Places
"Odes to the Land"
William
Manly, c.1890 New arrivals to the Santa Clara Valley could often scarcely contain their enthusiasm for the land before them. Whether from the Old World or the New, people marveled at the place, which might remind them of other lands but at the same time was so very different.
William Manly - an intrepid 19th-century explorer of North America’s wild places – wrote about his arrival in the Santa Clara Valley in his book, Death Valley in ’49. He described himself as “a stranger in a strange land, everything was new and wonderful”. Arriving in the Willow Glen area near the Arroyo Tulares de las Canoas on foot, Manly found “a large extent of willows so thick, and so thickly woven together with wild blackberry vines, wild roses and other thorny plants, that it appeared at first as if I never could get through.” The willows standing fifty feet tall awed him, as did the climate of the place. “The sun rose without a cloud, and a little later the sea breeze from the bay blew gently over the valley, making the climate perfectly delightful in its temperate coolness, a true paradise on earth it seemed to me.”
Authors would continue to laud the beauty of the Santa Clara Valley, its small hills and interior valleys breaking up the otherwise flat plain. To many Americans, the Valley seemed a special gift to them – a place where the sun always shines and the earth produces in abundance. Life seemed easy in the Valley where the sun always shines and every seed produces in abundance.
Read transcript of “The Santa Clara Valley” poem from Sunshine, Fruit and Flowers.
