What role did agriculture play in Carsons history?
By the late 1700s, Juan Jose Dominguez was raising hundreds of horses and cattle on the Rancho San Pedro. Branded with the DR of the Dominguez family, vast cattle herds minded by vaqueros continued to shade the landscape throughout much of the century that followed, their hides shipped off to Europe for currency and supplies. In the last years of the nineteenth century, and into the next, the Dominguez heirs gradually leased or sold off portions of the ranch to European immigrants and migrants from other parts of the United States, many of whom set up small farms. The land in the vicinity of Carson slowly became a patchwork of small dairies, family farms with pens of chickens, and fields thick with barley, oat hay, lima beans, alfalfa, sugar beets, and vegetables. Amongst the farms, clumps of residential housing arose where regularly occurring floods could be kept at bay. But prior to World War II, Carson encompassed little more than small farms and a few industries. The post-war years
