Vintage 1950s Empire Builder Apples Crate Label 🍎 Cashmere, WA, Classic Americana!

Who Packed Empire Builder Apples? 🍎 Empire Builder Washington State Apples, Cashmere Pioneer Growers, Cashmere, Washington

Size: 9 3/4" x 8 3/4" ~ Little to no wear.

Now that's a Washington apple! This is a vintage 1950s Empire Builder crate label, grown and packed by the Cashmere Pioneer Growers of Cashmere, Washington. A giant shiny red apple with big green leaves fills the right side, and behind it the whole valley is laid out: rows of orchard trees running off in every direction, a long packing plant with trucks lined up at the loading dock, and purple and orange mountains rolling across the back under a deep blue sky. "Empire" swoops across the top in yellow script over a huge BUILDER in cream block letters. Down in the corner is the growers' own emblem, a covered wagon pulled by a team of oxen, which is exactly what you'd pick if you named your outfit the Pioneer Growers.

🏷️ What's Printed on It

• Empire BUILDER
• WASHINGTON STATE APPLES
• GROWN AND PACKED BY CASHMERE PIONEER GROWERS
• CASHMERE, WASHINGTON
• CONTENTS ONE VOLUME BUSHEL
• PRODUCE OF U.S.A.

Washington State University keeps two Empire Builder labels from Cashmere in its fruit crate label collection, dated about 1955 and about 1958, and the Cashmere Pioneer Growers were still running controlled-atmosphere apple storage as late as 1990.

🚂 The Empire Builder

The name Empire Builder has a story. It's what folks called James J. Hill, the railroad man behind the Great Northern, for the huge region his lines opened up and the way they ran its economy. Hill wanted people to settle along his tracks. The Great Northern's main line came right through the Cashmere valley in 1892, and on June 10, 1929 the railroad launched its crack passenger train and named it the Empire Builder, in honor of its founder. The train stopped at Wenatchee just down the line, and it's still running today under Amtrak, which took it over in May 1971. For a grower in Cashmere shipping apples east by rail, it's hard to beat that name.

🏔️ Cashmere, the Vale of Kashmir

Cashmere was platted as Mission in 1892, when the Great Northern came through. Trouble was, half the Northwest seemed to have a town called Mission, and the mail kept going astray. So Judge James Harvey Chase, a former elocution teacher famous for his public readings, suggested a name out of a poem he loved, Thomas Moore's Lalla Rookh, which sings about the Vale of Kashmir. The town took the name Cashmere in 1904 and incorporated the same year.

What turned the ranches into orchards was water. Pioneers started digging the Peshastin irrigation ditch in the 1890s, and once it was running, apples and pears took over the slopes. Cashmere sits in Chelan County on the south bank of the Wenatchee River, with 8,500-foot Mount Cashmere and the Cascades behind it, and it's still apple and pear country today. And if you've ever had Aplets & Cotlets, those fruit-and-nut candies come from Cashmere too.

🏡 Display

Crate Labels are a reminder of a bygone era but the amazing lithography process 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 these out to preserve their history. Once the limited supply for sale is gone and on display with collectors or in galleries then they will be very difficult to acquire.

Imagine this amazing vintage advertising hanging as home decor in any room of your home instead of a museum! It's a natural for a kitchen, a train lover's den, or anybody from Cashmere, Wenatchee or the Great Northern country.