Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/495

Rh the extensive nurseries of Ellwanger and Barry and A. J. Downing a large variety of young trees and plants, which he brought back via the Isthmus of Panama, carried across by Indians and mules. This time Mr. Luelling, to correct his mistake in the Yellow Newtown Pippin, had Mr. Downing personally point out the trees as they were dug. Strangely the same mistake occurred again, and again Luelling brought out the Green Newtown Pippin, and it was not for some years that the real Yellow Newtown Pippin was introduced into Oregon. The first box of apples placed upon the sidewalk in Portland in 1852 by Mr. Luelling was eagerly purchased by the admiring fruit-hungry crowd that gathered about, at $1 per apple, and returned the neat little sum 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 $1 per pound by the box, and in Portland retailed at $1.50 per pound readily, and all other fruit 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 $2.00 per pound.

In 1854, 500 bushels of apples were shipped and returned a net profit of from $1.50 to $2.00 per pound. In 1855, 6,000 bushels were shipped and returned $20 to $30 per bushel. Young trees were now in full bearing and the export of 1856 was 20,000 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 1860 the fall and winter shipments bi-monthly to San Francisco, per steamer, were from 3,000 to 6,000 boxes.

The business decreased from 1860 until 1870. Only a few boxes per steamer of the late winter varieties were sent. There were the Yellow Newtown Pippin, Winesap, Red Cheek, Pippin, Genet and Red Romanite, which grown in our cool climate, kept until the California varieties were gone. This marks the decadence of the fruit industry in Oregon. California sent us apples, pears, cherries, plums, prunes, apricots, grapes, and berries a month or two earlier than we could produce them; and with them came many of the insect pests which had been imported from Australia and the eastern states, and which hitherto had been unknown to us. In our isolation we had no outlet by rail or water for our surplus products. Transportation, such as we had, was enormously expensive. We could not even ship dried fruits. Our elegant orchards were neglected and the fruit allowed to fall to the ground and decay, thus furnishing breeding grounds for the green and wooly "aphis" and the "codlin moth."

In 1857, Henry Miller of the firm of Miller & Lambert, of Milwaukie, who had purchased the orchard of Luelling and Meek, sent to Ellwanger & Barry, of Rochester, New York, for the best drying prunes; and in answer received scions of the Italian (Fallenburg), and a little oblong purple prune walled the d'Agen, but not the prune known now as Petite d'Agen or French prune.

About the year 1858, Seth Luelling, a brother of Henderson Luelling, set the first Italian prune orchard, five acres, near Milwaukie. Others, noting the elegance of the fruit, in quality, size, and flavor, and its fine shipping and drying qualities, began setting trees in different localities over the state for home use, and as an experiment to test locality, and as a basis for business calculation. About 1870 there was much talk and speculation about prunes and prune growing as a business, for and against, those favoring showing facts and figures, those against claiming that our prunes were not the true German and Italian prunes, and that the prunes in this country would, as they had in eastern states, degenerate in a worthless, watery plum not fit for drying, and, at any rate, that the curculio would soon come and destroy them. Solid business men considered the prune business a visionary scheme, not worthy a serious consideration.

To verify our plums and prunes, in 1872, I ordered from August Bauman, of Bolwiler on the Rhine, one of the largest and most reliable nurserymen in