Vintage 1950s Lolilla Brand Lake County Mountain Bartlett Pears Crate Label 🍐 — Lolilla Orchards, Finley CA

Who Packed Lolilla Brand Pears? Lolilla Brand Pears: A Lake County Mountain Bartlett Label From the Pear Capital of the World

Size: 10" x 7"

Most crate labels sold with a picture. This one sells with a place. There is no fruit, no orchard scene and no pretty girl anywhere on it, only LOLILLA in towering gold letters on navy and three words aimed straight at the produce buyer: LAKE COUNTY MOUNTAIN. In the hills north of the Napa Valley, where Kelseyville was once revered as the "pear capital of the world," growers put the altitude on the label because the altitude was the selling point.

What Is Printed on the Label

A lithographed paper label, 10" x 7", and an all-type design with no picture at all: LOLILLA BRAND, "Pears" in a big brush script, and the packer's credit. It was never pasted to a box. Minor edge wear you would never see on display; please see the pictures and the video and judge for yourself.

Finley, California

Finley is a small unincorporated community about 3.5 miles southeast of Lakeport, at an elevation of 1,352 feet. It takes its name from settler Samuel Finley Sylar, and its first post office opened in 1907. Pear orchards and packing sheds grew up around it, and the town is still home to Scully Packing Co., which in 1984 bought what was described as the oldest packing house in Lake County and put it back to work packing fruit.

How Lake County Became Pear Country

Thomas Porteus is credited with planting Lake County's first commercial orchard, four acres in Big Valley, in the late nineteenth century, and Louis Henderson put in the county's first large-scale commercial Bartlett orchard in 1891. J.W. Annette of Finley was among the growers who followed, along with L.P. Clendenin in Scotts Valley and J.B. Laughlin and George Akers of Kelseyville. By 1919 there were 700 acres of pears in the county.

At first the fruit was dried rather than shipped fresh, and until after World War I most of it went to Europe, where food was desperately needed. In the early 1920s the California Packing Company ran what was called the largest dry yard in the world at Kelseyville. Then boxing fresh fruit became the norm, and Lake County growers had to haul their pears by truck over the Hopland grade or to Ukiah to reach buyers. That is the trade this label was printed for: fresh Bartletts, boxed by the 46 pounds at a Finley shed, with the brand on the end of the box telling the buyer where they grew.

Why "Mountain" Mattered

Lake County's orchards sit well above the Sacramento Valley growers, and the area's pattern of hot days and cool nights gives its Bartletts a reputation for flavor and high sugar, which also helps the fruit hold up in shipping. The "mountain Bartlett" line on this label is that reputation turned into a sales pitch. In recent years the county has grown about a quarter of all the Bartletts raised in California and shipped roughly a third of the state's fresh pears.

Lore: Slabs of Gold and a Pear With a Borrowed Name

Dried Lake County Bartletts were fondly remembered as "slabs of gold," and many considered them the finest dried pears in the world. Kelseyville's old boast lives on at its annual Pear Festival, which started in 1993 as a street dance and a scarecrow contest with just twelve booths.

The pear itself carries a case of mistaken identity. It was raised in Berkshire, England, by John Stair, a schoolmaster, and sold there as the Williams pear. In 1799 trees were imported to Massachusetts and planted on Thomas Brewer's grounds in Roxbury. When Enoch Bartlett of Dorchester, Massachusetts, took over the property, he put his own name on the fruit without knowing where it came from. By the time a shipment from England in 1828 showed the Bartlett and the Williams were the same pear, the American name had stuck, and it is the name printed here in capitals.

A Short History of Crate Labels

Fruit crate labels began on the West Coast in the 1880s, when transcontinental railroads let growers sell to the whole country and every packer needed a brand that stood out across a produce market. They were printed by lithography, and color itself carried meaning; on many labels a blue background marked a packer's top grade. World War II squeezed crate makers and printers alike, and pre-printed cardboard boxes eventually replaced the wooden crate and its pasted label. California pear labels held on longer than most, with around 2,000 different designs used from about 1918 into the late 1970s. The ones collectors own today survive mostly as unused stock left behind in packing houses and print shops.

What It Stands For

A label like this is the advertising of a whole county economy. The pear became the backbone of Lake County farming, dried fruit fed postwar Europe, and a packing town of a few hundred people shipped its brand to markets it would never see. The wooden boxes are long gone; the paper that sold them is what remains of that trade, and the lithography on it is still hard to match.

Questions People Ask

Where is Finley, California?

In Lake County, just outside Lakeport, in the orchard country around Kelseyville and Big Valley.

What does "Mountain Bartlett" mean on a pear label?

It advertised Bartlett pears grown in Lake County's higher orchards, prized for flavor and sugar from hot days and cool nights.

How old is the Lolilla label?

It is a 1950s crate label, unused and never pasted to a box.

How big is it?

10" x 7" ~.

Does it have a picture?

No. It is an all-lettering design: LOLILLA in gold on navy, "Pears" in cream script, and the packer's green ribbon banner.