Summers in California's Central Valley are no joke, and in the early 1900s, there was no AC unit to save you. According to the NationalRegister of Historic Places, the official U.S. government database of historic sites, one Fresno property has been recognized since 1977 for how one man solved that problem. He went underground for 40 years straight.
His name was Baldassare Forestiere, and more than a century after he began digging, what he left behind still stands, tucked away in a quiet Fresno neighbourhood.
A cellar that turned into a lifelong obsession
Forestiere was born July 8, 1879, in a small hamlet, Filari, near Rometta, on the northeast corner of Sicily. He immigrated to the U.S. in the early 1900s after a falling out with his father. He first spent time on the East Coast before purchasing land in Fresno, hoping to make a living growing citrus fruit. But there was one major problem. Most of the soil was hardpan, a thick, cement-like layer that citrus roots could not penetrate, and the summer heat made it almost unbearable to work the land.
So Forestiere dug himself a little cellar to cool off. He may have been inspired by Roman catacombs and Sicilian wine cellars he remembered from home. The Forestiere Historical Center, a family-run organization that documents his life and now runs the site, says he liked it so much that he kept at it, one room at a time, for the next four decades.
