Working The Land: Some History of the Lemon Packing House, San Dimas, 1900-1909, Part Four

by Paul R. Spitzzeri

In early 1908, just over seven years after its formation, the San Dimas Lemon Association, which grew to include growers from Azusa, Charter Oak, Claremont, Covina, Glendora, La Verne (formerly Lordsburg) and North Pomona, found that its packing house was in a location that was too limited for growth. This was at the southwest corner of San Dimas and Bonita avenues where the Frontier Village shopping center is today and north of the Santa Fe railroad line (to the west in Rhoads Park is the Santa Fe depot—a 1934 structure that replaced the fire-destroyed 1889 original—that is now the Pacific Railroad Museum.)

The Pomona Progress-Bulletin of 25 February briefly noted that the Association “has rented the packing house near the Southern Pacific depot and will make regular shipments over the Southern Pacific in the future.” While the Santa Fe line coming east moves northwest from San Dimas into Glendora and Azusa and is now used as the Metro A Line, with the Foothill Extension from Glendora to Pomona in final preparations for service, the Southern Pacific route to the south comes in from La Verne, with the San Dimas depot formerly on Cataract Avenue just as it turns into Covina Boulevard—the Metrolink San Bernardino train runs along this line today.

The paper’s 4 June edition reported that, in addition to a healthy growth in the amount of oranges being grown in the area, the San Antonio Fruit Exchange, of which the San Dimas lemon organization was a member, determined that,

The San Dimas Lemon association is handling this year nearly twenty-five per cent more lemons than ever before, showing a large increase in acreage and the growth of the orchards.

As mentioned in part three of this post, the Association purchased, in 1907, property to the west with an eye to moving its operations to a new facility. The Los Angeles Express of 18 July 1908 concisely remarked that it “has begun work on a new packing house,” while the Progress-Bulletin of 5 September reported that more than 146,000 boxes were handled by the Association in the prior year.

The 9 December edition of the Pomona Review provided a lengthier review of the project, when it remarked that,

Our little sister burg of San Dimas can now boast the largest lemon packing house in the world. For a long time, San Dimas, which is the acknowledged center of one of the largest and most prolific lemon-growing districts in California, has been prominent as a lemon-shipping point.

[Noting its packing of fruit from those surrounding areas mentioned above] . . . The rapidly-increasing business of the association has, therefore, demanded more floor space and conveniences, hence the construction of the new building.

Contractor R.J. Noble was expected to finish the new packing house around the beginning of 1909 and the paper remarked that “it will be the most complete lemon curing house in the state, with all the latest improved modern ventilating contrivances and machinery.” The core of the house was to measure 104×300 feet and have a capacity of 300 carloads, while a 9-foot high basement was to have room to store a third that number of fruit.

It was added by the Review, thanks to information provided by the house’s manager, Frank H. Harwood, that “all of the work is now systematized so that the fruit can be handled in the most expeditious manner by the small army of employees.” The article concluded with the note that the 1907-1908 season yielded 500 railroad cars of fruit packed and shipped from the establishment.

The 2 February 1909 edition of the paper remarked that,

The lemon growers of San Dimas and La Verne are these days picking, curing and packing lemons. In fact, they have been working at night getting fruit ready. The San Dimas Lemon association, which is one of the largest in Southern California, is shipping on an average of ten cars a week. They have now twenty-five packers employed and these are kept busy all the time. The price of lemons is climbing up every day and the grower bids fair to getting a big price this year, owing to the recent earthquake disaster in [southern] Italy and Sicily [the 28 December 1908 killed nearly 100,000 persons]. The valley around San Dimas and La Verne produces the finest lemons grown anywhere in the country. Just recently a new packing house was built and is up-to-date in every way.

The Review‘s issue of 20 March went into greater detail concerning the new plant, while beginning by observing that “the ‘Pet’ brand . . . is known wherever good lemons are consumed.” Moreover, the paper commented that “the lemon industry in and about San Dimas has received great impetus the past few years on account of the freedom of the section from injurious frosts.”

