The land is bordered by an ocean on the east and mountains on the west. Beyond the mountains is a desert. To the south the mountains march down into the sea, with several small (mostly uninhabitable) islands. To the north the mountains peter out to low hill country near the coast, with more desert beyond (really rough country).

Does Mediterranean make sense? My closest experience with that environment is San Diego. Its along the coast, with mountains and desert behind it. But San Diego feels less isolated than the land I envision. (Maybe that feeling is due to cars and highways?)

I don't know if that environment could support a relatively large population with "primitive" farming techniques (oxen instead of tractors). Is that region Chaparral all the way from the mountains to the coast? What crops could my people grow there?

Did San Diego used to be forested? I don't want my people to be seafaring. What would they use to build homes and larger structures?

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Does Mediterranean make sense? My closest experience with that environment is San Diego. Its along the coast, with mountains and desert behind it. But San Diego feels less isolated than the land I envision.

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Actually Los Angeles is a slightly better parallel to what you're talking about. It's a basin, mostly surrounded by mountains. There's a desert (the Mojave) to the northeast.

It's basically a Mediterranean climate.

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Is that region Chaparral all the way from the mountains to the coast? What crops could my people grow there?

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Naturally? Pretty much chaparral back against the mountains and coastal sage scrub nearer the ocean in both cities.

Well, where I live (just outside Los Angeles), the soil is adobe clay with a white layer of old (mostly crushed) shells about six feet down, laid down by ancient river estuaries and old coastlines. Especially during the summer, you can grow just about anything in that clay soil (very rich), as long as you can water it. Of course, you also have to break into it. And adobe forms a crust that might almost as well be cement when it's dry. I imagine oxen could do the job, though. And pickaxes. So, if you've got a decent irrigation system, you're set. Since it's a Mediterranean climate, you can also grow a lot of things during the winter. But adobe clay soil holds water like you wouldn't believe, so you can't grow anything that needs to have the soil dry out between waterings during the winter.

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Did San Diego used to be forested? I don't want my people to be seafaring. What would they use to build homes and larger structures?

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Forested, no. Not at least in anything like recent times. There would have been oaks, mostly scrub oaks, in the chaparral. A few bigger oaks (Engelman) in some valleys. Sycamores along the river beds. There is one stand of Torrey pines just north of San Diego in Del Mar. Of course, there would be forests in the surrounding mountains, so there's the possibility of bringing lumber from the mountains. It'd be pretty labor intensive.

The mountains behind San Diego have a mixed forest--some oaks (mostly Golden oaks) mixed with certain types of pine and fir. The mountains behind Los Angeles have mostly conifer forests, but I believe those mounains are a little higher, too.

Most of the original structures built by the earliest settlers were made of adobe bricks. Clay, straw, and sun are all you need. Everything from original homes to the mission churches were made out of adobe. Quite a few are still standing, too. And nice, thick adobe walls provide good insulation, as a side benefit.

Oxen are the most surefooted and strongest of draft animals, but they're slower moving than horses or mules. A team of about eight horses or mules is capable of plowing up to ten acres per day in light soils, two acres in heavier soils.

A double furrow heavy plow can be worked by as few as four horses or mules or two oxen and turn about half what a team of eight horses can plow in a day, though an oxen plowing team traditionally pulling two side-by-side double furrow heavy plows consisted of eight oxen, which conceivably could plow fifteen or twenty acres a day.

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There are palm trees all over southern CA. Are they native?

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A region with climate conditions similar to Southern California would either need an extensive aquaduct and irrigation system or do mostly dryland farming of hearty species, grains in particular, like barley and corn and maybe oats. Wheat is pretty much out of the question because it's too warm a climate. Alfalfa would do well for livestock grazing.

