8 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



narrow strip of land along the shore of Lake Michigan, the northern 

 limit of which was very indefinite. 



The Peninsula, as you all know, is a narrow strip of land extending 

 from the head of Grand Traverse Bay some twenty miles in a north- 

 easterly direction, dividing the bay into two arms, knoA\Ti as the east 

 and west arms. The waters of Grand Traverse Bay are said to be 

 very deep, in many places as deep as anywhere in Lake Michigan, thus 

 exercising a peculiarly favorable influence upon the climate; the soil is 

 varied in character but the greater portion of it may be described as a 

 dark sandy loam, naturally .well drained and easy to work, a soil 

 easily exhausted by improper methods of handling, but under a wise 

 system of management is capable of maintaining its fertility and re- 

 sisting the effects of drouth to a remarkable degree. 



The surface is mostly a succession of undulating plains, hills and val- 

 leys, the highest })oints being about three hundred feet above the bay 

 level, thus furnishing the necessary atmospheric drainage and providing 

 excellent locations on nearly every section of land for the production 

 of fruit. The records kept at the Old Mission weather station for the 

 past 19 years show an average annual rainfall of over thirty inches, 

 well distributed throughout the growing season. These records show 

 for the present year from January 1st to December 1st, eleven months, 

 a rainfall of 318.5/100 inches, of "which 14 2/100 inches fell during the 

 five moiiths of May, June, July, August and September. 



The first attempt at fruit growing on a commercial scale was in the 

 fall of 1860 when apple trees were procured from a New York nursery 

 for the planting of three orchards of about 400 trees each, consisting 

 largely of Greenings, Baldwins and Northeni Spies. Two of these 

 orchards were planted on good soil and favorable locations and are still 

 alive and producing fruit. The other was dead and gone long ago, 

 due, I think, to three causes, fl) poor location, being down on low flat 

 land but little above the bay level, (2) poor soil. (3) neglect. 



The Peninsula has an area of seventeen thousand acres. A careful 

 estimate made by the Board of Supervisors three years ago placed the 

 number of acres then set out to fruit at seventeen hundred or one tenth 

 the total area, and 42% of the total orchard acreage of the entire county. 

 Large plantings have been made during the last three years, so that 

 there is at the present time probably two thousand acres set out to 

 fruit trees. 



In 1867 Mr. George Parmelee bought a large tract of land on the 

 north end of the Peninsula and after two or three years of preparation 

 set out his large apple orchard of one hundred acres and twenty acres 

 to other fruits. Closely following INfr. Parmelee came O. P. Avery, 

 Tracy & Reynolds, A. P. Gray, Benjamin and Amos Montague, W. D. 

 Bagley, H. W. Curtis and others, each of whom planted large apple 

 orchards as did also several of the older residents of the town. This 

 was before the days of cold storage for apples, and the plantings were 

 largely of Golden Russets on account of their long keeping qualities. 

 Most of them have since been top grafted to other more desirable sorts 

 and have proved to be very good stock for such purpose. 



In a general way it may be said that it was about thirty years ago 

 that apples began to be produced for commercial purposes. I well re- 

 member about this time that our young apple orchard of 300 trees 

 which I helped to plant when a small boy produced what was up to that 



