Antique 1930s Snow Owl Brand Apples Crate Label Perham Fruit Corporation, Yakima WA — Blue / Red Available

Size: 10 1/2" x 8 1/2" ~ little to no wear. They vary a little one to the next.

🦉 Blue or Red, Same Owl

I carry this label both ways - a deep navy-violet ground and a red-orange one - and you can have either, or both. Same owl, same lettering, same layout; the difference is the color, and by the convention Northwest packers used, that difference meant something: blue for Extra Fancy fruit, red for Fancy. The only other difference between the two is a tiny mark tucked in the lower corner of the blue sheet, too small to read; the red sheet doesn't carry one.

🍎 Perham Fruit Corporation

The label names Perham Fruit Corporation of Yakima, Washington as its DISTRIBUTOR; no printer is named. Ben A. Perham founded the company in 1919, and he was a local boy through and through: born in Hood River, Oregon, in 1879, the youngest of Eugene and Martha Perham's nine children in a pioneer family. He went on to become president of Mount Adams Orchards, where, according to Good Fruit Grower, he built what was at the time the largest d'Anjou pear orchard in the world. In the 1920s, ownership of Mount Adams passed jointly to the Bloxom and Perham families of Yakima, and starting in 1924 it was Perham Fruit Company directing the packing and marketing - an arrangement that lasted until 1948, when the Bloxoms bought out the Perham family's share entirely.

🚢 Apples and Pears, Shipped Far

Perham's fruit traveled. A court case the company brought against Cunard White Star describes Perham shipping seven carloads of pears all the way to Glasgow, Scotland - by rail across the country, then by Cunard steamer across the Atlantic. It's a small detail, but it says something about the reach a Yakima packing house had.

📦 The Box This Label Was Made For

"CONTENTS ONE U.S. BUSHEL" refers to a specific piece of hardware: the standard Northwest apple crate, a softwood box about 10 1/2 inches deep, 11 1/2 inches wide and 18 inches long. Labels like this one were pasted to the end of that crate, and they mostly disappeared once packers switched over to cardboard cartons in the 1950s. Washington State University's library holds five Snow Owl labels in its own collection, donor-dated to around 1940 - roughly the same era this one comes from. A former Perham warehouse building in Zillah, Washington still stands today, now known as Perham Hall.