From [The Greening of the California Desert](https://www.henrygeorge.org/caldes.htm) by E. Robert Scrofani:

“Wright authored an act in 1887, signed by Governor Bartlett on March 7,1887, to give farmers new powers and thereby weaken the hold of the cattle ranchers and land speculators.
…

The farmers would use this power to form a special assessment district with the power of eminent domain to overcome riparian rights and the power to raise funds for dams and canals through the sale of bonds. The bonds would be paid off by a tax on the value of the land in the district. This financing arrangement was ingenious because it imposed no burden on the capital resources of the farmers.
…

The key principle was that landowners paid the land tax, whether they used the water or not, since it was the availability of the water that increased the value of their land.

The principles that underpinned this elegant fiscal system were sophisticated. Every landholder in an irrigation district was taxed not according to "ability to pay," nor on what each produced, but only in proportion to the value of land to which he has the deed.”

The Wright Act subsequently broke the power of land monopoly in rural California and made it one of the top food producers in the world. It’s a simple demonstration that we should not tax what people produce, but instead tax (or do away with if possible/preferable) what is non-reproducible.

Another LVT success in California came when Georgist mayor Edward Robeson Taylor used it to [rebuild](http://www.hartfordinfo.org/issues/documents/taxes/htfd_courant_043006.asp) San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake, to tremendous success.

California has a rich history of using land as a tax base to achieve great things, it needs to be brought back.