Salinas River

The Salinas River is the defining geographical feature of the Salinas Valley, a long narrow swale between two mountain ranges in Northern California. It winds and twists up the center of the valley until it falls at last into Monterey Bay. The river is not a constant presence; it is a part-time river, and its seasonal transformations govern the valley's rhythm of life.

Geography and Seasonal Cycle

The Salinas River flows through a valley that was once the bottom of a hundred-mile inlet from the sea. The river mouth at Moss Landing was centuries ago the entrance to this long inland water. In the winter of wet years, the streams that slip out of the hill canyons on both sides of the valley run full-freshet and swell the river until sometimes it rages and boils, bank full, and then it is a destroyer. The river tears the edges of the farm lands and washes whole acres down; it topples barns and houses into itself, to go floating and bobbing away. It traps cows and pigs and sheep and drowns them in its muddy brown water and carries them to the sea. When the late spring comes, the river draws in from its edges and the sand banks appear. In the summer the river does not run at all above ground. Some pools are left in the deep swirl places under a high bank. The tules and grasses grow back, and willows straighten up with the flood debris in their upper branches. The summer sun drives the river underground. It is not a fine river at all, but it is the only one the valley has, and so the people boast about it—how dangerous it is in a wet winter and how dry it is in a dry summer.

The River as a Symbol of the Valley's Character

The river's behavior mirrors the valley's larger pattern of wet and dry years. There are rich years when the rainfall is plentiful, but there are dry years too, and they put a terror on the valley. The water comes in a thirty-year cycle: five or six wet and wonderful years when there might be nineteen to twenty-five inches of rain, and the land shouts with grass; then six or seven pretty good years of twelve to sixteen inches; and then the dry years, when sometimes there is only seven or eight inches of rain. The land dries up, the grasses head out miserably a few inches high, great bare scabby places appear in the valley, the live oaks get a crusty look, the sagebrush is gray, the land cracks, the springs dry up, and the cattle listlessly nibble dry twigs. The farmers and ranchers are filled with disgust for the valley. The cows grow thin and sometimes starve to death. People have to haul water in barrels to their farms just for drinking. Some families sell out for nearly nothing and move away. And it never fails that during the dry years the people forget about the rich years, and during the wet years they lose all memory of the dry years.

The River in Human Life and Narrative

The river is a constant reference point for the characters who live in the valley. Adam Trask, looking out over his land, sees the river as a boundary and a resource. Samuel Hamilton, the water witch and well-digger, understands the river's hidden depths and the hard-pan layer that resists water, and he dreams of dynamiting holes through it to let the water in. The river's willows and sycamores band the valley in the middle, and its bed provides cover for hunting and play. The twins Cal and Aron hunt rabbits in the river bottom, and the willow tree by the pumphouse becomes a secret meeting place for Aron and Abra. The river is also a measure of the valley's potential: men look at the flat dry dusty valley and the ugly mushroom towns and see a loveliness, dreaming of the time when ditches will carry water all over the valley or deep wells with steam engines will pump the water up out of the guts of the world. The river, in its seasonal disappearance and return, embodies the valley's promise and its frustration.