Fresno

About Fresno

Fresno was founded in 1872, when the Central Pacific Railroad built a station in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley and named it for the Spanish word for the ash trees that grew along the nearby river. Irrigation canals soon turned the dry plain into one of the richest farming regions on earth, and Fresno grew into the capital of the valley's raisin, grape, fruit and nut country. It was incorporated in 1885 and is now the fifth-largest city in California.

Immigrants from many lands shaped the city, including a large Armenian community that produced the writer William Saroyan, along with Japanese, Mexican, Hmong and Punjabi families. Their traditions show in Fresno's food, churches and festivals. Downtown keeps the 1928 Warnors Theatre and the 1894 Old Fresno Water Tower, while the Tower District, grown up around a 1939 Art Deco movie house, is the city's arts and dining neighborhood.

Among Fresno's most unusual sights are the Forestiere Underground Gardens, hand-dug by a Sicilian immigrant over four decades. Families head to the Fresno Chaffee Zoo and Woodward Park, and each spring the Fresno County Blossom Trail fills the orchards with flowers. Fresno is also the closest big city to Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sequoia national parks.