Jardins souterrains de Fresno

Baldassare Forestiere, un jeune et naif immigré sicilien débarqua en Amérique au début des années 1900, convaincu d'y bâtir sa fortune sur la culture du citron. Il n'en sera rien, car Baldassare va se découvrir une passion de bâtisseur. Il va passer 40 années de sa vie à Fresno (Californie) à creuser un immense réseau de passages souterrains, de grottes, d'habitations troglodytes à partir d'anciennes catacombes.Il plantera alors cette fabuleuse oasis souterraine d'agrumes et de vigne, créant ainsi ce paysage unique en son genre. Baldassare Forestiere was the ingenious creator and builder of a large maze of underground rooms and passageways that he patterned after the ancient catacombs,and which can still be seen today in Fresno, California. A young and naive Sicilian immigrant with no formal education, he came to America in the early 1900s to build a
citrus empire. Instead, he spent the next 40 years of his life carving out the useless farmland he had purchased for such into a habitable underground oasis adorned with luscious fruit trees and grapevines that he planted underground. He never intended to spend his life digging his way to success, but rather to free himself from the iron rule of his father and prove that he was a worthy and capable businessman.
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