Yucca are native to Southern California. One of the more dramatic species is the Joshua Tree, Yucca brevifolia. Yuccas have a lot of beneficial uses. The spiked bayonet-like leaves of some species work as effective fence barriers. Some societies planted them to fashion corrals. Pigs love the fruits, sort of like figs. The leaves are useful for fiber products, baskets, thread, yarn. etc. The flowers of some species are edible. Y. aloifolia, the most common in much of that region was widely used by natives throughout its range. Yucca's tuberous roots are a lot like potatoes after soaking and cooking to detoxify the plant. Cooked yucca root tastes a little strong and bitter, but not unpleasantly so.

Cactus, scrub shrubs, and some tree species growing alongside river courses pretty much are about all else for Southern California pre-aquaduct era, besides some hardy grass, sedge, and rush species, briar vines, and the like for a semi-arid climate.

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Cactus, scrub shrubs, and some tree species growing alongside river courses pretty much are about all else for Southern California pre-aquaduct era, besides some hardy grass, sedge, and rush species, briar vines, and the like for a semi-arid climate.

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So extrinsic, the physical features I described could support a few good-sized rivers to support farming, and still have the climate we're discussing? (This is a fantasy world; it doesn't need to mirror southern CA.)

It sounds like you are describing desert. Cactus, yucca, oh my! So is the ecology you described pretty much what one would expect between the "chaparral back against the mountains and coastal sage scrub nearer the ocean"?

The farming is sounding pretty challenging to support a couple of medium-to-large cities and lots of towns/villages. I just read the crash course on aqueducts and qanats. They could even play into my plot...

Just to make sure I am going down the right trail:

I definitely need the ocean and the surrounding mountain range with desert beyond. Populous coastal plain (sparse population as you head into the mountains). I don't want the people to be seafaring, which probably rules out large stands of quality trees. (Unless there is some other good reason why they don't have a shipping industry, even though ships from other countries visit once in a while.)

Given these parameters, is there a different climate that fits better?

Or for a completely creatively constructed region;

A mountain lakes region or two fed by orographic precipitation feeding several major rivers cutting from the foothills through a piedmont region meandering across a coastal plain and to the sea would fit the agriculture and irrigation bill nicely.

Prevailing winds blowing inland (Westerlies), ocean currents wrapping the coastline flowing clockwise from an equatorial region (eastern sunrise, perhaps a moon for tides' beneficial flushing?). A mountain range, say less than 100 miles inland, a broad piedmont and broad coastal plain in a temperate lattitude climate would support a vigorous population.

Maybe mid California, the Carolina's, even Virginia with its five major rivers and five inland peninsulas and large inland bay. The water hand laces the land hand there. Maybe coastal areas of Australia, Argentina, Brazil, even African regions near mountain ranges with ocean currents flowing from equatorial regions. Deserts on the other sides of the mountains.

Chile's Atacama Desert is a product of a mountain rain shadow and a temperature inversion layer caused by the cold Humboldt Current. Southwestern regions of Africa experience arid climates for similar reasons. The aridity of Southern California and Baja for similar reasons too.

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It sounds like you are describing desert. Cactus, yucca, oh my! So is the ecology you described pretty much what one would expect between the "chaparral back against the mountains and coastal sage scrub nearer the ocean"?

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Prickly pear cactus aren't really desert cactus. They would be found in drier parts of the coastal sage scrub and chaparral. You get different species as you go into the desert. Joshua trees are very dramatic, but (in the real world) are definitely a desert plant (Mojave). They also take a very long time to grow. Yucca (what I would call true yucca, with the sword-like leaves in a clump at the base) often grows on hillsides or the lower slopes of the mountains.

There can be all kinds of reasons why the people have not developed sea-going ships. In my opinion, it's most likely to be cultural. Basically, cultures that really wanted to found a way, if they had to bind leather hides over a wicker framework or make bundles of grasses. Other cultures (medieval China) knew how to build ships and had the materials, but turned their back on it. Without knowing more about your story

1) they could have a deep attachment to the land and not want to leave

2) there could be a cultural or religious taboo about going beyond the chain of islands you described into the deeper ocean.

3) maybe there are wicked currents off the coast (around those islands?), making it very difficult for a fledgling boating industry to get started. Then the occasional visitors are from places where they had an easier time learning to navigate and can now handle the currents.

