Fresno, CA Summary

photo by gusto

“Fresno” is Spanish for “ash tree,” and this central California city was named for the ash trees that grew along the banks of the Fresno River.

At the heart of one of America’s richest farming areas, the San Joaquin Valley, Fresno is known as “the Raisin Capital of the World” and is home to the Sun-Maid Growers Cooperative and the world’s largest raisin processing plant. Fresno, at 185 miles southeast of San Francisco, is a popular stop on the way to nearby Yosemite, Kings Canyon, and Sequoia National Parks and the Sierra and Sequoia National Forests. The local population has nearly doubled, to about 400,000, in the last 20 years. This is mostly due to many families from urban San Francisco and Los Angeles escaping high housing prices and seeking more space for less money.

Pulitzer prize-winning playwright and novelist William Saroyan was born in Fresno in 1908, and the Fresno Metropolitan Museum of Art, History, and Science houses a gallery in his honor.

The African-American Historical and Cultural Museum has an extensive photographic display, and the Artes Americas Museum features Hispanic art. Sicilian immigrant, Baldasare Forestiere, spent 40 years carving out the Forestiere Underground Gardens. It is 10 acres of rooms, tunnels, grottoes and even an aquarium that is 20 feet below ground. Today the underground gardens are a museum.

Chaffee Zoological Gardens in Roeding Park has a tropical rainforest; tigers, lions, grizzly bears, tule elk, and hooting siamangs; and a reptile house. Woodward Park is home to the Shin-Zen Japanese Friendship Gardens, opened in 1975 and dedicated to Fresno’s sister city, Kochi, Japan.

No tour of Fresno is complete without a stop at the Santa Fe Depot, a railway station built in 1896 in the California Mission Revival style. During February and March, the 62-mile selfguided driving tour along the Blossom Trail is resplendent with blooming almond, apricot, plum, lemon, and peach trees. Even though fastfood outlets dot the landscape, the rich ethnic mix of the area means that almost any cuisine is available, from Armenian to Vietnamese.

There is bus service and daily train service, and Fresno Yosemite International Airport is nearby.