Vintage 1960s Tex Rio Tomatoes Crate Label 🍅 — Interstate Fruit & Vegetable Co., La Feria, Texas

Who Packed Tex Rio Tomatoes? 🍅 Tex Rio Tomatoes, Interstate Fruit & Vegetable Co., La Feria, Texas

Size: 13" x 5" ~ Unused, never pasted on a lug.

Amazing vintage beauty that can light up your home with her smile! This is a vintage 1960s Tex Rio Tomatoes crate label, packed and shipped by the Interstate Fruit & Vegetable Co. of La Feria, Texas, down in the Rio Grande Valley. She's got dark hair pulled into a long braid, a big green bow, a yellow blouse embroidered in red, a string of red beads, a tasseled earring and a lavender scarf over her shoulder, with a wide embroidered sombrero behind her. On either side of her, the brand in giant white letters trimmed in red: TEX and RIO, Texas and the Rio Grande in two words.

🔍 What's on it

A long black label made for the end of a tomato lug. Up in the corner: PACKED AND SHIPPED BY INTERSTATE FRUIT & VEGETABLE CO., LA FERIA, TEXAS, 78559 and U. S. A. On the right, TOMATOES in light blue capitals and NET WEIGHT 30 LBS. beneath. There's no printer's name and no year anywhere on it.

That little 78559 does the dating for us. It's La Feria's ZIP code, and five-digit ZIP codes started on July 1, 1963, so this label was printed in 1963 or later. That makes it something of a late bloomer. Texas Co-op Power, writing about Valley crate art, says paper labels had their heyday from the 1910s to about 1960, and that the sudden switch in the late 1950s to cheap preprinted cardboard boxes left mountains of unused labels behind. Tex Rio kept a paper label going after most of the Valley had given them up.

🎪 La Feria, "the fair"

La Feria is Spanish for "the fair," and the town's name is older than the town. According to the Texas historical marker put up in 1971, the land was surveyed in 1777 for Spain's grants to Don Juan Hinojosa and José María Ballí, ancestors of the priest Padre Island is named for. The old rancho raised cattle, sheep and goats, and by the 1790s it had its own fairground for fiestas, horse racing and other sports, which is where the name comes from. After the Mexican War the Ballí heirs had their title confirmed by Texas, and in 1850 a cattleman named Nathaniel White, a reputed smuggler according to that same marker, opened Anglo ranching here.

My favorite La Feria story is how the town got its train station. When the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway came through in 1911, it put its stop at a place called Bixby, about a mile from the new townsite. The railroad wouldn't move it, so in July 1912 the founders took care of it themselves. As the Cameron County Historical Commission's history tells it, one night a group of citizens rode out to Bixby in a horse-drawn wagon and "literally helped themselves to the station building," and hauled it to La Feria. By 1915 the town had a bank, two churches and its own weekly paper, the La Feria Leader, and by 1967 it counted ninety industries, fruit and vegetable canneries among them.

🏡 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! It's a long, narrow piece that looks great over a kitchen doorway or a window, and a perfect gift for anybody from the Rio Grande Valley, Cameron County or South Texas.