During the 1880s, wheat prices dropped in Sacramento with the railroad’s advent and refrigeration’s introduction. However, the fruit became a significant cash crop due to the advent of the railroad and refrigeration. Because of this, grain ranches profiting from wheat began to bankrupt and close between 1883 and the turn of the 20th century; the ranches’ original owners soon died, and their heirs gave their farms to people seeking them. During this period, there was a land boom, and hundreds of thousands of acres were irrigated by new fruit ranchers. Sacramento’s agriculture, however, was noticeably hampered by the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.
#1 Sacramento Daily and Weekly Union newspaper office at 520 J Street about the 1880s. The newspaper started in Sacramento in 1851.
#2 Weisel’s Block. Cor. K & 5th Sts. Sacramento, 1880
View of three-story Weisel's Block building housing Wm. D. Comstock, Furniture Dealer and Wilcox, Powers & Co. Wholesale Liquor Dealers. Horse-drawn Sacramento Street Railroad Company passanger car at left; wagons and carriages in the street; furniture on display along covered sidewalk along the building; people in the street and on the sidewalk; two American flags on top of the building.
![The Margaurite [sic] Shows two-story residential building surrounded by wrought iron fence on corner of Seventh and Q Streets, Sacramento, 1884](https://www.bygonely.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Sacramento_1880s_123.jpg)
