Vintage McIntosh Brand Crate Label 🍊 — Famous Marion County Citrus, O. D. Huff Jr. Groves, Inc., McIntosh Florida

Who Packed McIntosh Brand Citrus in Marion County? 🍊 McIntosh Brand, Famous Marion County Citrus, McIntosh, Florida

Size: 8 1/2" x 3 1/2"

This label is a great piece of history. This is a vintage McIntosh Brand citrus label, packed by Buddy Huff's company in McIntosh, Florida. It's a tall, narrow label on a deep royal blue: "Famous" in light blue script up top over MARION COUNTY CITRUS, then a huge McINTOSH slanting up across the middle in yellow letters edged in red with a deep shadow, "Brand" in script, PRODUCE OF U.S.A., and the packer's name in red on a maroon panel at the bottom. My pictures seriously don't do it justice.

🏷️ What's Printed on It

• Famous MARION COUNTY CITRUS
• McINTOSH Brand
• PRODUCE OF U.S.A.
• PACKED BY O.D. HUFF, JR. GROVES, INC., McINTOSH, FLA.

McIntosh here is the town, not the apple. And that "GROVES, INC." is the clue to its age. The State of Florida's records show the company was incorporated under that name on November 29, 1957, and the State Archives of Florida keeps an earlier printing of this same design that reads just "O.D. HUFF JR., McINTOSH, FLORIDA," with no "Groves, Inc." So this printing comes from 1957 or later, when the business had grown into a corporation.

🌳 Buddy Huff, Citrus Man

O. D. "Buddy" Huff Jr. was born in Evinston, Florida, on August 29, 1908. In 1941, at 33, he left the corporate produce world to start his own operation, and he and his wife ran their own retail citrus shop and packinghouse beside the groves on the hill overlooking Orange Lake at McIntosh, a grower, packer and gift-fruit shipper all in one. The crates were typically made of magnolia wood by McIntosh's own Franklin Crate Company, and the railroad right downtown made shipping easy. A 1964 Marion Sentinel article reported Buddy kept around 12,000 diesel grove heaters, smudge pots, ready for cold nights.

He was a big name in Florida citrus. Buddy Huff served on the Florida Citrus Commission from 1962 to 1971, as its chairman from 1965 to 1969, and he was inducted into the Florida Citrus Hall of Fame in 1981. He died on July 12, 1984, at 75. The Christmas Eve freeze of 1983 had already hit the groves hard, and the family's three-decade citrus business never came back. In 2019 the Alachua Conservation Trust acquired 71 acres of the old Huff land, and it's the Orange Lake Overlook today.

🏘️ McIntosh, on Orange Lake

McIntosh is named for Col. John Houstoun McIntosh, the earliest documented settler of the area back in the early 1820s. Citrus groves started to thrive there after the Civil War, and oranges went out across Orange Lake to Palatka on the St. Johns River until the railroad came to town in 1881. McIntosh was incorporated on May 22, 1913, with the land laid out in lots and ten-acre plots for citrus. Family recollection has it that after the great freeze of 1894-95, folks in McIntosh moved their surviving citrus up to the highest hilltop, the same hill the Huff groves later covered.

🏡 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! The tall shape fits a narrow wall beautifully, and it's a perfect gift for anybody from McIntosh, Ocala or Marion County.