CHAPTER XX 



THE PEACH 



From the first years of the American occupation for about forty 

 years the peach was the leading deciduous fruit grown in California. 

 In the later '90s grain and other field products were low priced and 

 people were told that cured prunes could be put up in sacks more 

 cheaply than wheat. So they took to planting prune orchards all 

 through the wheat districts of the great valley, and even carried 

 the trees where no one would think of planting wheat cutting up 

 shallow-clay upland sheep pastures and even yucca sand wastes 

 into prune-growing colonies. Figures of prune trees in orchards 

 rushed far beyond the peach figures. This over-planting of prunes 

 naturally brought loss and disappointment, and interest turned 

 again to peach planting, so that in 1907 the peach had secured 

 notable advance beyond the prune. The peach held the leadership 

 until 1915 when the demand for dried peaches fell below the cost of 

 production, planting was arrested and some orchards sacrificed. 

 The situation was, however, radically changed in 1917 by the organ- 

 ization of the peach-growers' association and by the rapid advance 

 of prices under such control. Still as the prune experienced no 

 such set-back planting proceeded and the relation of the two fruits 

 in 1920 is shown in Chapter VI. It is, however, not at all certain 

 that the peach will not regain ascendancy over the prune. Still, 

 although the peach now stands below the prune in California pro- 

 duction, the California peach still has national leadership, for the 

 report of peach production in 1918, by the Bureau of Crop Esti- 

 mates of the United States Department of Agriculture, placed the 

 national product of peaches in 1919 at 29,461,000 bushels, of which 

 California produced 16,268,000 bushels or 3,000,000 bushels more 

 than all other states combined. 



The peach was the first fruit to ripen on the improved trees 

 brought here by the early American settlers, and the magnificence 

 of the peach was consequently the key-note of the refrain which 

 greeted the ears of the world in which the California gold cry was 

 ringing early in the fifties. In fact, the gold from the mine and the 

 gold from the tree were very nearly related. In old Coloma, where 

 gold was discovered, there was a peach tree which bore four hun- 

 dred and fifty peaches in 1854, which sold for $3.00 each, or $1,350 

 for the crop of one tree, and in 1855, six trees bore one thousand 

 one hundred peaches, which sold for $1.00 each. Some of these 

 pioneer trees are said to be still living and bearing fruit. 



LONGEVITY OF THE PEACH IN CALIFORNIA 



There are many other facts to establish the claim that the peach 

 tree, if planted in a suitable soil and situation and cared for with 

 any devotion and skill, is not a short-lived tree in California. Cali- 



