Historic Hood River
Perfect Fruit
Notes
A couple of things to talk about here. This is the nicest of a cluster of images from “Fruit Fairs” in Hood River. Some of them include labels with “Eight Biennial Fruit Fair” and others “Hood River Fruit Fair, 1909,” so I believe they are from different years. The Eight Biennial Fruit Fair was in October 1908. We can be pretty confident Laraway was the engraver of the trophy. It includes beautiful vines and fruit clusters. We know the trophies were usually displayed in his jewelry store window before the fruit fair. And finally, there are some great apple varieties on display. Besides the standards like Yellow Newton and Early Spitzenberg, we have Arkansas Black, Hydes King, Oregon Red, and Akin Red.
While the trophy is wonderfully shiny and shows all sorts of reflections, unfortunately I can’t make out the camera or photographer. I can see a nice old phone on the wall, but the engraving blocks many of the interesting parts.
You can read about the Eighth Biennial Fruit Fair here. The article lists even more heirloom apple varieties.
L.E.
Every year, I buy a couple of boxes of Arkansas Black at Dickey’s in Bingen. But, I think they actually come from Hood River.
Bill Seaton
When I was a kid back in the 1940’s, I remember that then the main apples in the orchards were Red or Yellow Delicious. But many of the orchardists kept an Arkansas Black in their back yard for the family to eat.
L.E.
The date of that newspaper is 1908. The number of orchards listed is huge.
The HR Valley must have gone through a mind boggling change in landscape in the late 1800’s of clearing land and planting orchards.
L.E.
Thanks Bill. That made me smile. I love the Arkansas Black for pies, applesauce and just plain old eating a fresh apple.
Roger Sheldrake
This relates to the comment by L.E. My brother John Sheldrake fancied himself as a bit of a pyrotechnical engineer back in the 50’s. He blew a neighbor’s fruit tree out of the ground. Were you in on that Arlen? Dad must have been so proud? Not!!
Arlen L Sheldrake
Roger, I was not involved in brother John W’s exploits with explosives. I do remember seeing some of his bomb fragments however.