Weekly journal-miner., 1919-10-29
(BY SHARLOT M. HALL)

"Yavapai county IS the Ozarks of the West" said an international apple expert not long ago. He was a man whose business it had been to buy apples both for American trade and for export, and he knew apples all the way from the crabs of Siberia, blossoming under the lee of snow banks and ripening fruit like tiny plums, to the latest creations of our American apple wizards.
 When l talked with him he had just been on grand tour of apple orchards from New York westward, down through the famous Ozarks, up around the Oregon, Washington and South Canadian orchards, and by mere chance into Yavapai-for if apples were his business, copper was his amusement, and hecame into Yav- apai looking for copper and went away boasting of the new apple re- zion which he had discovered.
 You people will all be talking ap- pies as well as mines in a few years more; you'll eat and sleep and dream apples as they do in the Hood River region and the Ozarks; you'll be talk ing visitors out to see orchards as well as mines by the time 1 come again. I've bought just enough Yav- apai copper property this trip to give me an excuse to come back and watch the apple orchards grow. I'll be buy ing Yavapai apples for the English market in a few years. The English are the greatest apple eaters l know and they want American apples. I'll be sending your Yavapai fruit to London tables before you folks get awake to what rarely good apple region you have here. J
 Altitude enough, cold enough, sun for perfect ripening, just the soil for color and texture, and not moisture enough to spoil the flavor and keep ing qualities. I'd choose fruit from seni-arid region for long-distance shipping every time-it holds up best it tastes best There are spots in. South Africa that remind me of this, and hill farms there that grow won derfully good apples-but they are too far away from transportation to figure in world markets-you are not, and your apples will do their own advertising. Next time come l think I'll trade my copper mines for an apple orchard and stay"
 Our enthusiastic visitor had only made a quick survey of few of Yav apai's apple orchards between seeing copper mines-probably if he had seen the biggest of the orchards he would have stayed this time But it is worth while to have such enthusi- astic endorsement from a man whose business it has been to know apples as a large buyer knows them.
 The oldest apple tree in Navapai is not above fifty years, probably, per haps not so old, and apple orchards as a business enterprise are not half as old. Fruit trees were brought overland in wagons both from the East and from California and planted when the first little farm homes were made Probably some of the trees in l back yards in Prescott are as old as any in the county and there are a few old orchards, like that on the old Clough ranch in the Point of Rocks, 1 now owned by john Bianconi, that reach back 10 the beginning of apple !. growing in this region.
 Out at the old Lynx Creek hyd- raulic mine there IS the remnant of once famous orchard planted by an Arizona pioneer in the days when fruit trees and most everything else came in by wagon train. A few old 1 apple trees still cling to life and bear fruit in spite of a quarter century of neglect
 It is from these old trees and old 1 orchards that we can get some idea 1 of how long-lived and fruitful an ap- pie tree may be expected to be in this region. Barring those particular varieties which are short-livcd almost anywhere an orchard ill Yavapai may be expected to far outlive the hands that plant it and to bear more and | more profitable crops if given proper . care.
 The first orchards were as truly | pioneer ventures as were the mines; no one knew what varieties would | prove best adapted 10 our soil and . climate; only experience could show which would come into bearing carly f and fully, and which would be slow and scattering. The majority of peo- pie thought fruit would not grow and | bear here and what advice was offered !