February 22, 1946

February 1946. World War II is over and wartime production jobs were ending. During the war, Carl and Georgie worked a number of jobs in several places, finishing the war in Pocatello, Idaho. They elected to return to Iowa, where they both had family, but opted to make a grand tour of the west on the way. Georgie wrote a journal of the trip. The story starts here.

The next morning, we drove down to Sacramento. Passed many hops farms. Particularly noticed the tall barns and high arbors on which the hops vined. Arrived in Sacramento quite early in the morning and spent some time looking over the capitol grounds. The have a great number of different trees, all labeled, among them flowering eucalyptus and many types of palm trees. Looked at the exhibits in the Capitol. Then drove to Sutter’s Fort and spent several hours there. 

More from the scrapbook. A booklet about Sutter’s Fort, an image of the fort, one of Vallejo, CA, and the campanile at the University of California – Berkeley.

Also saw a Drive-In-Theatre near Sacramento, the first we had ever seen. Left Sacramento in mid-afternoon and drove to Burlingame through Vallejo, Richmond, Berkeley, and Oakland.

Google (ND) [Directions from Williams, CA, to Burlingame, CA] Retrieved February 3, 2021

Right outside of Sacramento the hills were green and very beautiful. We passed several eating places that sold curios, vegetables, and fruit. The traffic was very heavy as it was Washington’s Birthday, a state holiday in California. There was a great deal of war housing in the area and everything seemed so congested. In Oakland we met three nuns driving in the heaviest traffic – one of those unexpected sights California is famous for. We crossed the San Francisco Bay on the San Mateo Bridge which is supposed to be the longest bridge in the world – 7.2 miles.

We arrived in Burlingame about 6 o’clock ad found Earlene’s address.  She was at work so we went downtown and had dinner at a cafeteria. The trailer had a flat when we got back to the car so we had it fixed and went back to Earlene’s to wait for her.

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Walt’s Comments

Drive-in theaters had been around for a while, but they hadn’t reached southeastern Iowa just yet. And during WWII gas and tire rationing impacted driving habits a lot. So it’s not surprising that this would be something new to Carl and Georgie. Nuns driving would also have been a new thing, as nuns take a vow of poverty, so they wouldn’t own a car, and most churches and schools wouldn’t have a car either.

Hops in California

If you drove the same route today you probably wouldn’t see many hop farms. In fact, you may see none at all. Hop farming came to the West Coast in 1854, in response to increased demand for beer during the Gold Rush. It wasn’t long before California was the leading producer of hops in the US, an honor they held until Prohibition began. By 1940 Washington and Oregon had overtaken California as the biggest producers.

In the postwar years California produced fewer and fewer hops. Bigger breweries consolidated the beer market, and the California growers couldn’t compete on price with their counterparts in Washington and Oregon. By the 1960’s it was largely a thing of the past in California.

Today, with the popularity of craft brewing, there’s a renewed interest in growing hops in California (among many other places), but hops are still a pretty rare sight today.

Digging Deeper

The Sonoma Index-Tribune published an article in 2019 on the history of hops in the area.

The Hop Growers of America’s website also has a more general view of the history of hops in the US here.

The New York Film Academy has an interesting page on the history of the drive-in theater.