What did Yolo mean in 1919?

November 2, 2014 12:12 PM

I was playing around with Google's Ngram viewer and noticed this interesting graph. Any idea what drove the two peaks around 1885 and 1919?
posted by monkeys with typewriters to Writing & Language (7 answers total)

I'm not sure about the peaks themselves, but Yolo County, California was established as of California's statehood in 1850, which corresponds to the beginning of that first rise. I imagine the peaks are related.
posted by papayaninja at 12:16 PM on November 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

Searches in Google Books turn up a lot of references to "Yolo County, California" in that range. Mostly from sundry survey works with geographical and geological significance: atlases, soil surveys, etc. Why such things would spike in two specific years seems like either a historical idiosyncrasy of what people were interested in or perhaps an artifact of what books Google has OCRed.
posted by jackbishop at 12:18 PM on November 2, 2014

When I clicked on the link for Google books, Yolo County accounted for the top hits. (Yolo was gold rush territory and there was a second gold rush in 1880-1905 as new techniques made it more profitable. (according to this)
posted by metahawk at 12:19 PM on November 2, 2014

If you plot both "yolo" and "yolo county" you get this graph, which seems to show both peaks in the same years, so it seems like it's Yolo County.
posted by cushie at 12:20 PM on November 2, 2014 [2 favorites]

Indeed, you can search for a custom set of dates (if this link works it is for 1/1/1885 - 12/31/1885). The range for 1/1/1919 through 1/1/1920 is similar, and brings up the 1920 census, which could be a reason why various place names could spike in those years.
posted by papayaninja at 12:24 PM on November 2, 2014

Another clue: if you search British English vs. American English you can see that it's American English driving those peaks.
posted by BlahLaLa at 12:30 PM on November 2, 2014

Hello from Yolo County, California. *waves*

I searched through the California Digital Newspaper Collection and didn't see anything terribly striking that happened in 1885. (I got bored and didn't look through 1919.) Yolo County was growing rapidly in 1885, and a lot of land was being sold, so that alone might warrant a mention in certain publications.

Another context in which Yolo was mentioned pretty often was "the Yolo side of the River." The Sacramento River serves as the boundary between Yolo and Sacramento counties for a good stretch.

My guess, though, is that a lot of those references are in almanacs, governmental agency reports, etc. Yolo has always been a high-output agricultural production center. (To this day, even.) I suspect that the spikes could be because of especially good or bad crop years.

For example, in May of 1885, there was a great infestation of locusts/grasshoppers that caused a lot of crop damage in the Sacramento Valley, including Yolo County. Could have been documented in a lot of governmental reports.

I also found one pub that says that the Agricultural Council, the California Farm Bureau Federation, and the State Department of Agriculture were all three formed in 1919. More Ag groups mean more publications which means more mentions of Yolo County.

Here's my favorite theory for 1919: Prohibition. Prohibition would have posed a major challenge to grain farmers and grape growers -- of which there are many in Yolo County.

I bet if you played around with the USDA's historical stats, you could narrow down the reasons for the spikes, because I'm willing to bet money that they're ag-related.

And a correction to something mentioned above -- Yolo County is far from gold country. Shouldn't have anything to do with the Gold Rush(es).
posted by mudpuppie at 2:43 PM on November 2, 2014