California
California's Fruit Cities
QUESTION: What do apples, pumpkins, oranges and lemons have in common? ANSWER: These delicious fruits bare the names of cities and towns in California.- If you've been longing for a juicy apple, there was a time that you'd head directly for Apple Valley, Calif. Apples were never particularly native to the area on the edge of the Mojave desert, but do grow there through extensive use of irrigation, making the city a once popular tourist spot for apples. A well known apple orchard that was owned by Max Ihmsen, publisher of the Los Angeles Examiner newspaper, won many agricultural awards. Apple orchards disappeared from the landscape around the 1950's.
- If you want to see oranges as plentiful as weeds, where should you go? Why not head to Orange County and the City of Orange? You can wander down the sidewalks of Old Towne and see oranges dangling from trees hanging over fences of personal residences. Oranges are plentiful and require hardly any effort to grow in the land of sunshine. Orange County is now one of the densest counties in the nation with over 3 million population, but at one time the landscape included miles and miles of oranges during the "Orange Era" between the 1880's and 1950.
- Right around 6 Flags Magic Mountain, you'll find a special kind of "orange" called Valencia. The name alone conjures up a sweet, juicy fruit dripping with goodness and flavor. Today it's mostly houses in the planned community which is part of the City of Santa Clarita, though oranges grow exceedingly well.
- Calabasas is located along I-101, just a stone's throw from the beach and Pepperdine University. The city with the Spanish name that means "pumpkin" provides great climate for growing them. They even have an annual pumpkin festival and pumpkin patch at Juan Bautista de Anza Park in October. According to legend, a traveling wagon carrying pumpkins overturned and started the area's first pumpkin patch.
- Lemon Grove (San Diego County) is home to the world's biggest lemon, a 10 foot tall statue near the trolley station. Lemon and orange orchards provided the area's main economy in the early 1900's. You'll still find an abundance of fruit trees growing in yards in the mostly residential, commuter city.
- Lemon Cove can thank J.W.C. Pogue, once a Tulare County supervisor, who introduced lemons to Tulare County and the development of the townsite of Lemon Cove. In 1885 he won a blue ribbon for his lemons at the Los Angeles Fair.