Or any of a hundred other reasons.

Water for crops can come from two places: rivers and rainfall. A river can be naturally isolated, because it is only fertile right next to the river (or a conceivable distance for aqueducts.) So, you can isolate an area by having a river-dependent people where the river flows through a desert, like the Nile was for Egypt.

As for rainfall, you can have it placed in one the atmospheric cells for precipitation:

http://whatonearth.olehnielsen.dk/atmosphere.asp

The part on the Hadley cell helps explain why there is a longitudinal pattern to rainfall across the globe. Areas where warm air rises are more likely to dump water as they cool, making increased rainfall.

Also, being next to a mountain range will increase precipitation as air cools and loses moisture as it goes over the tops of mountains. The leeward side will be a desert. This is like the western United States, where California gets more rainfall from the moisture rich air from the sea, but then as the air passes over higher elevations, it dumps the water and you end up with desert in Nevada and Utah. Your situation is the same, but on the eastern coast of a continent. So you'd need a prevailing wind that goes the other way, so you'd need your planet to rotate the other way, sun rising in the west and setting in the east. Or you could redo your geography and make it on a west coast... But this also explains the desert beyond the mountains quite nicely.

As for the fertile ground, it just depends on how much rain and how long stuff has lived there. Depending on the level of technological advancement, man can plow, fertilize, and improve land with things like crop rotation.

Another element in your worldbuilding will be the latitude of your world. Weather patterns and growing seasons will be different in the north than the south. Even in California the ecology changes from the rainforests of the northwestern tip to the arid desert in the southeast.

If you're looking for a factor to reduce seafaring in your world, line the coasts with cliffs, have small or no river deltas, have no natural harbors. If there aren't any good places to protect vessels, seafaring would be inhibited and restricted to local fishermen.

Now I'm torn. The gentler climates would work well for farming, but I've started to fall in love with the richness and possibilities of the chaparral. Its a biome with a great deal of variation. Before this discussion started, I invented a magical yucca plant (although I didn't know that's what it is).

Dry climate, two-three rivers coming down from the mountains and roaring over the cliffs in splendid falls... sweet. (Especially since it avoids the cliches of warm climate with beautiful sandy beaches and cold climate with rugged cliffs overlooking the sea.)
Would it make sense to have a wide river delta on the plain, before trickling over the cliffs at multiple points? I guess if the lay of the land is right...

Fishing and river travel-yes, that's okay. But I don't see them as integral to the story. The cliffs can be low enough to get up and down them. I think the land is long, not wide, so the rivers run the short way across. Need bridges and fords.

FYI: Near the end of the story I'm planning to wipe out a lot of the farmland and then have it be magically restored

I am grateful for the time and knowledge you folks have shared with me thus far. Thank you!

Other regions without seaports have broad, shallow alluvial plains at the mouths of rivers where the continental shelf extends out a distance underwater. Lightering onto barges is done at sea and then the shallow draft barges clear the offshore sandbar or reefs to transport the goods inland. And vice versa for goods going the other way.

Superstitions kept humankind largely close to shores until relatively recent times, circa 1000 A.D.

A principal feature for chapparal ecosystems is seasonal fires, late summer, early fall after long, dry summers. Sporadic fall, winter, spring rainfalls. There's that oceanic currents, prevailing winds, and latitude coming into climate play again.

A delta-like plain exists in Central Virginia, the Chickahominy Marshes. It straddles the piedmont/coastal plain zone. Rivers feed it, the terrain slows water's flow across a deep loamy plain dammed by the rock ridge feature of a piedmont. In Richmond, at the southern side of the Chickahominy Marshes, the James runs through the city's rocky terrain from the piedmont to the coastal plain and drops about 100 feet in a few miles, some class V rapids but no dramatic waterfalls.

Four native species of yucca in the Coastal Carolinas. Natural barrier island ecology resembles chapparal. Scrubby live oaks, juniper, yucca, prickly pear cactus, hardy grasses, peaty bogs, parasitic vines climbing into the low forest overstory.