Vintage 1970s Golden Cargo Celery Crate Label 🚢 Oxnard, Los Angeles CA, Nautical Ship Design

🚢 A Treasure Galleon, Loaded With Celery

Fat three-dimensional capitals spell out GOLDEN CARGO, and through a riveted ship's porthole a three-masted galleon with red pennants sails into an orange sunset. Gold, a galleon and a hold full of cargo make a treasure-ship picture, but the treasure on this label was vegetables. This is a vintage 1970s Golden Cargo Brand crate label made by Oxnard Celery Distributors, Inc., the celery packer of Oxnard, California and Los Angeles. It measures 7" x 5" ~ and has little to no wear.

It is also a small piece of two stories: Los Angeles's old wholesale produce trade, and the Oxnard Plain in Ventura County, where celery became one of the county's top crops.

🔍 What Is Printed on the Label

Every line of type on the sheet, top to bottom:

• PRODUCE OF U.S.A.
• GOLDEN CARGO
• BRAND
• GROWN AND PACKED BY
• OXNARD
• CELERY DISTRIBUTORS, INC.
• OXNARD, CALIF • LOS ANGELES

The design sits on a two-tone green ground. GOLDEN CARGO runs corner to corner in yellow block letters with deep orange-red sides, with a slanted BRAND tucked beside it. At upper left, the round porthole frames the galleon on a green sea, with the sun low on the horizon behind it. The packer's credit fills the lower right. No printer's imprint appears on the sheet, and the back is blank cream paper with the front design faintly showing through.

The brand name and the picture are one joke. The words say golden cargo, and the porthole shows the ship carrying it.

🥬 The Packer: Oxnard Celery Distributors, Inc.

The label's own words are GROWN AND PACKED BY, and the firm's name says what it grew: celery. The place line names two places, OXNARD, CALIF and LOS ANGELES, separated by a centred dot.

GOLDEN CARGO was also a federal trademark. Oxnard Celery Distributors, Inc., a California corporation, filed for it on May 17, 1976, and it was registered on March 15, 1977 (Registration No. 1061337). The registration covered fresh vegetables: celery first, then tomatoes, cabbage, cucumbers, red leaf lettuce, beans, bell peppers, romaine lettuce and cauliflower. The registration was cancelled on August 9, 1983, because the registrant did not file an acceptable Section 8 declaration, the filing that keeps a federal registration alive.

The design was printed in more than one version. Another Golden Cargo label keeps the galleon and porthole but adds a large CELERY under the brand, moves the packer's block to the lower left, and prints ZIP codes for both Oxnard and Los Angeles. The one offered here has no crop word and no ZIP codes.

🏙️ The Los Angeles Side: San Pedro Street

In the trademark record, the firm's Los Angeles address was on South San Pedro Street, in the 900 block just below 9th Street. That put it on the same stretch of San Pedro Street as City Market, the wholesale produce market that a group of Chinese and some Japanese vendors organized in the early 1900s. Its buildings went up in 1909 around the block bounded by San Pedro, Ninth, Eleventh and San Julian Streets, and it stayed a produce market for about a century, closing in 2009. A celery shipper with a Los Angeles office on San Pedro Street was working in the heart of the city's produce trade.

🌱 Oxnard: A Town Built on Sugar Beets

Oxnard exists because of a sugar factory. Henry T. Oxnard, who ran a sugar beet business with his brothers Benjamin, James and Robert, was persuaded to build a $2 million beet sugar factory on the plain inland from Port Hueneme. The factory ran from August 19, 1899, to October 26, 1959. The story goes that he wanted to name the new town after the Greek word for sugar, but it ended up carrying his own surname. Oxnard was incorporated as a city on June 30, 1903.

That same year, Japanese and Mexican beet workers formed the Japanese-Mexican Labor Association and struck against the growers, the American Beet Sugar Company and a grower-controlled labor contractor. Its interethnic organizing is seen as a forerunner of later farm-labor movements. The Oxnard Plain's early farmers grew barley and lima beans, and today the area produces about a third of California's strawberries.

🥬 Celery Country

Celery has been one of Ventura County's top crops since urban development began pushing it out of Los Angeles and Orange counties in the 1960s. By 2010, Ventura County farms grew $182 million worth of celery, an all-time high, and it ranked as the county's number two crop.

🏷️ Why Crate Labels Exist

Paper crate labels started on the West Coast in the 1880s, when California and Washington growers began shipping produce east on the new transcontinental railroads. Competition was fierce, so growers and packing houses put bold, eye-catching labels on their crates to make their brands stand out to buyers at the far end of the line. Lithographers sold generic stock labels that could be overprinted with a grower's or packer's name, or they made private labels for a single brand. The early ones were stone lithographs, and from the 1920s on most were printed by offset lithography. Museums collect and show them: the California State Railroad Museum has put fruit crate labels on exhibit, and the Museum of Florida History keeps nearly 700 citrus crate labels.

A label like this was made to be glued to a box and thrown away with it. Unused packer's stock is the only way one reaches a wall today, and that is what makes it rare.

🖼️ Size and Condition

7" x 5" ~ little to no wear. Unused, with bright colour and a clean blank back. A US quarter appears beside it in one of the photographs for scale.

🎁 Good For

• 🚢 Nautical and coastal rooms, where a galleon in a porthole frames perfectly.
• 🥬 Kitchens and farm-to-table decor, with a real California celery packer behind it.
• 🌴 Collectors of Oxnard, Ventura County and Los Angeles history.
• 🏷️ Crate label collections, especially vegetable labels and the Golden Cargo variations.
• 🎁 A small, inexpensive gift that frames easily.

❓ Questions People Ask

Who made the Golden Cargo label?

The packer's credit belongs to Oxnard Celery Distributors, Inc., with Oxnard, California and Los Angeles named beneath it. No printer's name appears on the sheet.

Was Golden Cargo a celery brand?

Yes. CELERY is part of the packer's own name, and the federal trademark the firm registered for GOLDEN CARGO listed celery first among its vegetables.

Is Oxnard part of Los Angeles?

No. Oxnard is a separate city in Ventura County. The label names Oxnard and Los Angeles as two places, and the firm's trademark address was in Los Angeles.

How is this version different from other Golden Cargo labels?

This one has no crop word and no ZIP codes, with the packer's credit at lower right. Another version adds a large CELERY and ZIP codes, with the credit at lower left.

Has it been used?

No. It is unused stock with a blank back and little to no wear.

How big is it?

7" x 5" ~.