Forestiere Underground Gardens

Digging down to escape the heat is a common idea; digging for forty years with a pick, a shovel and a wheelbarrow is not. Baldassare Forestiere, a Sicilian immigrant who came to America in 1901 to farm citrus, began carving an underground retreat in Fresno in the early 1900s. The National Register nomination, reproduced by Historic Fresno, dates the work 1906 to 1946 and says he dug through hardpan, a native sedimentary stone, working without blueprints. The operator says no plans were put on paper and that he patterned the place on the ancient catacombs he admired as a boy near his home town in Sicily.

The nomination describes "a complex of underground caverns, grottos, patios and garden courts" around his living quarters, linked by passageways and an auto tunnel about 800 feet long. Roman arches, columns and domes support the earth, skylights admit light, and one citrus tree was grafted with some seven varieties. Depths differ by source: the operator says the gardens reach as deep as 25 feet and cover more than 10 acres, while the nomination says some trees are planted as deep as 22 feet. Forestiere died in 1946 aged sixty-seven, and the nomination says the gardens were afterwards opened to the public as a museum. The operator says California designated them Registered Historical Landmark No. 916 in 1979.