Vintage 1940s On Rush Brand Selected Vegetables Crate Label 🥬 — F. H. Hogue Co., Yuma AZ and Firebaugh CA

Who Packed On Rush Vegetables in Yuma? 🥬 On Rush Selected Vegetables, F. H. Hogue Co. of Yuma and Firebaugh

Size: 9" x 7" ~ Unused.

Amazing provocative label. Lithography just pops! A red-haired gal in a white blouse and a green skirt is running flat out with a woven basket on her arm, the wind whipping her skirt up past her stocking tops and garter, white heels flying and yellow blossoms tumbling along behind her, all on a bright red ground under big white ON RUSH letters. My pictures seriously don't do it justice.

Grab one at my price while I have them available. I won't be seeing these again likely.

🏷️ What's Printed on It

• PRODUCE OF U.S.A.
• ON RUSH
• Selected VEGETABLES
• PACKED & SHIPPED BY F. H. HOGUE CO., YUMA, ARIZONA, FIREBAUGH, CALIFORNIA
• ©STECHER-TRAUNG S. F., CALIF., the printer's line in tiny type along the bottom

The back is blank, with the big letters showing through a little.

🖼️ In a Museum

This same design is in the collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Their Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts bought one in 1994 (accession number 1994.103.80), cataloged as a color lithograph printed by Stecher-Traung and dated about 1930 to 1940, with an image 24.3 by 17.2 centimeters, right about the size of this one.

📜 A Registered Brand

The F. H. Hogue Company of Yuma, Arizona filed ON RUSH as a trademark for fresh vegetables and melons on April 24, 1943, and it was registered on September 28, 1943 as Reg. No. 403,519. The drawing on file is the same slanted, shadowed block lettering you see on this label, and Hogue said they had been using the name since May 10, 1933. They filed BLUSHING and FOOT HIGH the same day, and that December they added BUXOM, another pin-up girl label. The ON RUSH registration finally expired in 1986.

🌵 Yuma and Firebaugh

Hogue shipped from two great vegetable towns. Yuma sits on the Colorado River down in the Arizona desert, and up to 90% of the leafy vegetables grown in the U.S. from November to March come out of there, thanks to about eleven hours of sun a day, rich river soil and Colorado River water.

Firebaugh, on the west side of California's San Joaquin Valley, goes back to 1854, when Andrew Davidson Firebaugh set up a trading post and ferry on the San Joaquin River. He was a Virginian who served with the Texas Mounted Riflemen in the Mexican War, came to California in 1849 and fought under Major James D. Savage on the expedition that discovered Yosemite. Firebaugh's Ferry became a station on the great Butterfield Overland Stage route, he built the first road over Pacheco Pass, and in 1872 he helped found "The Academy," Fresno County's first secondary school.

🖨️ Stecher-Traung of San Francisco

The printer started out in San Francisco in 1911 as the Pingree Traung Company and became Traung Label and Lithography in 1916. When it bought the Stecher Lithograph Company of Rochester, New York, founded in 1887, it became Stecher-Traung, and it printed under that name until 1966, when International Paper bought it.

🏡 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!

This is within 20 years of full antique status.