Citrus crate labels were color-lithographed paper labels that California growers and packers glued to the ends of wooden fruit crates from the 1880s into the 1950s, to tell buyers whose oranges or lemons were inside. Each one names a brand and a packer's town, and often the lithographer along the bottom edge.
Our family has grown and packed citrus in Redlands for five generations, and these days our citrus goes into marmalades such as our Navel Orange Marmalade rather than labeled crates. The town's old labels are part of our paper trail, and the small print on them says more than the pictures.
What the labels were for
A crate label was an advertisement and an address at once. The Huntington Library, which holds more than 1,500 of them, describes labels made for California growers and shippers "to identify brand names and packing locations" on wooden crates of citrus.
According to the Ephemera Society of America, the West Coast began using them in the 1880s. Size followed the crate. Orange and grapefruit labels ran about 11 by 10 inches, lemon labels about 11 by 9. The Redlands orange labels for the Herald and Mutual brands, cited below, each measure 28 by 25.5 cm, or about 11 by 10 inches.
Who printed citrus crate labels?
When a label credits anyone, it's usually the printer, not the artist. The Riverside Public Library, for example, catalogs the "Herald Brand" label for Redlands oranges under its lithographer, H.S. Crocker Co. of San Francisco and Los Angeles. The designers who drew the labels mostly went unsigned.
The Ephemera Society names the big label printers as Schmidt Litho Co., Western Litho Co. (Los Angeles), Louis Roesch Co., Stecher-Traung and Schwabacher-Frey (all San Francisco), and H.S. Crocker Co. The Huntington notes that many of its labels came from Los Angeles and San Francisco lithographers.
The printing method helps with dating. Labels before the 1920s were usually printed from stone; after that, offset lithography took over. The Huntington's collection shows the full range of techniques: crayon drawing, hand stippling, Ben Day screen patterns and halftones. More than 100 of its labels are "bronzed", printed with varnish and then dusted with fine bronze powder for a metallic shine. Many carry a received-date stamp on the back from the Fruit Growers Supply Company, and some have approval signatures or notes about printing corrections.
Style helps with dating too. In the Huntington's words, the earliest labels favor naturalistic designs, such as flowers, animals and landscapes, while later ones lean on brand names in block letters and geometric patterns. A label with a painted landscape is likely older than one built around a single bold word.
Don't trust the town name on its own
The town printed on a label can be the marketer's address, not the grove's. Two labels in the Orange Public Library's collection show it.
The "Elephant" label reads "Redlands, Cal.", yet the library's record adds that the fruit was grown at Villa Park, in Orange County. The 1940 "Par Gold" label says Redlands in large type, but it was packed by Olive Hillside Groves in Olive, and "Mutual Orange Distributors, Redlands, California" runs along the edge. Read every line before deciding where the oranges grew.
Redlands labels you can view online
These records are on Calisphere, the University of California's portal for library and museum collections. Dates are as the holding library gives them.
| Label | Packer or shipper named | Date given | Printer in catalog record | Held by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Herald Brand | West-American Fruit Co. | c. 1885–1899 | H.S. Crocker Co. | Riverside Public Library |
| Mutual Brand | Redlands Mutual Orange Co. | c. 1906 | Not listed | Riverside Public Library |
| Sunny Heights | Redlands Co-Operative Fruit Assn. | c. 1930s | Not listed | Riverside Public Library |
| Par Gold Brand | Olive Hillside Groves, Olive; Mutual Orange Distributors, Redlands | 1940 | Not listed | Orange Public Library |
| Elephant | Not named (fruit grown at Villa Park) | Not given | Not listed | Orange Public Library |
A building survives to go with the Mutual Brand label. The company's 1906 packing house is one of the surviving brick buildings listed in the 1991 historic district filing for downtown Redlands. The Elephant label's Redlands address may point to the town's Elephant Orchards packing operation, whose grower filed a 1908 patent for sticking paper labels on individual oranges, as we covered in the story of the first fruit sticker.
Why did crate labels disappear?
Labels lasted into the 1950s, but cardboard ended them. The Ephemera Society explains that World War II cut into the crate makers' workforce and the printers' supply of metals, and cheaper cardboard boxes, with their designs printed directly on, replaced the wooden crate and its paper label.
Where can you see original labels?
The Huntington's largest label holdings came from Jay T. Last, a founder of Fairchild Semiconductor, who began collecting lithographed citrus box labels in the late 1960s. The Huntington notes that he directed production of the first integrated circuit chips at Fairchild, work that depended on photolithography. After visiting more than 40 libraries and museums, he chose The Huntington as the home for his collection in 2005. Its citrus label collection is open to qualified researchers.
Closer to Redlands, California State University, San Bernardino keeps a collection of citrus labels from the early 1900s through the 1950s, with an emphasis on Inland Empire growers, Redlands among them.
Photo by Joao Vitor Marcilio on Unsplash.
