The Forty Acres

Forty Acres is a rural district at the corner of Garces Highway and Mettler Avenue, three miles west of Delano, California. In 1966 a farmworker organization bought the barren, alkali parcel beside the city dump and turned it into a service center and union headquarters. Between 1966 and 1974, volunteers and supporters, led by builder Richard Chávez, constructed an adobe service station, the steel-frame Roy L. Reuther Memorial Building, a health clinic and a fifty-nine-unit residential building. They also added a well, a tree-shaded park, a stone memorial, a recreational field and roads. Most buildings follow a modest Mission Revival design. The property matters as the base of César Chávez and the United Farm Workers during the table-grape strike and boycott, the first permanent agricultural labor union in the country. Chávez's first public fast took place at the service station, drawing national attention, and the union's work contributed to California's 1975 farm labor law.