and agriculture in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Jenkins provides a thorough accounting of how railroads helped build Southern California into an agribusiness hub. Moreover, he provides a crucial addition to our understanding of agrarian politics during the Gilded Age – best represented by the Populists – by showing how citrus growers and railroad titans eventually worked together for mutual benefit. Citrus growers did pressure railroads to lower rates and improve services, but they never supported government ownership over the railroads and other public utilities. This history reveals a critical point of cooperation, rather than outright hostility, between agriculture and industry at the turn of the twentieth century.

Despite these strengths, Octopus’s Garden could have more thoroughly traced the post-World War II changes to the Southern California citrus industry through a more nuanced analysis of lemon production and plant diseases. In places like Ventura County, lemon production continued to increase during the postwar era, and citrus growers wrestled with plant diseases including quick decline (also known as citrus tristeza virus). Pinning the decline of the citrus industry on quick decline and suburbanization makes for a legible narrative, but it does not fully capture the complex ecological and economic terrain in postwar Southern California. Yet this critique does not take away from the readability and significance of Octopus’s Garden, which offers the first book-length treatment of the relationship between the citrus and railroad industries. This book advances compelling arguments, opens a variety of questions, and makes a strong case for other historians to continue its research agenda. It should be read by historians of agriculture, labor, business, and California.