1950's era brass California orange broach pendent with bright white blooms and vibrant orange and green colors. Icredible detail and execution. A possible fair souvenir or simply a celebration of our rich naval history here in California.
Dimensions:
2 1/8" Length
1 1/2" Height
Condition:
No chips or paint loss. Small rust and light patina on inside of pendent.
The History of citrus in California
Citrus crops triggered a different kind of gold rush in 1849, that is still going strong today.
California's citrus heritage has deep roots in what is now bustling downtown Los Angeles.
In the 1840s, it was the site of the state's first commercial citrus farm, planted by a frontiersman named William Wolfskill, considered to be the "granddaddy" of California's citrus business.
"When the Gold Rush of 1849 hit, there was a huge demand for oranges in the gold country because it was well established that fresh citrus was useful in combating scurvy," a vitamin-C deficiency, said Vince Moses, a historian on California citrus and former director of the Riverside Metropolitan Museum. "Wolfskill's business grew exponentially and established a market for citrus fruit."
But long before citrus became a viable commercial crop for Wolfskill and other growers who followed, Spanish missionaries who settled in Southern California during the 1700s were already cultivating a variety of citrus fruit, believed to have originated from Southeast China thousands of years ago.
Wolfskill grew hundreds of lemon and orange newest seedlings, which he secured from the San Gabriel Mission. And while his early success showed that there was at least a regional market for citrus, it was not until the introduction of the navel orange in the 1870s that propelled the growth of California citrus, which fueled the economic and social development of California.
So called because the end of the fruit resembles a belly button, the navel orange was far superior to other varieties at the time because it was seedless, sweet and ripened in winter under California's Mediterranean climate.
The fruit was actually a mutation from an orange tree that grew in a Brazilian monastery. The U.S. Department of Agriculture obtained cuttings from this tree and in 1873 sent two or three starter trees to spiritualist and woman suffrage activist Eliza Tibbets in Riverside to see if they would grow.
"The trees produced these incredible oranges—huge golden globes that outshined every other citrus table fruit around," Moses said. "That was the key to the establishment of the California commercial citrus industry. Riverside really became the fulcrum for the development of that big market."
The navel also changed how farmers produce citrus and other fruit trees. Prior to the navel, citrus was grown mostly from seed, which meant the trees retained their biological diversity, bearing a hodgepodge of fruit that lacked standardization.
Because the seedless navel has no way to reproduce naturally, growers must assist Mother Nature by grafting bud sports to another tree's trunk or roots, a process that creates a clone of the original.
Today, nearly all of the navel orange trees grown in the state are descendants of the Tibbets' original trees. One of those trees, now 137 years old, still stands and bears fruit in Riverside, and has been designated as a California historical landmark.
Riverside remained the center of the navel orange business, which soared in the 1880s. The whole nation wanted California navel oranges, and with the establishment of the transcontinental railroad, growers were able to supply them.
"The railroad made it possible to get this fruit thousands of miles away to the big eastern markets—New Orleans, Chicago, New York," Moses said.
Demand for California citrus grew, along with the state's citrus acreage, as citrus quickly became the economic base for the Golden State. The citrus boom spurred California's "second" Gold Rush—only the new gold was orange.
With the rapid expansion of citrus production in the state, growers needed a more effective way to broker and market their fruit. As individual farmers, they were often at the mercy of wholesale agents and the railroads and paid hefty freight charges to ship their goods.
"The growers were being taken advantage of considerably by jobbers and those who were marketing the fruit, so much so that they were operating in the red," said Dick Barker, president and founder of Citrus Roots-Preserving Citrus Heritage Foundation. "So there was a need to associate and bring all the growers together so they could control the situation and at least receive a fair return for their products."
In 1893, they did just that and formed the Southern California Fruit Exchange, a cooperative known today as Sunkist Growers.
Capitalizing on the image of California as the land of opportunity and sunshine, the state's citrus sector became the first to use advertising to promote an agricultural commodity, and the orange became the perfect symbol for the sun and the Golden State, Barker said. The ads proved effective, and sales of oranges rose.
"That was the key to the whole industry," said Barker, himself a retired third-generation Sunkist grower. "It sent the momentum to sell fruit and was successful in marketing the fruit. From then on, advertising was the key to marketing citrus and the benefits from those ads were prolific."
