Antique Royal Guard Brand 🏇 1932 Citrus Crate Label Knight on Horseback Lake Wales Florida

Who Grew Royal Guard Citrus? 🏇 A Knight Riding for a Town Named After a Man Called Wailes

Size: 9" x 9"

Lake Wales, Florida has nothing to do with the Prince of Wales. In 1879 a land agent named Sidney Irving Wailes renamed a body of water called Watts Lake after himself, and the town laid out beside Lake Wailes in 1911 took its name with a plainer spelling. Its growers still ended up with a royal-sounding address, and this label makes the most of it. A knight in orange armor rides a rearing white horse across a navy sky, and the pennant on his lance reads LAKE WALES. Across the top, in big yellow blackletter: Royal Guard.

The growers' association put its own copyright on the design, dated 1932, and it is still around. It is one of the member cooperatives of Florida's Natural Growers, the co-op headquartered in Lake Wales that makes Florida's Natural juice. This label is an unused survivor from the crate era, its back blank, never pasted to a box of fruit.

🛡️ What Is Printed on the Label

• Brand: Royal Guard, in yellow blackletter outlined in orange, with BRAND in small capitals beneath
• The knight: full orange armor, visor closed, a decorated shield on his arm and a lance flying a red pennant lettered LAKE WALES
• The horse: white and rearing, in a jewelled bridle, harness and patterned saddlecloth
• The crest: a quartered shield at upper left with a blackletter R, a tall cup, an orange with leaves and a blackletter G, set on a red and orange stripe. The R and G are the initials of the brand printed beside it.
• Ground: navy and black fields cut by light-blue diagonal bands
• Origin line: PRODUCE OF U.S.A. in red
• Copyright line: COPYRIGHT 1932 By LAKE WALES C.G.A., in small light-blue type at lower right
• Yellow band: LAKE WALES CITRUS GROWERS ASSOCIATION over LAKE WALES, POLK COUNTY, FLORIDA, with a yellow fleur-de-lis in a black square at the left end
• Back: blank. Never applied to a crate, new old stock.
• Size: 9 x 9 inches

📜 What "Copyright 1932" Tells You

The copyright line is the association's claim to the design, and the year it claimed was 1932. A sheet carrying that line was printed in 1932 or afterward. Through that period, commercial prints and labels in the United States were registered with the U.S. Patent Office; Congress handed that job to the Copyright Office in 1940.

The Lakeland Public Library in Polk County keeps a Royal Guard label from the same association in its Florida citrus label collection. The library catalogs its copy at 22 x 23 centimetres, dates it 1932, and files it under the themes Knights and Royalty. The same collection holds two more of the association's brands, Crown Jewel and Prince of Wales. Put the three names together, Royal Guard, Crown Jewel and Prince of Wales, and it is easy to see a grower co-op having fun with a town whose name only sounds royal.

🍊 The Growers' Co-op and Florida's Natural

According to Florida's Natural Growers, the Lake Wales association has been in existence since 1919. It was a grower-owned cooperative: the growers pooled their fruit, packed it under shared brand names like this one, and sold it together. In April 1999 the citrus growers associations of Dundee, Lake Wales and Winter Haven announced a consolidation of their organizations.

In 1933 a group of Florida growers founded the Florida Citrus Canners Cooperative. It changed its name to Citrus World in 1969 and to Florida's Natural Growers in 1998, and today it is headquartered in Lake Wales, with fourteen member citrus cooperatives. The Lake Wales association is one of them. In 2001 the cooperative opened the Grove House, a visitor center directly across from its Lake Wales processing plant. So the name printed along the bottom of this label, over the words POLK COUNTY, is still attached to Florida oranges today.

🚚 Why a Crate of Oranges Needed a Knight

Paper labels dressed Florida citrus crates from the late nineteenth century until the early sixties, and the Museum of Florida History puts their Golden Era between 1900 and 1939. This label's copyright year falls inside it. The fruit was sold at auction, and the museum explains the problem the art had to solve: the auctions moved fast, and a brand had only a moment to catch a buyer's eye. So the labels went big and bright, with belles, adventurers, sports, Florida scenery and, in Lake Wales, a knight. Local collectors' lore holds that the association saved its most elaborate designs, like Royal Guard, for its best fruit.

