Because asparagus has been found growing wild in so many places about the world, there are many opinions as to its actual place of origin. Some scholars place this tasty member of the lily family in the eastern Mediterranean area or in Asia Minor.

Others say East Central Europe is the ancestral home of asparagus. Regardless of its origin, we do not that asparagus has been cultivated for at least 2,500 years.

The Greeks and Romans enjoyed asparagus as a food and valued it for supposed medicinal properties as well. Early records suggest its value in preventing bee stings, aiding heart ailments, dropsy, and toothaches. Teas and syrups were made from all parts of the plant. If you were sick, you might drink it, bathe in it, inhale it, use it as a mouthwash, or apply it as a skin plaster. Asparagus was also prized . . . as an aphrodisiac.

We know asparagus is a good source of vitamin A and C and of the minerals potassium and phosphorous. Modern medicine uses the root of the plant as a diuretic. Beautiful and delicious, asparagus is also low in calories when left alone.

By the time of the Renaissance, the growing beds of Northern Italy were famous. More than one historian has written of the asparagus of Ravenna where three stalks easily made a pound. And, Louis XIV of France gave land and a title to his gardener who found a way to provide the monarch asparagus year-around. He did so by building "stove houses" or green houses and heating the beds inside. It wasn't long after this that the Germans began producing white asparagus - still considered a delicacy in many parts of the world.

The first hardy souls to pioneer America had the good taste to bring asparagus with them. Some say the English brought it over, others say it was the Dutch. It probably doesn't matter. With the movement west came hardy and industrious individuals - people who were farmers, entrepreneurs, and speculators. In the California heartland, they found soil of extraordinary variety and composition. And, the climate was as challenging. To understand and appreciate this land's potential for productivity took a wonderful act of imagination on the part of agricultural interests. At the confluence of California's two greatest rivers, the Sacramento and the San Joaquin, they found the rich peat of the delta lands. Here was an agrarian frontier to conquer.

The earliest recorded growing of asparagus in California was in the northern delta in 1852. The market was strictly local until August 1900. On that date, the first trainload of asparagus was sent east. Shipped from the Hickmott Cannery on Bouldin Island, the twenty carloads began a marketing revolution. With the easy and regular availability of canned asparagus, Americans across the country fell under the spell of nature's most perfect vegetable.

In 1919, Thomas Foon Chew built the Bayside Cannery at Isleton. Foon brought to the delta years of experience in the cannery business. Foon devised and built asparagus sorting and processing equipment which was, in effect, the prototype of that found in today's canneries. Because the peat soil was soft and retained its moisture, ideal for the formation and nurturing of tender stalks, Foon's Bayside Cannery became the first cannery to package green asparagus. It wasn't long before Tom Foon had earned the title of Asparagus King. At the peak of operation, Bayside's canning volume was over six hundred thousand cases a year.

Scows, barges and riverboats brought asparagus from the field to the cannery. Later, Model A Fords traveled newly graded dirt roads across the delta. Processed asparagus was shipped by rail to the mid-west and by boat to the bay area. Steamships carried the product to eastern markets. The Delta King and Delta Queen, magnificent stern-wheeled riverboats launched in Stockton in 1925, hauled the bulk of the canned products daily to Sacramento and then on to the bay area for transshipment.

>In 1903, nearly 6000 acres were planted to asparagus in the San Joaquin-Sacramento delta region. In 2000, over 37,000 acres represented a statewide crop value of $144,448,000.

For better than a century, the ingenuity of the California farmer, assisted by state and university scientists, has improved the quality of the vegetable and the productivity of the land. Growers and gourmands are the new poets singing of the development of hybrids with greater yields and large, tight-tipped spears.

The methods by which asparagus is planted, grown, and harvested is much the same today as it was a hundred years ago. Horses wearing specially designed peat shoes have been replaced by the track-laying caterpillar tractors of today. Hybrid plants with greater yields and disease resistance have replaced the early plants. The balance of production is a slice of history preserved in practice.

Adapted from history written by James Shebl and printed in The Original Stockton Asparagus Festival Cookbook in 1987.