The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1897-03-13
ORANGES IN THESE MARKETS
Formerly Luxury, Now Almost a
Necessary Some California
Varieties.
From the Philadelphia Public Ledger.

Inc orange, lOrlucIly luxury vi Tie
sick room and of the holiday season, is
rapidly becoming staple in the growing
variety of fruit that supplies comfortable
homes. This is partly due to the improve
ment in the orange itself since its produc-
ton in the United States, but more largely
to the growing consumption of all fruits as
their toothsome, healthful qualities are
generally realized Florida has been the
chief source of the American supply, and
it is estimated that she had ), 600. 600
boxes of oranges on her trees when last
season frost substantially destroyed the
growing crop and seriously crippled the
trees themselves While the real damage
has proved less wholesale than was at first
supposed, it has temporarily dethroned
Florida from her control of the orange
market, and directed attention to the supply
of southern California, hitherto Florida
only noticeable rival in the home produc-
ton
The Washington navel especially, in
whose development and supply Riverside
and vicinity have borne such conspicuous
part needs only favorable introduction to
win speedy and profitable favor But
Riverside, though raising fruit products Of
81, 500, 600 to 50, 600, 900 annually, is
but in the infancy of her orange output.
The official report to the State Comptroller
for 1894 returned 376, 452 orange trees
in bearing in the Riverside district, and
$50, OBS young orange trees not yet in
bearing Still, while now growing and
packing over third of California l,
800, 900 boxes of oranges, Riverside is
being encircled by galaxy of younger
orange towns like South Riverside, Ontario,
Pomona, Cotton, Highland, and Redlands,
which are fast making name and reputa
ton of their own in the orange market.
Ontario alone set 400 acres to oranges
last year, besides 500 acres to lemons and
3, 100 acres to deciduous fruits
1t is a far cry from the original home of
the orange, in India, till it has finally cir
cled the globe in southern California, but
it has been reserved for our own century to
see the golden spheres made considerable
article of commerce, so that hardly coun-
try grocery but has the orange in its list of
merchandise The Romans, with all their
wide cOnquests and numerous and expen-
sive luxuries, do not seem to have been ac-
quainted with the orange. The Arabs,
fired by the fanaticism of Mohammed
have the honor of bringing the orange from
their conquered provinces in India to their
Mediterranean empire. The year 922 is
given by an Arabian writer as the date of
this valuable addition to the fruits of the
Western world, and he quantity adds
''One knew it not before, but it lost much
of its sweet odor and fine color which it had
in India, because it had not the same eli
mate, soil, and all that which is peculiar
to that country As conquest brought
the orange to the Holy Land, the bloody,
expensive crusades, fruitless in many re-
spects, scattered it, with the apricot and
other fruits of Palestine, throughout Eu-
rope. The monks of that age, preserving
so much to literature and agriculture, in-
cluded the orange among the exotics that
graced the courts of their monasteries, and
when their successors accompanied the
Spanish explorers and merciless tyrants
they soon planted the orange wherever they
established themselves in the New World.
None of these missions scattered along
the California coast was more prosperous
than that at San Gabriel, few miles east
of the young metropolis of Los Angeles,
and here Father Tomas Sanchez planted
the first orange seed, said to have been
brought from San Rafael in Lower Cali
fornia. Happily the mission buildings at
San Gabriel are still in fair state of pres
ervation. for the early monks had hun
dreds of Indian converts in their employ,
storing silver which they got by raising and
shipping wheat to Mexico and hides to
Boston, not to mention their wines and i'm
mense focks of sheep
Father Tomas enclosed his priced orange
trees with high adobe wall, and gener-
alton later Don Luis Vignes removed thirty
five of them to an exotic garden he was
planting at Los Angeles. 1t was reserved
for German settler of Los Angeles, how
ever, William Woffskill, to plant Californ-
la first orange grove in 1871 as bust
ness speculation. Vineyards were then
paying handsomely in three Or four years
after they were planted, and their owners
scoffed at Wolfskill for raising an untried
fruit which required longer time to reach
profitable fruitfulness. German pluck
triumphed, as it has so often in other fields,
and Wolfskill, adding to his orange grove
by buying nursery planted with seed from
Central America and the Sandwich Islands,
lived to sell his last crop, from about twenty
eight acres, for S25, 600 Insect pests
subsequently checked the orange product
for some years, and it is said that in 1862
there were only %, 900 orange trees in
California, two-thirds of which were on the
Wolfskill property, now swallowed up by
the main Southern Pacific station and resi-
dence lots.
1t was not till Riverside proved its profit
ableness that orange culture became gen
eral in southern California, and in 1862
Luis Rubidoux, whose sheep ranged over
IelNCIElNG > UdllCu ttClCos hChb OCAOAO tAN
County Supervisors and declined to pay any
more taxes on that part of his ranch, which
he pronounced utterly worthless,
Yankee ingenuity and industry have since
brought water upon this same worthless
land, and, as already stated, it now markets
fruit products, chiefly oranges, with a cash
value of between 81, 900, 600 and 50, 900,
000 Riverside first orange trees were
planted by DIR. Shugart, March l 1871,
and it cost twenty-five cents barrel for
hauling water to keep them alive, as the
first irrigating canal was not finished until
some months later The Agricultural De-
partment at Washington imported several
orange trees from Bahia, Brazil, in 1873,
and couple of orange trees, budded from
the Brazilian stock, were sent to Mrs. l..
G. Tibbets of Riverside, from which sprang
4bo fa~oo,,e TVocbiooton naval tho main