this a much more used route especially for passengers. The other main sailing ship route was going around Cape Horn, about a 120-day (via Clippers) or 200 day trip by regular sailing ship. Nearly all freight to California till 1869 took this long route around South America—shipping by ship has nearly always been relatively slow but cheap. Overland shipping was too difficult and took too long for nearly all cargo. The First Transcontinental Telegraph replaced the Pony Express in 1861 and established the first rapid communication with the east coast. The First transcontinental railroad was completed across the future states of Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah and the new states of Nevada (est. 1864) and California in 1869 and cut this trip to about 7 days. This rail link tied California and the rest of the Pacific states firmly into the union and led to much more rapid and profitable commerce between the states. In 1886 the first refrigerated cars on the Southern Pacific Railroad entered operation. The loading of such cars with oranges, at Los Angeles on February 14, 1886, started an economic boom in the citrus industry of Southern California, by making deliveries of perishable fruits and vegetables to the eastern United States possible. Early farming in the state was primarily concentrated near the coast, and the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta in the Central Valley. Winter wheat was an early crop that grew well without irrigation if planted in the fall and harvested in the spring. By the 1880s extensive grape fields for producing wine were being planted in many areas in California. Many of the vine stock originally came from France and other parts of Europe. Starting in the late 1880s, Chinese workers and other laborers were used to construct hundreds of miles of levees throughout the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta's waterways in an effort to control flooding, reclaim and preserve flooded land that could be converted into farmland. This area now often grows extensive rice crops. Subsequent irrigation projects have brought many more parts of the Central Valley into productive agriculture use. The Central Valley Project, formed in 1935 to redistribute water from northern California to the Central valley and Southern California helped develop more of the Central Valley. Water for agricultural and municipal purposes was captured in the spring from snow melt in the Sierra Nevada (U.S.) and stored for later irrigation use with an extensive system