On Nov 1, 4:54*pm, FishWisher wrote:
On Nov 1, 12:20*pm, "Calif Bill" wrote:



"FishWisher" wrote in message

....
On Oct 31, 3:04 pm, "Calif Bill" wrote:

wrote in message

....
On Oct 31, 8:04 am, FishWisher wrote:

On Oct 30, 6:41 am, wrote:

Dale, what is that canal used for?

It was dug off Old River for farm irrigation - or that's what I've
been told. There are irrigation pumps along the canal for pumping the
water over the levees, so that make sense.

Dalewww.FishWisher.com

Cool, from your pics it looked like a pretty good sized canal so I was
curious if it was for irrigation or barges to something or what.

It may have also been for barges. Sugar Cut is a lateral canal to
Grantline
and that went to the Spreckels Sugar Beet plant.

I wouldn't doubt that barges (and perhaps more) plied the canal. The
nearby plant is a Holly Sugar plant, Spreckles is no more and was in
Manteca, a nearby town. A shopping center sits on the old Spreckles
site. (I used to haul sugar and molasses out of that plant years ago.)
Lots of ferries plied the delta years ago, hauling all kinds of farm
products. Here's a grand site for learning about the California Delta:www.californiadelta.org

Dalewww.FishWisher.com

I thought the plant was a Spreckles when it was running. *With all the
housing around Tracy, there is no way that a sugar beet processing plant
could run. *The process generates some of the nastiest smells possible from
vegetation.

Several years ago ('96) Holly and *Spreckels merged and called
themselves Holly Sugar. When the company was bought out by Imperial
Sugar, they dropped Holly and went back to Spreckels. They have plants
in Mendota (near Fresno), Brawley, Ca (near the Mexican border),
and... Tracy. I checked the website to catch up on the facts.www.spreckelssugar.com. When I drove truck back in the 70s, they had
plants in Salinas, Woodland and Manteca, too. I hauled molasses
between all of them. Those were the days...

Dalewww.fishwisher.com

P.S. I just read that Tracy does not process the beets any longer,
but is used for packaging and distribution. I noticed recently that
the plant has no appearance of actual processing - and thought that
maybe it was closed down.