Dirt and Iron
The Industrial Revolution in the Delta
From Factories to the Fields
The construction of clam shell dredge buckets took place at the Stockton Iron Works, on modern day Fremont Street in Stockton. The Stockton Iron Works was an example of a foundry, or a factory that makes melts metals such as iron, steel, or copper and pours the molten metal into a mold, forming a casting.
In the 1890s, San Joaquin County and parts of Sacramento, Solano, and Contra Costa Counties would come to have large numbers of foundries, mainly because the region presented geographical challenges to agriculture. In the Delta, even the reclaimed islands and peninsulas were too muddy in the wet season and too soft in the dry season for horses or traditional steam powered harvesters to work – it was all to common for workers to quite literally be stuck in the mud. In the drier parts of the Central Valley, wheat agriculture required harvesters and that could easily adapt to changing terrains, which also required the need for new types of equipment.
As of 1910, San Joaquin County had over fifty foundries, mostly stationed in Stockton, Lodi, and Tracy. Nearby Stanislaus and Contra Costa Counties also had large numbers of foundries, centered in Modesto and Brentwood.
In addition to agricultural machines and equipment for moving earth, many foundries in the Delta region also specialized in building wind turbines or irrigation pumps. For example, Samson Iron Works in Stockton built many large-scale irrigation pumps to bring water to farmland. The Smith Mechanic Shop in Lathrop, California, built over a dozen types of windmills for power generation between 1900 and 1930. The Davis Regulating Windmill Company of Stockton, in operation between 1883 and the 1940s, built thousands of windmills that were used across San Joaquin County.
