CV History: Dates, the Coachella Valley’s Top Agricultural Crop, Were Introduced to the Area 125 Years Ago

CV History: Dates, the Coachella Valley’s Top Agricultural Crop, Were Introduced to the Area 125 Years Ago

The Coachella Valley is sometimes called the Date Capital of the United States, for good reason: More than 90 percent of the United States’ commercial date-farming acreage is in California, and of that, 95 percent is in the Coachella Valley. The date palm has been cultivated by man for thousands of years. Domesticated date palms probably originated in West Asia during the fourth millennium BCE, and later expanded throughout North Africa. The dat…