Antique 1930s Summit Mountain Apples Crate Label 🍎 Colfax, CA, Snow Pack!

Who Packed Summit Brand Apples? 🏔️ Summit Brand Mountain Apples, Colfax Fruit Growers Assn.

Size: 11" x 7" ~ Little to no wear.

Such a cool (pun intended) label! This is an antique 1930s Summit Brand Mountain Apples crate label from the Colfax Fruit Growers Association of Colfax, California, up in the Sierra Nevada foothills, marketed under the Blue Anchor of the California Fruit Exchange, and never used. The story always told about these mountain growers is that they used mountain snow, before refrigeration, to keep their fruit fresh in the railcars on the way to market, and that's part of what makes these labels so desirable and sought after.

🔍 What's on it

A big snow-capped mountain under a blue sky, dark green conifers, and a hillside orchard in white blossom. SUMMIT in huge yellow letters outlined in red, BRAND under it, and MOUNTAIN APPLES on a light blue panel. Lower left, the yellow roundel with the blue anchor: BLUE ANCHOR, CALIFORNIA FRUIT EXCHANGE. Lower right, a second yellow roundel: COLFAX FRUIT GROWERS ASSN., COLFAX-CALIF., around a little mountain scene lettered SUMMIT BRAND, APPLES, PLACER & NEVADA COUNTIES. Along the bottom, TRADE MARK REG. U.S. PAT. OFF.

Some of the pictures, and the video, show the pear version, which is the same label except for the name of the fruit: MOUNTAIN BARTLETT PEARS. That pear version carries the printer's imprint in its corner, SCHWABACHER-FREY S.F., the big San Francisco printer and stationer.

🚂 Colfax, the foothill fruit town

Colfax started out as Camp 20 on the Central Pacific Railroad, next to the old Gold Rush camp of Illinoistown, and in 1865 it was named for Vice President Schuyler Colfax, who came through that year to inspect the railroad's progress. Fruit came early. Enos Mendenhall planted one of the first orchards in the area in 1850, and by 1890 the Sacramento Union was reporting a new fruit shipping house in Colfax. In the early 1900s the local growers formed the Colfax Fruit Growers Association, and the town was also the end of the line for the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad from 1876 until 1942.

Keeping fruit cold was everything. Long before electric refrigeration, folks around Colfax leaned on Mother Nature's own freezer, the Sierra Nevada snowpack, and the way the old-timers tell it, it wasn't unusual for picked fruit to sit in a snow-filled canyon or a root cellar until it could be shipped. In 1926 the Southern Pacific built an icing platform right in Colfax, part of the Pacific Fruit Express network of refrigerator cars, so the fruit could go east on ice.

The heart of it all was the Fruit Exchange Building on Railroad Street, right beside the Southern Pacific tracks, where the growers inspected, packed and shipped their fruit. By the 1920s Colfax was sending out thousands of crates of fruit a year, and the packing went on there until the early 1950s, when mechanical refrigeration took over. The building still stands in downtown Colfax.

⚓ The Blue Anchor

The Colfax growers shipped through the California Fruit Exchange, the growers' cooperative that incorporated on May 1, 1901 with member associations from Loomis, Newcastle and Penryn. Its anchor was George H. Cutter's idea: suggested by 1903, first used in 1904, and registered in 1923 as the trademark for the Exchange's highest quality fruit. The California State Railroad Museum keeps Colfax Fruit Growers labels in its fruit crate label collection, and the Boston Public Library has the association's Sun Smile pear label.

🏡 Display

Imagine hanging this antique advertising on your wall as home decor in any room! That snowy peak looks great framed in a cabin, a kitchen or a den, and it's a perfect gift for anybody from Colfax or the Placer and Nevada County foothills.

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.