The Eastern Sierra from the now desert-like Owens Valley… it was an active and lively farming community in the early 1900s when Los Angeles came up and quietly bought up farm after farm for the water rights. Once LA had critical mass of water rights, they started building canals and pipelines to move the water to LA. Very controversial and led to bloody battles between the locals and LA’s thugs. The locals lost. LA bulldozed the farm buildings away such that today it looks like there never were farms here.