The humble beginnings of the organization was noted, as well, rising from “a small number of growers with scarcely enough fruit to make a showing in the market” to the assertion that “the growth of this Association is one of the marvels of Southern California.” It was believed that an annual shipment of 1,000 rail cars of fruit was likely to happen soon and the brands at San Dimas “are well received by the trade and have the record, on several occasions, of having commanded the highest prices in eastern auctions of any sales made during the year.”

With respect to the new facility, the paper noted,

This Association has erected the largest, most modern and most complete lemon house in the United States, if not in the world. The building is 100×304 feet, with a basement 116×112. It is so constructed that the entire main floor and basement can be thrown open on all sides and ends for ventilation or the whole can be closed tight so as to practically exclude air. The storage rooms are fitted with the latest tent system [for sweating, or curing]. The normal storage capacity of house is 240 cars. There is in addition a receiving and packing room 100 feet square, built as a “T” to the main building, where all fruit is received, washed and sorted before it enters the storage rooms. The Association has an annual output of about 600 cars for lemons, being, at present, by far the largest organization of lemon growers in this country.

Also in that’s day edition was a feature concerning the San Antonio exchange, including a photo of the ten men who comprised its officers and directors. Mentioned a couple of times in his post was the secretary and manager, Peter J. Dreher, who spoke frequently at San Dimas Lemon Association annual meetings. The vice-president was Fred J. Smith, a Pomona orange grower and realtor who owned the Workman Homestead from 1899 to 1903 after it was lost to foreclosure by John H. Temple—Smith being the first owner not in the Workman and Temple family.

President David C. Teague was the brother of Robert, from whose nurseries most of the local lemon trees were raised, and they were the sons of Crawford, who brought family to the area in 1881 from northern California, having acquired much of the land of Rancho Azusa owner Henry Dalton in Mud Springs, the former name of San Dimas and which was a swamp-like cienega, where groundwater came to the surface. After growing grain, the Teagues planted citrus trees in the late 1880s as San Dimas was forming during the latter stages of the great Boom of the Eighties.

The article commented that the Teagues “located at Mud Springs, about one-half mile from the present townsite of San Dimas,” this would be southeast near the Santa Fe tracks and along Arrow Highway between Walnut Avenue and San Dimas Canyon Road, “from which point not a tree, planted by man, was visible.” The account continued that the family had 3,000 acres “now comprising the San Dimas section” in wheat and barley before oranges were planted in 1888 “near the old ranch house.”

The rented house near the Southern Pacific depot was still used the Association as late as the end of June as coverage of a fire that razed the rail station reported that “the packing house of the San Dimas Lemon Association, which is across the tracks from the station, was in grave danger,” though was saved from the flames.

The first of July found the Review remarking that the Association “has been busy day and night for ten days rushing lemons to market” and that 40 cars of fruit were shipped out since the 23rd of June. The issue of the following day reported that, while hot weather in the East abated and demand for the fruit dropped significantly, “still the lemon market is exceptionally firm and profitable.” Reaffirming the continuous packing and shipping of the fruit from the San Dimas house, the paper concluded that the Association “has enough lemons on hand to keep up [the] rate of shipments” lately reported.

The highlighted artifact for this post is a real photo postcard from the Museum’s collection of the newly completed packing house from the northeast showing the two structures, including the Association name across the front of the main building, mentioned in the last quote above. On the reverse is a message to a recipient in Beatrice, Nebraska in the southeast portion of the Cornhusker State from someone whose name appears to read “Roy” or “Ray” “Ans,” and who stated that he’d visited the famous local Mt. Lowe resort for Independence Day, followed by wearying trips to Long Beach and Los Angeles. He followed with, “am well, am still working nights, this is the Packing house I watch at night [as a security guard].”

A second photo here from the Homestead’s holdings shows the facility from the Santa Fe tracks is from a later date, with the organization name removed and additional windows added, while the entrance to the principal edifice was also redone. In fact, the Review of 30 January 1911 reported that “the San Dimas lemon packing house is the largest in the world, but it is over crowded and they are devising schemes by which the space above the trusses may be utilized for fruit packing purposes.”

