Fruits of their labor

I was driving to Little Rock from Nashville, Tenn., and it seemed like a wise detour. Rather than fighting the big trucks and enduring the construction-zone headaches on Interstate 40, I would take U.S. 64 out of Marion and head west through Crawfordsville, Earle, Parkin, Wynne, McCrory and Augusta.

The key to that route is that I would intersect with U.S. 67 at Bald Knob, just in time for an afternoon snack at The Bulldog, a famous dairy bar that serves what I consider the best strawberry shortcake in America. If it's May in Arkansas, having strawberries at Bald Knob seems the natural thing to do.

They held what was known as the Bald Knob Strawberry Homefest last week. You can still find strawberries for sale at roadside stands around the White County town. The industry isn't what it used to be, but it's undeniable that the strawberry remains an intrinsic part of Bald Knob's history and identity.

"The strawberry triggered an economic surge for Bald Knob," William Leach writes for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture. "The sandy, upland soil was ideal for the fruit, which was introduced in neighboring Judsonia in the 1870s. The first strawberry association in Bald Knob was organized in 1910. In 1921, June 'Jim' Collison and Ernest R. Wynn organized The Strawberry Co. They built the longest strawberry shed in the world, a three-quarter-mile structure parallel to the tracks of the Missouri Pacific Railroad (now Union Pacific). In the peak year of 1951, Bald Knob growers sold $3.5 million worth of strawberries. Bald Knob became the Strawberry Capital of the World, which described the city until the 1960s when berries ceased to be a major crop because of changing market and labor conditions."

The state also was among the nation's leading producers of apples and peaches at one time. Long before Wal-Mart, chickens and big trucks reigned in Northwest Arkansas, apple production was the major business. Commercial orchards across the region grew significantly with the completion of railroad lines to Fayetteville in 1881 and Lincoln in 1901. Benton County had an estimated 40,000 acres of apple orchards in 1900, and Washington County had almost that many. They were considered the two largest apple-producing counties in the country at the time.

"The railroads enthusiastically and with optimism promoted opportunities for easy profit-making, and for a few years, this was true," writes Curt Rom of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. "Along with the great orchard expansion, supporting industries developed: barrel making, apple drying, distilling juice, packing sheds and ice-making plants. Barrels, manufactured locally, held 140 pounds of fruit and were packed for shipping in the orchard. As late as 1919, 60 percent of the crop was packed in barrels and shipped as green apples, although switching to boxing had been advocated 10 years earlier. The apple-drying business, utilizing low-grade fruit, became the largest employer in the area by 1901. An estimated 250 evaporators were in existence, with the largest being the Kimmons-Walker Plant in Springdale."

The top year for Arkansas apple production was 1919, when more than 5 million bushels were harvested. That declined to less than 2 million bushels by 1935, and less than 250,000 bushels annually by the 1960s.

Rom writes that the Arkansas apple industry was laid low by poor varieties, a growing reputation for shipping poor-quality fruit, diseases, a failure to adopt to changing market demands, federal regulations, shipping rates that favored West Coast producers, the aging of orchards and the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s. The apple blossom remains the state flower, as declared by the Legislature in 1901.

Peach orchards flourished for a time in several regions of Arkansas--Crowley's Ridge in the east; Johnson and Franklin counties in the west; Howard, Pike and Clark counties in the southwest; and Benton, Boone and Washington counties in the northwest. The 1879 development of the Elberta peach variety in Georgia made peach production a viable industry in the South.

In 1904, the Highland orchard in Pike County was the largest peach orchard in the country with 4,600 acres of peach trees. The orchard could produce 240,000 bushels of peaches in a good year. Storage facilities and icehouses were built at Nashville and Prescott to serve the Highland orchard. During peak production times, 175 boxcars of peaches would leave Nashville each day. The orchard went bankrupt during the Great Depression and was broken into smaller tracts. Most of the land is now used to raise cattle and pine trees.

The peak peach production year for the Nashville area was 1950 when 425 orchards produced more than 400,000 bushels. Statewide, the peak production year was 1940 when 2.3 million bushels were produced. Late freezes in 1952 and 1953 caused many producers to abandon peaches.

Fine strawberries, apples and peaches are still grown in Arkansas, but they're mostly for in-state markets these days. "Local farmers' markets, roadside stands and sales on premises offer an opportunity to fill a niche and profitably sell orchard-fresh, high-quality fruit of specific varieties direct to the consumer," Rom writes. The time when Arkansas supplied strawberries, apples and peaches to a hungry nation is now simply a part of the state's history, a period I contemplate while eating my strawberry shortcake at The Bulldog.

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Freelance columnist Rex Nelson is the president of Arkansas' Independent Colleges and Universities. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.

Editorial on 05/13/2015

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