As I drove up the I-5 through San Diego, I saw many date palms along the way. It reminded me of the extensive history of the date and the attempts to grow it in the New World, they failed in the caribbean and they failed in North America, but now they are expanding throughout California, Arizona, and Mexico.
Before there was a United States and before there was a California the Spanish explored California. Missionaries follows and they brought with them among other things a bunch of date seeds. The planted the seeds and to their disappointment the date palms did not produce much fruit at all. Eventually date seeds made their way to hot climate areas like Bakersfield where it was discovered that dates could be produced in California. It took a long time before anyone could grow dates in the US. The dates were actually grown in what is now called Mecca in the Coachella Valley. Back in the early 1900s an Englishman started a date orchard. He brought from by boat which landed in New York and from New York to the Coachella Valley.