The paper’s edition of 31 March remarked that Noble “has been just rushing things on the reconstruction . . . so as to afford more room for business” because “the way the lemon packing business has grown at this point is a perfect wonder.” The pillars supporting the structure were reinforced so a second floor could be built and “with this extra floor space a fourth more packers and graders can work,” while a like 25% amount of capacity would be added, boosting this to 250 cars.

With grading and packing moved to the upper level, the main floor and basement were to be reserved strictly for storage of the fruit. The Review ended by noting “the present month will prove the greatest in the history of the lemon industry in San Dimas” with the 70,000 boxes counted as of that evening breaking the previous record of 67,000 in February 1909, just after completion of the facility. It was pointed out, as well, that “it is nothing unusual for the lemon house to received 4000 boxes per day these days.”

The 5 July issue of the Review mentioned that “the newly enlarged packing house has been opened this week” with space expanded to nearly 285,000 square feet. The piece continued that “an average of 150 persons are employed, one-half of which are heads of families,” while the increased capacity, said to be 225 cars, was such that it was “possible to store the fruit against the demands of the market, also eliminating the necessity of precooling, as the fruit is kept for weeks or months, as the demand may be, at an even or low temperature.”

As for the oft-broadcast claims that San Dimas was free from frost, this was proved unfounded when, in the first days of 1913, a freeze hit the area, with temperatures getting as low as 26 degrees and the Pasadena Star-News publishing a report from Pomona that “in the foothill sections, including the famous San Dimas lemon district, La Verne, Lordsburg and Claremont, there was considerable damage, the frost being the heaviest in twenty years.”

Still, growth continued and peaked during the Roaring Twenties. The Los Angeles Times of New Year’s Day 1924 ran a short description of San Dimas, commenting that it had 2,400 residents and that “the main industry is the raising of oranges and lemons, [with] four modern packing-houses preparing the fruit for shipment to eastern markets.” Two plants were operated by the California Fruit Growers’ Exchange, which marketed the widely-known Sunkist brand. The Association was again heralded as having the largest facility in the world “and has a storage capacity of 200 cars.”

In 1928, another remodeling took place principally involving the modernizing and expansion of office space. The 20 May 1929 edition of the Progress-Bulletin reported that the name of the Association was painted in letters measuring 20×30 feet so that the increasing number of airplanes traversing the skies overhead could see them from as far as 10,000 feet in altitude.

This, it was averred, served to “designate San Dimas as one of the best marked towns in Southern California from an aviator’s point of view” and it was stated that a pilot looking for the private airport of cereal magnate Will Keith Kellogg on his ranch where Cal Poly Pomona is now couldn’t locate it, finding the San Dimas packing house helped him get his bearings.

The Great Depression was followed by the rationing and restrictions of the Second World War and then came the postwar housing boom as suburbia spread rapidly through the San Gabriel Valley and then descended upon San Dimas. Still, while the peak year in the Twenties involved 525,000 boxes processed at the house, there were still 467,000 received in 1956-1957, though the number tumbled to 150,000 from 850 acres (the peak acreage was 3,000).

In August 1963, the packing house closed. While the Association lingered out for a short while as it phased out its operations, it offered the structures for sale at $175,000. The manager, only the third after Harwood and serving for almost a quarter century from the early 1940s to the mid-1960s, was William B. Temple (1904-2008), who was born in Covina, where his family settled six years prior. Temple’s father, Hamilton, was a distant cousin of Walter P. Temple, owner of the Homestead from 1917-1932, they have a common ancestor from the earliest days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Hamilton was born in 1841 in Reading, the town where Walter’s father, F.P.F., was born and who left that year for California.

A portion of the San Dimas Lemon Association packing house is still with us and has long been owned by the Machinery and Equipment Company. How long the surviving structures will be around is certainly a notable question and the San Dimas Historical Society, which has its offices and museum in the second floor of the late 1880s San Dimas Hotel/Walker House has done much work to preserve the history of the city.