The Land of Bashan Bears Fruit Annually!

 July 2, 2026

   Yes, the young profit, James Collins Brewster, made a very absurd prediction, and most of the Oatman family, lost their lives pursuing it.

The Survivor Olive Oatman, 1856

   To the followers who made it to the Land of Bashan, almost all of them had to be disappointed, if not crushed. The majority of the Oatmans did not live to see it, although Olive and Lorenzo lived to see it—and they left as soon as they could. One of the Brewsterites who made it to the Land of Bashan, wrote this letter to her father back home:

"It seems that it never rains here, to do any good or hurt. The ferrymen say they have been here ten months, and it has not rained enough to wet their shirts through. In consequence of there being no turf here,  it is very dusty, as the wind blows two days out of seven; and when the wind does not blow, about three o'clock, mi[d]gets (gnats) bite unmercifully."

—Mrs. Kelly

   Disheartened by the harsh reality of what they witnessed, and no doubt bitterly disillusioned about the prophesy of their leader, the Brewsterites pushed on towards the California coast where most of them eventually settled.

   And, so, what happened to the so-called Land of Bashan?

Ironies of Ironies
    Thanks to Teddy Roosevelt and the newly minted Bureau of Reclamation in 1902, The Yuma Project diverted Colorado River water to irrigate more than 58,000 acres along the river, all the way to the Mexican border. 

New advances in equipment helped build canals

on the Yuma Project.

   The water turned the harsh desert into a lush tableland supporting 275 farms and 90,000 residents. Farming year round, today these farms produce $196 million in crops every year. The Yuma Chamber of Commerce claims that 90% of all wintertime leafy vegetables in the United States come from this area—an area once prophesized as the Land of Bashan.

The Yuma farming area from the air.

"The wilderness and the wasteland shall fall away and the desert will rejoice and blossom as the rose."
—James Collins Brewster