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If you ask about California history, most people are familiar with the Gold Rush, but there’s much more to the history of America’s most populated state than just miners and gold. California is the biggest producer of agriculture products in the nation, and the state’s history is marked by entrepeneurs who built agricultural empires that seem almost unimaginable today.
Two of those entrepeneurs, Hugh Glenn and Henry Miller, are the subject of Ann Foley Scheuring’s Valley Empires, a new book that examines two half-forgotten figures in California history who had a profound effect on the development of California’s enormous agricultural industries. Henry Miller, founder of the land and cattle empire Miller & Lux, owned more than a million acres and was the largest landowner in the U.S. at the time of his death in 1916. Hugh Glenn’s dominance of the wheat industry led to the nickname “The Wheat King” and culminated in an unsuccessful run for state governor before his untimely murder in 1883. Although the two men came from radically different backgrounds (Miller was an impoverished German immigrant, Hugh Glenn a physician from Missouri), both seized on opportunity to create empires within their lifetimes.
For those interested in California history, Valley Empires offers a glimpse into a little explored, though very important, chapter in the history of our state.
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