Early fruit labels of Watsonville, CA

The Pajaro Valley of central, coastal California is famous for its fruits and vegetables. The main town in the valley is Watsonville with a population of around 50,000.

The first railroad in the Pajaro Valley went through in 1873, and fruit brokers followed the railroads. They bought fruit and vegetables in bulk and shipped them to the larger cities like San Jose, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Later, they were shipped all over the world. The first big fruit brokers in Watsonville were Dalmatian Croats from near Dubrovnik — Marko Rabasa from Janjina, Pelješac, and Luke Sresovich from Lopud island. Sresovich built a packing shed in Watsonville in the 1870s but neither man lived there.

The first fruit brokers to actually live in Watsonville were M. N. Lettunich and the Scurich brothers, Luke and Steve. All three were born in Konavle and moved to Watsonville in the 1880s. Many Dalmatian Croats followed, such as Rilovich, Secondo, Cikuth, Miovich, Banaz, Pista, Stolich, Marinovich, Alaga, Miljas, Grizich and 2 more Scurich brothers, all from Konavle. And Knego from Brgat, near Dubrovnik. They all tried their hands at brokering fruit, some more successful than others. And most of them also bought land and planted orchards.

In the 1890s, thousands of tons of fruits and vegetables were shipped out of the Pajaro Valley, mostly in wooden boxes. And finally, after much prodding by the local newspaper, some of those boxes had labels on them, advertising where they were from.

The only newspaper in town for most of the 1890s was the Pajaronian, a 4-page weekly. It lobbied for fruit labels many times in its pages, starting around 1895. Here are some examples of transcripts from the paper, taken directly from the pages of The Slav Community of Watsonville, California, a book of excerpts from Watsonville newspapers covering 1881 to 1920. (Watsonville newspapers are now online; search for “Watsonville historical newspaper archive" and follow the links.)

Transcripts of news items from the Pajaronian newspaper (Paj.).

Nick Banaz was the first known broker to put labels on his boxes; in his case, cherries. No known example of this label can be found.

Then in 1899, the first apple label shows up, as shown in this transcript from 27 July 1899. It was the Dewey Brand label of P. N. Lettunich & Co.

After that, hundreds of labels came out of the Watsonville area, peaking in the 1920s and 1930s, and ending after WWII when cardboard boxes became the main method of packaging and shipping. Cardboard boxes also had printed advertisements on them but they were printed directly onto the cardboard. No more labels. The end of an era.

But collectors are still busy buying, selling and trading them. Searching the Internet for “Watsonville fruit labels” will return hundreds of examples.

A collage of 66 Watsonville labels in a poster format has been created.

Here is a small version of this poster.

The pdf file can be downloaded from https://archive.org/details/labels-poster and taken to a local print shop to make a poster of any size. The quality is quite good for this purpose. A little more about the history of these labels can be found in the text on the web page, and under the image of each label.

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[Srezović of Lopud island; Sekondo of Lovorno; Cikut and Letunić of Mihanići; Banac of Popovići]