Antique 1930s Summit Brand Mountain Bartlett Pears Crate Label 🏔️ — Colfax Fruit Growers Assn., Blue Anchor, Placer & Nevada Counties

Who Packed Summit Brand Pears? 🏔️ Summit Brand Mountain Bartlett Pears, Colfax Fruit Growers Assn., Colfax, California

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

Such a cool (pun intended) label, which used Mountain snow before refrigeration to keep their produce fresh in railcars for transport to market, making them very desirable and sought after. This is an antique 1930s Summit Brand Mountain Bartlett Pears crate label, shipped by the Colfax Fruit Growers Association of Colfax, California, and sold under the Blue Anchor of the California Fruit Exchange. A big snowy peak rises under a blue sky over dark pines and a hillside orchard, SUMMIT runs across in huge yellow letters outlined in red, and MOUNTAIN BARTLETT PEARS sits on a light blue panel, with two yellow seals in the lower corners.

🏷️ What's Printed on It

• SUMMIT BRAND
• MOUNTAIN BARTLETT PEARS
• NET WEIGHT 46 LBS.
• BLUE ANCHOR, CALIFORNIA FRUIT EXCHANGE (the seal at lower left)
• COLFAX FRUIT GROWERS ASSN., COLFAX-CALIF., SUMMIT BRAND, PEARS, PLACER & NEVADA COUNTIES (the seal at lower right)
• TRADE MARK REG. U.S. PAT. OFF.
• SCHWABACHER-FREY S.F. (the printer, in tiny type at the lower left)

The Bartlett is the pear the English call the Williams, and it took its American name from Enoch Bartlett of Dorchester, Massachusetts, who grew it and passed it around back in the early 1800s. Up in the Sierra foothills it became a mountain fruit, and "Mountain Bartletts" were a selling point all their own.

🚂 Colfax, Camp 20 on the Central Pacific

Colfax began as Camp 20 on the Central Pacific Railroad, right next to the old Gold Rush camp of Illinoistown, and in 1865 it took the name of Vice President Schuyler Colfax, who came through that year to look over the railroad's progress. Orchards came early. Enos Mendenhall set out one of the first in the area in 1850, the Sacramento Union was already reporting a new fruit shipping house in Colfax by 1890, and early in the 1900s the local growers organized the Colfax Fruit Growers Association. Colfax was also the southern end of the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad from 1876 to 1942.

The whole game was keeping the fruit cold. In 1926 the Southern Pacific put an icing platform right in town as part of the Pacific Fruit Express refrigerator-car network, and the growers packed and shipped out of the Fruit Exchange Building on Railroad Street, beside the SP tracks. By the 1920s thousands of crates a year were going out of there, and the packing carried on until the early 1950s, when mechanical refrigeration took over. The old building still stands downtown.

⚓ The Blue Anchor

The Colfax growers marketed through the California Fruit Exchange, the co-op that incorporated on May 1, 1901 with member associations from Loomis, Newcastle and Penryn. George H. Cutter suggested the anchor by 1903, it went into use in 1904, and in 1923 it was registered as the trademark for the Exchange's best fruit. The California State Railroad Museum keeps Colfax Fruit Growers labels in its collection, and the Boston Public Library has the association's Sun Smile pear label.

🏡 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! That snowy peak looks great in a cabin, a kitchen or a den, and it's a perfect gift for anybody from Colfax, Grass Valley or the Placer and Nevada County foothills.