Vintage Pirate's Cove Brand Mountain Bartletts Crate Label 🍐 — Lake Cove Growers Inc., Finley Lake County CA

Where Are the Pirates? 🍐 Vintage Pirate's Cove Brand Mountain Bartletts Crate Label, Lake Cove Growers

Size: 10 1/2" x 7 3/4"

No pirate, no ship, no chest of gold. The buccaneers on this label live only in its name, PIRATE'S COVE®, and beneath that name is pure Lake County pear country: a mountain lit gold over a wide lake, rows of trees across the valley floor, a wooded point and one small boat out on the water. It is a 1950s crate label for Lake County Mountain Bartletts, packed and shipped by Lake Cove Growers Inc. of Finley, California, from the final years of the paper fruit crate label.

10 1/2" x 7 3/4" ~ Little to no wear.

It is a stunning piece of Americana advertising. My pictures seriously don't do it justice. Picture this remarkable vintage advertising, not in a museum, but as a striking piece of home decor in any room of your home!

🍐 What the Label Prints and Shows

• PIRATE'S COVE® across the top in tall navy capitals edged in light blue, the registration mark after the final E, with BRAND beneath at the right
• LAKE COUNTY in large red capitals over MOUNTAIN BARTLETTS
• PACKED & SHIPPED BY LAKE COVE GROWERS INC., FINLEY, CALIF., U.S.A. and NET CONTENTS 4/5 BUSHEL along the bottom
• A navy pear lettered Lakes in white, with a cream outline map of the State of California set in front of it, carrying a small star-shaped mark
• The painting: a tall mountain with sunlit gold slopes and purple shadows under a blue sky, a green valley floor lined with rows of trees, a lake with a wooded point, a small cabin boat on the water, two trees on the far shore and green brush in the foreground
• The back: plain cream paper, clean, with the front lettering faintly showing through in reverse

The word pear is never printed, and it never had to be. To a produce buyer, Bartletts meant pears, and LAKE COUNTY told him where they grew.

🏴‍☠️ A Pirate Name on a Pear Box

Crate labels were salesmen that rode along with the fruit. From the late 1800s, as the railroads carried western produce to markets across the country, growers and shippers glued lithographed paper labels to the ends of their wooden crates. The label told a buyer whose fruit was inside, and the name and picture had to make that brand stick in his memory. Pirate's Cove promised adventure. The painting underneath shows the lake country where the pears were grown.

🌋 Clear Lake and Mount Konocti

Lake County was formed on May 20, 1861, from parts of Napa, Mendocino and Colusa counties, with Lakeport as its county seat. Its centerpiece is Clear Lake: 68 square miles, the largest natural freshwater lake lying wholly inside California. U.S. Geological Survey core samples taken in 1973 and 1980 dated its sediments to 480,000 years, which ranks it among the oldest lakes in North America. Today anglers call it the Bass Capital of the West.

The label does not name its mountain. The landmark that towers over Clear Lake's south shore is Mount Konocti, a 4,305-foot volcanic dome that last erupted about 11,000 years ago. Pomo and Wappo people have lived around it for as long as 11,000 years, and its name comes from Pomo words for mountain and woman.

📜 The Legends of the Lake

The best-known story is a love story. Legend has it that two giant chiefs, Kah-bel in the north and Konocti in the south, fought over Konocti's daughter, Lupiyoma, and both were killed. Kah-bel's body became the red hills to the north, and Konocti's became the mountain. Lupiyoma threw herself into the lake in her grief, and the bubbling springs of Soda Bay are said to be her tears.

Another telling explains the name: a mountain woman quarreled with her husband and climbed to the summit, vowing he would never see her alive again, and her people named the peak in her memory. Older lore holds that a lightless lake lies hidden inside the mountain, home to white fish with no eyes; that a drought in 1818 dropped Clear Lake low enough to expose a great cave beneath Konocti's eastern slope; and that marked sticks dropped down a shaft in the mountain's caves turned up weeks later floating in Clear Lake. Lake County historian Henry Mauldin recorded the explorers' accounts of that shaft.

Even the county's glittering volcanic stones, the Lake County diamonds, carry a legend. They are moon tears, the story goes, wept when the moon fell in love with a Pomo chief and had to choose between him and her place in the sky.

🍐 How Lake County Became Mountain Pear Country

Lake County Bartletts made their name in 1885, when they were exhibited at the World's Fair in New Orleans and proclaimed "the finest in the world." Thomas Porteus was the grower credited with planting the county's first commercial pear orchard, four acres in Big Valley, in the late 1800s, and J.W. Annette of Finley was among the growers who followed. By 1919 the county had 700 acres of pears.

Until 1923 the fruit was sold mostly dried, and early crops went to Europe. As packers moved into the county and iced rail cars arrived, more of the harvest was packed and shipped fresh to customers across the country, in wooden boxes like the one this label was printed for. Prohibition changed the county's farms again: in 1920 national prohibition essentially ended Lake County's wine production, and most of its vineyards were ripped out and replanted with walnut and pear orchards. Through the 20th century Kelseyville was called the pear capital of the world, and in 1999 alone Lake County processed 85,000 tons of pears.

Warm summer days and cool nights before harvest give Lake County Bartletts their rosy, sun-kissed blush. The county is the largest supplier of premium fresh pears in California and the largest growing area in the state's Mountain District, and pears are still packed in Finley today.

🏡 Finley, California

Finley is a small unincorporated community 3.5 miles southeast of Lakeport, at an elevation of 1,352 feet. It takes its name from Samuel Finley Sylar, a settler there, and its first post office opened in 1907. Lake Cove Growers Inc. printed the town's name on this label as FINLEY, CALIF., U.S.A.

📦 The End of the Paper Crate Label

Crate labels were printed by lithograph houses from original artwork painted in watercolor. In the 1950s pre-printed corrugated cardboard boxes took over the produce trade. They were lighter, cheaper, and easier to store and break down, and the apple and pear industries were among the first to switch. Once the box itself carried the brand, the glued paper label was finished. The labels that survive came out of packing-house storage, lithographers' proofs and warehouse finds, and collectors started turning up forgotten stacks of them in the 1960s.

❓ Questions People Ask

How old is this label? It is a 1950s crate label. The printed address, FINLEY, CALIF., U.S.A., carries no ZIP code, which fits a label printed before ZIP codes arrived in 1963.

Is there a pirate on it? No. Pirate's Cove is the brand name. The picture is a mountain and lake landscape with a small boat.

What fruit came in the box? Bartlett pears. MOUNTAIN BARTLETTS names the variety, and LAKE COUNTY names the California county where they were grown.

What does 4/5 bushel mean? It is the printed net contents of the box the label was made for: four-fifths of a bushel of fruit.

Who printed it? No printer's name appears on the label. The only company it names is the packer and shipper, Lake Cove Growers Inc.

How big is it? It measures 10 1/2 by 7 3/4 inches.

Was it ever on a crate? The photographed label's back is clean cream paper with no glue.