Apples Many Ways
OLD ORCHARDS
Recently, a reader contacted me about a variety of subjects. Thus, I was alerted to the Felix Gillet Institute. It is an interesting organization propagating heirloom fruit and nut trees dating back to the Gold Rush era in Nevada, Placer and Yuba Counties by grafting stock from old orchards, abandoned homesteads, etc before they become obliterated.
In 1861, Zenus J. Brown is credited with the planting of the first apple and peach orchard in Susanville. It did not take long before the Honey Lake Valley was dotted with apple orchards. By the1880s, apples from the region were being sold in the Sacramento Valley. In 1906, Lassen County reported to the State of California that there were 10,000 fruit bearing apple trees in the county. The trees produced 770,000 pounds of apples valued at $8,000.
There are a lot of knowledgeable readers, some of whom might enlighten us as to what historic varieties of the fruit trees of the area, before they disappear. If I am correct, there was an old orchard near Janesville that was destroyed in the 2021 Dixie Fire.
THE APPLE CROP OF 1891
Many may not realize that at one time there was a large commercial apple crop being produced in the Honey Lake Valley. Locally, the apple growers benefited when the Nevada-California-Oregon Railroad extended its line into the Honey Lake Valley, thus providing a better access to markets. One of those growers was W.M. McClelland. He estimated that during the 1891 season that 20,000 boxes of Honey Lake apples had been shipped to markets in Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Francisco. McClelland noted that the price received was one dollar for a fifty-pound box. In his opinion, the grower received one-half of that amount. That made for a nice tidy sum back then.
On a final note, in 1882 McClelland purchased sixty-five acres on the south side of the Susan River that was dissected by Richmond Road, the majority of which he planted an apple orchard.