This photo shows the Whitney Ranch located in the today’s City of Rocklin. Joel Parker Whitney arrived in San Francisco in 1852 at the age of seventeen. Starting in 1855, Parker’s father and brothers began acquiring land in the Rocklin area and building a sheep ranch that they named Spring Valley Ranch. Eventually, the farm would cover some 128, 400 acres of land.

Whitney’s ranch included sheep and a wide variety of agricultural products, and as the above photo indicates, tobacco. During the 19th Century, there was a push to grow tobacco in California, where the climate was so conducive to producing so many different crops. The absence of summer rain was notable as late rains would harm the plant, which happened more frequently back in the southeast, and the southern US, where summer showers were a regular occurrence. This article below is from the Pacific Rural Press, Volume 50, Number 1, 6 July 1895, talks about the exciting future for tobacco growing in California.

It appears that the growing of tobacco in California was a happening thing during the late 19th Century. Why it never took off, with most being grown in the southern United States, I don’t know.