Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/496



Germany, scions of fourteen varieties of plums and prunes. These came by ex- press at a cost of $ii per package. After tive orders and tive packages in va- rious shapes had been received in worthless condition, the sixth package envel- oped in oil and hermetically sealed in a tin can, came in good order. These were grafted on bearing trees, and the third year bore fruit — the Italian prune, German prune, the Petite d'Agen. Coe's Golden Drop, and all other varieties — just such fruit as we have been growing for these varieties — thus settling the matter of varieties beyond dispute. Whereupon, from 1S71 to 1881 I set 80 acres to or- chard near Portland; 6,000 prunes and plums, i.ooo Royal Ann and Black Re- publican cherries, 1,500 Bartlett pears, 500 Winter Nellis and other pears and winter apples.

This I am told, was the first commercial prune orchard on the coast. In 1876 I built a three ton box dryer, dried several tons of pitted peach-plums, which sold at 16 cents per pound in 50 pound boxes. The hrst yield of prunes dried in 1876 brought 12 cents, and for some years did not drop below 9 cents.

"I. R. Cardwell."

From the above account of the starting of the fruit industry in Oregon, nearly the whole of which is so near to Portland as to be a part of its history, it will be seen that it had its ebb and flow in the tide of prosperity. For fully twenty years, dating from 1870, there was very slight interest in raising fruit for sale in Ore- gon. The old orchards which had produced the "big red apples" were still pro- ducing fruit of a sort that would sell for something, although much of it was infested with the codling moth work, and all of it was scaly and sent to market in bad shape. To point out the particular time when there was a revival of interest from this period of depression, is not easy. The organization of the state board of horticulture in 1S85, with Dr. Cardwell as president, is probably the date when horticulture in Oregon commenced its ascent to the high state of prosperity in which it is now making money for all its well informed and industrious workers. The farmers about Ashland, in Jackson County, were producing just as tine apples, peaches and pears in 1863,-4 and 5, as they are today. But there was no market for the fruit; and there was scarcely any price for the land then that is selling now without fruit trees on it for $500 an acre.

And in Hood River valley, which had easy transportation to Portland by steamboat, there was very little sale for land on account of its value for produc- ing fine fruit, prior to 1895. And the advantages of Hood River for fruit rais- ing was well known as early as 1870. W. P. Watson, who owned a fine "beaver dam" tract of land at Beaverton. in Washington County, and was making money raising onions on it for the California market, traded his farm for one atljoining the little village of Hood River in 1870, his reason for doing so was that he could raise far better peaches and apples up there, than out in Washington County. The best apple land in Hood River valley could have been bought at that time at from ten to fifteen dollars an acre, and a lot of it could have been taken up as homestead. The same lands without fruit trees on them would sell for five hun- dred dollars an acre now.

The explanation of this great change, is the development of a market for the fine fruit outside of Oregon. While the orchard owners in Clackamas and Yam- hill Counties were debating whether they had better dig up their trees and sow wheat in the place thereof, or keep on selling Yellow Newtowns, Baldwins, and Bellefleurs to the Portland grocers for fifty to sixty cents a box. a few Hood River men got enough apples together to make a car load, antl packing them in neat boxes with tasteful clean papers sent them to New York on a venture — a reckless venture. And what was the result? The hard pressed Hood River farmers, the "Colonists" from Iowa, had wrought a miracle in trade and finance. Apples that could not have been sold for more than sixty cents a box in Portland were sold in New York for three dollars a box. The secret was turned loose, and Hood River apple lands looked like gold mines the next day. as in fact they