Life Down Under

By VERONIQUE de TURENNE

Feb. 18, 2002 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

FRESNO — Nearly a century after Baldasare Forestiere’s shovel first hit hardpan, the underground gardens that the Sicilian immigrant carved from his 70 useless acres continue to fascinate and flummox the world.

Fought over by family, marveled at by neighbors and mythologized by curiosity seekers, the labyrinth of 70 subterranean rooms, courtyards and corridors quickly became one of this city’s quirkiest tourist draws.

Decades of lawsuits and neglect followed Forestiere’s death at 67 in 1946. But since control of the gardens recently passed to his great-nephew Andre, a new era appears to be at hand.

Brides book the place for summer weddings. Businesses hold meetings and banquets at the site. Actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who toured the gardens earlier this year, is one of an estimated 15,000 annual visitors.

With the local tourist board planning to promote the gardens during a trip to New York, Andre hopes his eccentric uncle will finally get the respect he deserves.

“This place is an expression of the beauty of Baldasare’s soul,” said Andre Forestiere, Baldasare’s great-nephew by marriage. “It’s a feat of engineering and architecture. It’s eccentric, but taken as a whole it’s a work of art, and people are beginning to realize that.”

The realization has come slowly.

Baldasare Forestiere died without a will, and a dispute over the property landed the family in court. A promoter leased the gardens in the 1940s and ‘50s, filled the halls and rooms with earth to make them smaller, then billed the place as the bizarre home of “The Mole Man of Fresno.”

Rumors ran rampant. Some said Forestiere’s caverns were an expression of grief brought on when his fiancee refused to live underground. (His family says he was never engaged.) Baldasare Forestiere began his excavations in 1905, soon after learning that the San Joaquin Valley land he bought sight unseen was no more than a thin layer of topsoil over hardpan. Finding it unsuitable for the citrus grove he had hoped to plant, Forestiere found himself falling back on skills learned working in the subways of Boston and New York.

During his first Fresno summer, he used a pick and shovel to chip through the concrete-like dirt to create a cellar to escape the region’s brutal heat. He soon expanded the cellar into several rooms, in which Forestiere took up residence. He hired himself out as a farmhand and continued excavating his property.

“I don’t think people ever understood what Baldasare was trying to accomplish,” said Kenneth Scambray, a professor of English at the University of La Verne who grew up in Fresno. “Forestiere’s gardens became a sort of remembrance to him,” Scambray said. “He grew up in the hills of Messina, and when you look at the landscape there, it is laced with caves and catacombs and grottoes.”

Forestiere’s four decades of tunneling resulted in an estimated seven acres with carved courtyards, niches, patios, arches, benches, peepholes and elaborate passageways 12 to 25 feet below the surface. Architects and engineers marvel at his craftsmanship, which included skylights and ingenious vents to create a constant air flow.

“The Forestiere Underground Gardens are unique in the world,” said Brian Ziegler, director of tourism for the Fresno Visitor’s Bureau. Ziegler plans to talk up the gardens on a business trip to Manhattan next week.

“I’m going to pitch it hard,” Ziegler said. “We all think the city is lucky to have this place, and it really seems to speak to people.”