204 RURAL MICHIGAN 



the Lake Michigan shore had definitely become the 

 great "fruit-belt" of the State. Commercial peach- 

 growing in Berrien County is dated as far back as 

 1835 with the first shipment of the fruit from St. 

 Joseph in 1840.^ Grapes soon appeared in the 

 vicinity of Grand Haven^ on .the western shore, al- 

 though the wild variety had grown with the most 

 extraordinary profusion near Lake Erie in the south- 

 eastern section of the southern peninsvila. While 

 exceptionally severe winters, such as those of 1873 

 and 1875, which iced the surface of Lake Michigan, 

 were quite disastrous to fruit-trees even in the far 

 western counties, the normal mild winter and cool 

 growth-retarding temperatures of the lake shore 

 country were so advantageous to the fruit-growers 

 that the industry naturally settled itself in that dis- 

 trict, and has remained its dominant agricultural 

 interest to the present time. By 1884 a very large 

 fraction of the State's total output of fruit was 

 credited to the three southwestern counties of this 

 region, Allegan, Van Buren and Berrien, which pro- 

 duced one-ninth of the apples, two-thirds of the 

 peaches, and three-fifths of the grapes grown in 

 Michigan, as calculated from the return of the State 

 census of that year.- 



By 1899, the State production of orchard fruit was 

 reported in the United States census returns as 

 9,859,862 bushels, and ten years later at 15,320,104 

 bushels. Among the several species of these fruits, 



'"Kept. Mich. Bd. Agr.," 1888, 283. 



=" Thirteenth U. S. Census— Abstract. 411. 



