Vintage Surety Apple Crate Label: Yakima 🍎 WA Steamship Graphic, Sundquist Fruit & Cold Storage

Who Packed Surety Apples in Yakima? 🍎 Surety Apples, "From Tree to Trade"

Size: 10" x 9"

A steamship steaming across blue water under a snowy mountain, and a family apple business from Yakima, Washington that's still going. The steamship isn't just decoration, either: Surety was the label this company put on its apples bound for export.

🔍 What's on it

An original apple crate label, 10" x 9", never pasted on a box. SURETY in big letters with APPLES underneath and PRODUCE OF U.S.A. in the corner. The picture is a painted Northwest scene: a steamship crossing a lake or sound, farmland and hills behind it, a snow-capped peak and tall evergreens on the right. In the corner triangle, "FROM TREE TO TRADE" and "CONTENTS ONE U.S. BUSHEL BY VOLUME," and in a plaque at the bottom, SUNDQUIST FRUIT & COLD STORAGE, YAKIMA, WASHINGTON.

🚢 Why a steamship?

Sundquist used different labels for different markets. According to Good Fruit Grower, the Surety box label went on the fruit they exported, while their Sundquist Apples label went on their premium fruit. So a ship heading out to sea was exactly the right picture for apples on their way overseas. And "From Tree to Trade" was the company's own slogan; it's printed on Sundquist Fruit & Cold Storage letterhead in the family's papers, and it says what they were proud of: they grew the apples, stored them and sold them themselves.

👨‍🌾 Ralph Sundquist and the company

Ralph Roger Sundquist was born in Galesburg, Illinois, on January 5, 1894, the son of a minister, Rev. Hjalmar Sundquist, and the family moved to the Yakima Valley in 1910. Ralph earned a horticulture degree from the State College of Washington in 1916 and a master's the next year. In 1922 he agreed to manage an investor-owned orchard in the lower Naches area called Sunnyslope Orchard Tracts, which was deep in debt. Over the years he paid off the investors, took sole ownership of the land and planted more trees.

He was a sharp marketer. During the Great Depression he rented space in Selah and packed and sold his own apples to cut out the middleman, and in 1935, with a banker willing to back him, he bought a cold storage and packing plant on Yakima's "produce row." He opened the Hansen Fruit and Cold Storage Company in 1948, and later Sundquist Fruit and Cold Storage, the name printed on this label. His son Marvin joined the business in 1950, the orchards doubled, and in 1966 they built a new controlled-atmosphere storage building. Marvin's three sons, Steve, Curtis and Craig, came into the business through the '60s and '70s. Ralph died in Yakima in 1977. The family built a new packing and storage plant next to its Terrace Heights orchards in 1979 and 1980, planted more orchards there through the '80s and '90s, and in 2007 bought ground in the Columbia Basin north of Pasco and planted it in apples and cherries. By 2008 the fourth generation was joining the operation. Marvin gave his father's papers to Washington State University in 1980, and Sundquist Fruit & Cold Storage is still in business in Yakima today.

📅 How old is it?

The label doesn't print a year, but the company name on it does the work: Sundquist Fruit & Cold Storage came after the Hansen company of 1948, so this is a mid-century label, from after 1948.

🏡 Display

Imagine hanging this vintage advertising on your wall as home decor in any room! That sky and the red border look great framed in a kitchen, a den, or anywhere you want a little Pacific Northwest.