By the early 20th century, with the state's citrus business thriving, growers lobbied for a research facility that could help them with production issues and grow a better crop. They got their wish in 1906, with the establishment of the Citrus Experiment Station, which became the foundation of the University of California, Riverside.
The Citrus Experiment Station, now called the Citrus Research Center and Agricultural Experiment Station, remains at the forefront of citrus genetics, breeding, physiology and postharvest studies, and has brought consumers new citrus varieties such as the Ojai Pixie tangerine, and most recently, the Gold Nugget tangerine. The university's Citrus Variety Collection also contains more than 1,000 different citrus types from all over the world and is the most comprehensive collection of its kind.
Today, California's citrus sector, valued at more than $1 billion annually, ranks second in the U.S. after Florida, which produces the most valencia oranges; those are the seeded oranges used mostly for orange juice. California is No. 1 in fresh-market oranges, most notably the navel, but also produces a significant share of the nation's valencias, lemons, grapefruit and tangerines.
With the rise of urbanization in Southern California, what was once the state's original "citrus belt" has gradually migrated north into the San Joaquin Valley.
"The industry has primarily moved out of Southern California because it became more profitable to grow houses than oranges," Moses said.
He laments that the region's citrus tradition and heritage may be rapidly disappearing as new residents move into the area that are unfamiliar with the importance of citrus.
"Contrary to popular argument, it was not real estate that built Southern California," he said. "It was really the viable economic foundation that citrus brought to the region. It was a renewable resource that kept pumping money back into this region for a really long time."
History of citrus at a glance
1769 While building the California missions, Father Junipero Serra also plants the first citrus seeds.
1840 Frontiersman William Wolfskill plants lemon and orange seedlings in what is now downtown Los Angeles. California's citrus business is born!
1870s Riverside couple Eliza and Luther Tibbets receive navel orange cuttings from Brazil. The trees thrive and word quickly spreads about the sweet, seedless fruit.
1877 The completion of the transcontinental railroad helps satisfy a national demand for navels and other California-grown citrus.
1893 Needing an effective way to market their citrus, farmers form the Southern California Fruit Exchange—a cooperative now known as Sunkist Growers.
1906 Farmers lobby for a research facility to help them grow a better crop. The Citrus Experiment Station becomes the foundation of the University of California, Riverside.
Today California's more than $1 billion annual citrus business ranks second in the U.S., producing a significant share of the nation's navels, valencias, lemons, grapefruit and tangerines.
Mar./Apr. 2010 California Country magazine
Story by Ching Lee
California Naval History:
The citrus industry started in Los Angeles in the 1870s and by 1900 it become one of the largest industries in the state. With images of manicured trees filled with golden fruit, snow-capped mountains and a better life, along with its year-round magical climate, the selling of the “California Dream” went a long way toward altering the landscape from farms, to city, to meet an ever-expanding population that occurred directly after World War II.
Eliza Tibbets History:
Southern California has certainly seen its share of oddball dreamers. But few can top Eliza Tibbets, the queen of the navel orange.
As detailed in David Boulé's remarkable book, “The Orange and the Dream of California,” Tibbets was a force of nature. She was born in 1825 in Ohio, was an ardent abolitionist who married three times, marched with Frederick Douglass and was a spiritualist — even before she moved to California.
Tibbets and her husband, Luther, came west in the 1870s with “a vision of creating a new life for themselves, along with a better world,” Boulé writes.
They certainly did both, thanks to the navel orange.
Settling in Riverside, Tibbets was researching what crops might do well in this new farming area and wrote to an old friend in the Department of Agriculture. In one of those improbable coincidences that history seems so often to turn on, that friend had been corresponding with a missionary in Brazil who had been praising a variety of orange then unknown in the U.S.
Tibbets was able to procure some cuttings — driving her wagon three days from Riverside to Los Angeles to pick them up.
When the trees began to bear fruit, it was apparent that the oranges were something wonderful (the trees were also planted in Florida but didn't adapt nearly as well).
Because the trees can be reproduced only by cuttings, which they provided, the Tibbets became quite wealthy quite quickly. They earned a reported income of as much as $20,000 in one year — at a time when the average California worker made less than $400 a year.
