UC Merced

Beet sugar refiners intensified agricultural production in the arid valleys of central California during the late 1880s. Building irrigation, railroad, and housing networks through the industry impacted the local environment. These efforts to control the movement of natural resources and grow sugar beets consolidated the region under a single crop. Irrigating a once arid landscape, and transporting goods and people across vast acreage, central California remains permanently altered by this infrastructure.

This dissertation documents the development and management of farmworker labor camps in California’s beet sugar industry. The Spreckels Sugar Company instituted industry-wide housing and labor practices that parallel the global sugar industry and place California’s Central Valley at the heart of the national beet-sugar industry. Founded in 1888 and operating until 1963, the sugar company operated 66,000 acres of land at its zenith, including 44 labor camps spread throughout central California and one company town in Salinas. Juxtaposing the spatial and social construction of these distinct living spaces, the labor camps and company town highlights the role of the ideal family in the development of these rural agricultural communities. The relationship between housing and the ideal family reveals the determinative role of race, class, and gender in the beet-sugar industry and California agriculture.