REEFERS AND CANNERS (Summer of 1925)

 If it wasn’t for the reefers, Santa Rosa would have been a sad, sad place during the 1920s. Prohibition had nearly wiped out Sonoma County’s wine industry and Santa Rosa’s downtown was a quiet place now that our dozens of saloons were either closed or pouring nothing stronger than sarsaparilla. The only bright spot in the local economy was fruit.

Not until I completely read an entire month of the 1925 Press Democrat did I come to understand the scale of the fruit processing business that passed through Santa Rosa. Sure, there were canneries here and some growers were turning to new high-tech processors that dehydrated fruit or made it into syrups, but most of what wasn’t canned was quickly shipped East – and in incredible numbers. That July eight train cars of Gravenstein apples were sent off to England. Every day 40-50 railroad cars full of pears from Mendocino and Lake counties arrived here, where the produce was transferred to Pacific Fruit Express refrigerator cars commonly called “reefers.” (What, you thought it meant something else?)

The real surprise was that the canning operations here were so large they were handling fruit from outside the North Bay. That July, peaches and other fruit were imported from Sutter county near today’s Beale AFB, and likely other places. Yes, it was seasonal work but it extended longer into the year and must have employed far more people than I ever knew.

NEXT: THE BUILDING KNOWN AS THE FORMER