Wheeling Sunday register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1882-1934, 1899-07-09
AN OLIVE BRANCH WITH FRUIT.

article. Scattered along the interior Of
California these magnificent orchards
Of trees, ranging from 10 to 100 years
old, meet the traveller at every turn.
The younger trees show by their light
trunks and small bearing that new
grove is scarcely as PAYING as some
of the land boomers would have us be-
lieve, but when one turns to the gnarl-
ed, old grandfathers of trees planted a
century ago by the Franciscan Fathers,
it is seen readily why a grove is such
a paying and profitable property in the
long run.
The introduction Of the olive indus
try into California is entirely the work
of the Franciscan monks. They plant
ed the first trees in the San Diego
Mission in 1869, and from that or
chard have come the cuttings that
have created all the groves on the Pa
cific coast. The olives are everywhere
known as Missions" Thirty or forty
other kinds of olives have been i'm
ported by growers, and various large
groves exist of these new varieties,
but for making oil or picking for the
table the Mission olive is pronounced
by all to be the best.
From the abandonment of the var
ious missions on the Pacific coast in
1920 there was no further olive tree
planting until 1871, when the southern
Counties, which down to that date had
laid dormant, where opened up by
Americans, who saw in the soil and eli
mate possibilities hardly to be overes-
timated. In that year the first plant
ings from the mission groves were
made. From these paintings the olive
tree has spread to all the counties of
the State till they are now numbered
probably by millions, and yet there is
not, in all likelihood, a thousand cases
of true olive oil to be had in the State.
As to picked olives, they are practically
out of the market, and yet it is more
than six months before the next crop of
oil and olives can come in again,
showing the startling fact that the mar
ket is not half supplied with the do
nestle product and must depend on the
Importation of Mediterranean olive oil
and olives for full half year.
1t will scarcely be questioned that
there is not to be had as commercial
article single case, or bottle, for that
matter, of absolutely pure olive oil
which has been imported into the Unit
ed States. American cottonseed oil
probably forms tie larger part of what
is sold as pure olive oil, and this fact
will not likely be changed till Congress
shall have passed pure food law.
There are only three olive mills in
California. The largest is at North
Pomona, and was built two years ago,
from plans brought from Italy, while
much of its machinery and apparatus
was brought from Leghorn, Italy and
Barcelona, Spain. Another mill is at
Santa Barbara Mission, and a third one
at National City, which is away down
near the Mexican boundary line, in San
Diego county.
Though rather expensive to install,
these mills have been cheap to run,
and as result their proprIetors have
made large profits. In 1893 they turn
ed out about $4,000 gallons of oil, while
this year their output is not far from
$4,000 gallons.
The process of manufacturing the
oil is one of patience and industry,
rather than OF interest There is moth
ing spectacular in the method, The