Vintage 1940s Grandstand Brand Texas Citrus Fruit Crate Label 🥁 — Valley Fruit Co., Pharr TX — Stecher-Traung Litho, Marching Band Art

Who Packed Grandstand Texas Citrus? 🥁 Grandstand Brand Texas Citrus Fruit, Valley Fruit Co. of Pharr

Size: 9" x 9" ~ Little to no wear.

This is a vintage 1940s Grandstand crate label, made for the Valley Fruit Company out of Pharr, Texas, and it's a happy one. A grinning bass drummer in a green band uniform and a tall black bearskin hat is banging away on a big drum with a green star on it, and GRANDSTAND comes marching up the label in huge three-dimensional cream-and-yellow letters on a hot orange-to-red ground, with Texas in orange script and CITRUS FRUIT in pale green.

As the supply of originals dwindles, these Americana advertising images get copied for magnets, prints, posters, etc... Why not own the original label while you can that started it all?

🏷️ What's Printed on It

• PRODUCE OF U.S.A.
• CONTENTS 2 CU. FT. OR 1 3/5 BUSHELS
• GRANDSTAND BRAND
• Texas CITRUS FRUIT
• VALLEY FRUIT CO., GROWERS & SHIPPERS, PHARR, TEXAS
• REG. U.S. PAT. OFF.
• STECHER-TRAUNG S. F. CALIF., the printer's line in tiny type at the bottom

The back is blank, with the big letters showing through in reverse.

🍊 Valley Fruit Company

The Valley Fruit Company's fruit and vegetable packing plant in Pharr was built in stages from 1948 to 1972. At its height the company was the world's largest grapefruit distributor, and once it added vegetable packing it was one of the largest agricultural packing facilities under one roof. The old plant on North Cage Boulevard was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 7, 2011.

🌵 Pharr and Texas Citrus

Pharr goes back to 1909, when John Connally Kelley Sr. and Henry N. Pharr became co-owners of the land. Kelley's Pharr Townsite Company laid out the town and named it for his partner, and Pharr incorporated in 1916. The first commercial grapefruit grove in Texas was planted in 1904, and by 1925 about 80 percent of the Texas citrus crop was grapefruit. Then came the freezes of 1949 and 1951, which killed 7 million of the Valley's 9 million producing trees, and more freezes hit in 1983 and 1989.

🖨️ Stecher-Traung

The tiny line at the bottom belongs to Stecher-Traung of San Francisco, one of the big crate-label printers, which printed labels for Texas packers as well as California ones and worked under that name until 1966.

🖼️ 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 band room, a music lover's den or anybody from the Rio Grande Valley.