Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/43

Rh for some years that the real Yellow Newtown Pippin was introduced into Oregon. The first box of apples placed upon the sidewalk in Portland, by Mr. Luelling, was eagerly purchased by the admiring fruit hungry crowd that gathered about at one dollar per apple, and returned the neat little profit of $75.

The home market now showed many of the above mentioned fruits, which were eagerly sought at fabulous prices. Apples brought as high as one dollar per pound by the box, and in Portland retailed at one dollar and fifty cents per pound readily, and all other fruits nearly as much.

Californians, fruit hungry, with plethoric purses, bid high for the surplus, and in 1853, a few boxes, securely bound with strap iron (as was the custom in those days for protection against fruit thieves), were shipped to San Francisco and sold for two dollars per pound.

In 1854 five hundred bushels of apples were shipped and returned a net profit of from one dollar and fifty cents to two dollars per pound. In 1855 six thousand bushels were shipped and returned $20 to $30 per bushel. Young trees were now in full bearing and the export of 1856 was twenty thousand boxes. This year one box of Esopus Spitzenberg paid the shipper a net profit of $60, and three boxes of Winesap were sold in Portland at $102. From this time to 1869 the fall and winter shipments bimonthly to San Francisco, per steamer, was from three thousand to six thousand boxes.

In those days the foundation for many a princely fortune was laid, and to-day many of our fellow citizens are enjoying the merited reward of their enterprise in a luxurious competence and the "glorious privilege of being independent." But California with her proverbial enterprise, took in the situation and imported across the Isthmus of Panama thousands of young trees and root grafts, which multiplied into millions, and orchards, which had