The end came with the Second World War. Shortages of wood and metal stopped the making of wooden crates, cardboard boxes replaced them, and a company's name could be printed right on the box. Florida Southern College, whose library keeps a crate label collection, records 1956 as the year the last labels were used. The Museum of Florida History itself holds nearly 700 Florida citrus labels, and its largest single source was the Florida Citrus Commission.

🌴 Lake Wales, the Crown Jewel of the Ridge

The Lake Wales Land Company was a group of businessmen who, in 1911, bought 5,000 acres of hilly wilderness around Lake Wailes. They expected the pine forests to support turpentine and lumber, and the sandy soil to grow grapefruit, oranges and other citrus. The first settlers came that same year. Lake Wales was incorporated as a town in May 1917 and received its city charter in 1921. The Atlantic Coast Line Railroad opened a depot there in 1928; that building now houses the Lake Wales History Museum. Downtown, the Lake Wales Commercial Historic District preserves buildings from the Florida land boom. The city calls itself the Crown Jewel of the Ridge.

The Ridge. The Lake Wales Ridge is a sand ridge running about 100 miles north to south through central Florida. Two million years ago, when almost all of Florida lay under the sea, a chain of small islands stood above the water, and the ridge is what remains of them. Its dry, sandy scrub is a desert-like habitat, home to plants and animals found nowhere else on earth, and in the early twentieth century parts of the ridge were cleared for citrus groves. Some of the fruit that went out under this label grew on those old island sands.

Bok Tower. On February 1, 1929, President Calvin Coolidge dedicated Edward Bok's Singing Tower on Iron Mountain, just north of Lake Wales, on one of the highest points of peninsular Florida, about 295 feet above sea level. Bok was born in Den Helder in the Netherlands, came to Brooklyn at six, edited the Ladies' Home Journal from 1889 to 1919, and won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for his autobiography, The Americanization of Edward Bok. Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. designed the gardens and Milton B. Medary the tower, whose carillon today has 60 bells cast by John Taylor and Co. of Loughborough, England. Bok died in Lake Wales on January 9, 1930, and was buried at the base of his tower. Bok Tower Gardens became a National Historic Landmark in 1993.

Spook Hill. Lake Wales also has a legend. On North Wales Drive sits Spook Hill, a gravity hill where a car left in neutral appears to roll uphill. Local folklore says a Native American chief once fought a giant alligator there, both died in the struggle, and their spirits push the cars. An old Lake Wales pamphlet told a different story: two retired pirates buried on the hill whose ghosts shove cars uphill as a prank. The illusion made the front page of the Wall Street Journal in 1990, and on April 5, 2019, Spook Hill was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

🖼️ Who Wants This Label

• 🍊 Florida citrus label collectors: a named Polk County association, its own copyright line, and one of the bolder knight designs
• 🏰 Knight, heraldry and medieval art lovers: armor, a rearing charger, a pennant, a quartered crest and a fleur-de-lis on one sheet
• 🌴 Lake Wales and Polk County families: the town's name is on the knight's lance and again along the bottom
• 🧃 Florida's Natural and citrus-industry history fans: the association on this label is still a member of the co-op
• 🖼️ Framers and decorators: a square 9 x 9 inch design in navy, yellow, orange and red that fills a frame

❓ Questions People Ask

Was this label printed in 1932?

The small copyright line at lower right gives the year 1932. That is the year of the association's copyright on the design, so this sheet dates from 1932 or later. The Lakeland Public Library dates its own copy of the label 1932.

Who issued it?

The citrus growers' association of Lake Wales, in Polk County, Florida. Its name and its copyright are both printed on the front. The main in-state printer of Florida citrus labels was the Florida Grower Press of Tampa, which began as part of Florida Grower magazine; no printer's name appears on this label.

What do the R and G on the shield stand for?

Royal Guard, the brand name lettered beside the shield.

What fruit was in the crate?

The label names no single fruit. It came from a citrus growers' association, and the crest shows an orange.

Has it been used?

No. The back is blank and it was never pasted to a crate. It is new old stock.

How big is it?

9 x 9 inches, a square format that suits a standard square frame.

Is the association on the label still in business?

Yes. It is listed among the member cooperatives of Florida's Natural Growers, which is headquartered in Lake Wales.