Unfortunately, in another all-too-typical Southern California twist, they lost everything in the real estate crash of 1887. Despite the fact that every navel orange tree in California traces its lineage to their two originals, the Tibbets died broke.
California Boosters:
Exotic and delicious, the citrus fruit was not only a symbol of the Golden State's prosperity—it was an invitation to move here.
Los Angeles has long been a city packaged and sold by its boosters. From 1900 to 1930, the population ballooned from 100,000 to 1.2 million, and behind that expansion was a sustained branding strategy built around the mystique of a single item: the orange.
Spanish missionaries in San Diego planted the first California orange trees in 1769, but it wasn't until the 1870s that an endless belt of groves transformed Los Angeles into what became known as the Orange Empire (parts of which are now the Inland Empire). In 1920, citrus was second only to oil among California's industries, and by 1924, more than 52,000 acres of trees in Los Angeles County were producing about 20 million boxes of the sun-kissed citrus annually.
To market their produce for consumers in the Midwest and on the East Coast, growers formed a cooperative whose innovative national advertising campaigns (a first for fresh fruit) sold more than just a product. They offered sunshine, health, and wealth, three hallmarks of the Southern California lifestyle. A brilliant proprietary name—Sunkist—also helped whisk Americans away to the Golden State every time they peeled one of its “golden apples.” But many wanted to see the idyllic, fragrant groves for themselves, and L.A. advocates were eager to capitalize on the city's association with the fruit. Soon millions of visitors were traveling west, and many later returned as permanent residents.
Though California's citrus industry eventually retreated north into the Central Valley as a result of suburbanization, it left behind a colorful paper trail—one richly documented in the region's historical archives. Citriculturist David Boulé's recent book on the subject, The Orange and the Dream of California (Angel City Press), showcases thousands of artifacts related to the orange industry (some of which appear on these pages). The images recall a time when Southern California's most notable features weren't its endless beaches or regal mountain ranges but a palm-size fruit with a prodigious reputation.
MURALS
Created in 1935 for Sunkist's L.A. headquarters, this wall art virtually ignores the immigrant laborers who attended to the backbreaking work of citrus production.
PHOTO CARDS
Vacationers attracted new arrivals by sending citrus-related mementos across the country. Pasadena's Flag photography studio specialized in custom photo cards, which were meant to entice snowed-in relatives back east.
RAILROAD ADS
Transcontinental railroads often collaborated with the citrus industry on flyers like this one. In 1908, Southern Pacific and Sunkist promoted “Orange Week” in Iowa: Trains filled with fruit crisscrossed the state, bearing banners that read Oranges for Health—California for Wealth.
SOUVENIRS
After visiting the groves, tourists would take home keepsakes—everything from orange blossom perfume to decorative ceramic pieces. These served to present “California as a place of dreams,” Boulé notes in his book.
STAMPS
Oranges figure prominently alongside other California icons such as palm trees and Spanish missions on this promotional poster stamp.
WELLNESS BULLETINS
Print ads touted the health benefits of oranges, describing the fruit in almost medicinal terms. Los Angeles was already famous for attracting “lungers,” who sought relief from tuberculosis during the region's warm, dry summers and mild winters. Now Americans everywhere could commune with L.A.'s salubrious climate simply by biting into an orange.
CRATE LABELS
The vivid graphics on wood orange crates shipped cross-country invited people to drink in the Southern California lifestyle.
SUNKIST ADS
The company placed images of beautiful women among orange trees as a marketing tool. According to Boulé, “Consumers wrote in, asking for copies…and Sunkist sold thousands of reproductions to people who framed them as art.”
BUTTONS
Travelers proudly wore pins as proof that they'd seen the city's latest bumper crop.
TOURISM BROCHURES
The color orange is front and center on the covers of this 1929 chamber of commerce booklet. The handout has been preserved at Cal State Northridge's Oviatt Library.
PHOT0 CARDS
Vacationers attracted new arrivals by sending citrus-related mementos across the country. Pasadena's Flag photography studio specialized in custom photo cards, which were meant to entice snowed-in relatives back east.
By: Nathan Masters
December 24, 2014
Video:
King Citrus and the Selling of the California Dream.
Product code: California Midcentury newest Brass Orange Broach Pendent