Antique 1930s Lincoln Sunkist Crate Label 🍊 Riverside, CA, Historic Americana

Why Is Lincoln on a Riverside Orange Label? 🎩 Lincoln Brand Washington Navels, Victoria Avenue Citrus Association, Riverside, California

Size: 11" x 10" ~ Little to no wear.

Honest Abe himself, painted in a dark coat and black cravat with that famous chin beard, beside a leafy branch of big ripe oranges and LINCOLN BRAND in white rustic letters. This is an antique 1930s Lincoln Brand crate label for Washington navel oranges, grown and packed on Arlington Heights by the Victoria Avenue Citrus Association of Riverside, California, and never pasted on a box. What a great piece of Americana for a Lincoln fan!

🔍 What's on it

On the left, the portrait on a golden-brown ground, with WASHINGTON NAVELS across the top and a tissue-wrapped orange with Sunkist on the wrapper at the lower right. On the right, LINCOLN and BRAND in white knobbed lettering beside a branch with two oranges, over GROWN AND PACKED ON ARLINGTON HEIGHTS BY VICTORIA AVENUE CITRUS ASSOCIATION, RIVERSIDE, RIVERSIDE CO. CAL. on a gray-mauve ground, with a tiny red REG. U.S. PAT. OFF. There's a faint line of tiny type at the lower left too small to read. The back is plain, with the design showing through.

🍊 Washington navels were born in Riverside

The fruit named on this label has one of the great stories in California history. In 1870 the USDA brought the navel orange from Bahia, Brazil to Washington, D.C., and in 1873 two of the young trees raised in its greenhouses were sent out to Eliza Tibbets in Riverside. From those two trees the Washington navel spread across the groves of Southern California. One of Eliza Tibbets' original trees still grows in Riverside today, and it was made California Historical Landmark No. 20 in 1932.

🌴 Victoria Avenue and Arlington Heights

The packers took their name from one of the prettiest streets in California. Mathew Gage came to Riverside in 1881, and his canal irrigated the tract called Arlington Heights. The first Victoria Avenue Bridge, which Gage named for Queen Victoria, opened on Thanksgiving Day 1891, and in 1892 Victoria Avenue was graded and planted to a master plan by landscape designer Franz Hosp, running through the navel groves to link Arlington Heights with downtown Riverside. It's a Riverside Cultural Heritage Landmark and has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 2000. The association packed under a whole family of brands, Victoria (with Queen Victoria on it), Avenue, Casa Blanca, Navajo and Symbol among them, and gave the Great Emancipator a label of his own.

🏡 Display

Imagine hanging this antique advertising on your wall as home decor in any room! Lincoln looks great framed in a den, a study or a classroom, and it's a perfect gift for a history teacher, a Civil War buff, anybody from Illinois, or anybody from Riverside.

Crate labels are a reminder of a bygone era, and the lithography on them is unparalleled even to this day, in my opinion. Museums and art institutes have galleries dedicated to them, and more and more collectors are seeking them out to preserve their history. Once the limited supply for sale is gone and on display with collectors or in galleries, they will be very difficult to acquire.