Winter 2021 Journal of the California Garden & Landscape History Society Volume 24, Number 1 JOURNAL OF THE CALIFORNIA GARDEN & LANDSCAPE HISTORY SOCIETY EDEN EDITORIAL BOARD Editor: Steven Keylon Editorial Board: Keith Park (Chair), Kate Nowell, Ann Scheid, Susan Schenk, Libby Simon, Noel Vernon Regional Correspondents: Sacramento: Carol Roland-Nawi, San Diego: Vonn Marie May, San Francisco Bay Area: Janet Gracyk Consulting Editors: Marlea Graham, Barbara Marinacci Graphic Design: designSimple.com Submissions: Send scholarly papers, articles, and book reviews to the editor: [email protected] Memberships/Subscriptions: Join the CGLHS and receive a subscription to Eden. Individual $50 • Family $75 Sustaining $150 and above Student $20 Nonprofit/Library $50 Visit www.cglhs.org to join or renew your membership. Or mail check to California Garden & Landscape History Society, PO Box 220237, Newhall, CA 91322-0237. Questions or Address Changes: [email protected] CGLHS BOARD OF DIRECTORS President: Keith Park Vice Presidents: Eleanor Cox and Kate Nowell Recording Secretary: Nancy Carol Carter Contents Membership Officer: Janet Gracyk Treasurer: Patrick O’Hara Directors at large: Antonia Adezio, Kelly Comras, Judy Horton, Kathleen Albert Etter: Humboldt County's Horticultural Genius Kennedy, Ann Scheid, Libby Simon, Alexis Davis Millar Tom Hart ..................................................................................................................................................4 Past President: Christy O’Hara PUBLISHER’S CIRCLE The California Nursery Company Archives - Far and Wide $2,500 Annually towards the production of Eden Janet Barton ...................................................................................................................................... 24 Tracy Conrad Nancy Carol Carter The Orchards of Yosemite Valley Palm Springs Preservation Foundation Keith Park ...........................................................................................................................................34 HONORARY LIFE MEMBERS VLT Gardner The Camden House Orchard: Marlea Graham, Editor emerita Historic Survivor of Age, Disease, Drought, Fire, Flood, and Neglect William A. Grant (Founder) David A. Laws .................................................................................................................................... 52 Barbara Marinacci David Streatfield Twenty-five Years ofEden : The California Garden & Landscape History Society (CGLHS) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) Eden’s Editorial Evolution, Essential Eden, and the Publisher’s Circle membership organization devoted to celebrating the beauty and diversity of California’s historic gardens and landscapes; promoting wider knowledge, preservation, and Steven Keylon, Eden Editor ..............................................................................................................68 restoration of California’s historic gardens and landscapes; organizing study visits to historic gardens and landscapes as well as to relevant archives and libraries; and offering 2020 Annual Report opportunities for a lively interchange among members at meetings, garden visits, and other events. Eden: Journal of the California Garden & Landscape History Society (ISBN Donors, New Members, Contributors, Event Organizers and Volunteers 1524-8062) is published quarterly. Subscription is a benefit of CGLHS membership. Christine Edstrom O'Hara ................................................................................................................. 82 © 2021 California Garden & Landscape History Society Above: Some of the historic apple trees at Yosemite with Half California Garden & Landscape History Society Dome in the background. P.O. Box 220237, Newhall, CA 91322-0237 | www.cglhs.org An apple blossom from one of the historic apple orchards at Yosemite's Camp Curry. 2 Eden: Journal of the California Garden & Landscape History Society Winter 2021 • Vol. 24, No. 1 3 4 Eden: Journal of the California Garden & Landscape History Society Winter 2021 • Vol. 24, No. 1 5 Albert Etter Humboldt County’s Horticultural Genius TOM HART In the German language, “. the word self-made man whose contributions to ‘etter’ means a small, irregular patch of horticulture have persevered and blos- cultivated land situated in a wilderness, somed in the decades since his death. the same cultivated area being fenced by a low, broad unhewn stone wall – a veri- Born to Benjamin and Wilhelmina Etter table emblem of primitiveness. Here is on November 27, 1872, near the Shingle found the originator [sic] a man who had Springs post office in El Dorado County, little schooling in schools and books, yet Albert was the eighth of thirteen chil- exceptional opportunity and aptness in dren. Ten of these children survived the study of Nature first handed, until he to adulthood. His father was a Swiss has learned to read Nature as the average immigrant and veteran of the Mexican- man reads a book.”1 Harold Ellis wrote American War, while his mother was a these lines about famed Humboldt native of Baden, Germany. The two met County horticulturist Albert Etter in his while Benjamin was farming in Mis- 1923 article for California Country Life. souri during the Civil War and moved A true California pioneer in every sense to El Dorado County in 1866. In March of the word, Etter was a self-taught and of 1876, they uprooted their budding Previous spread; In this large-format color transparency, Albert Etter sits on a hill overlooking his orchard at Ettersburg in Humboldt County. Photograph by Gene Hainlin, 1943. Courtesy of the California Nursery Company - Roeding Collection, Fremont, California. Left: Portrait of Albert Etter, 1943. Photograph by Gene Hainlin. Courtesy of the California Nursery Company - Roeding Collection, Fremont, California. 6 Eden: Journal of the California Garden & Landscape History Society Winter 2021 • Vol. 24, No. 1 7 Above: Albert Etter (L) and brother family and resettled on the North Coast propagating dahlia seeds in a search for bent, the teacher furnished much of the interested in breeding dahlias, red cur- stock for a local farmer in the Upper Mat- August (R) circa 1890. Courtesy of 2 the Etter Family Archives. of Humboldt County to start a farm. It new varieties. inspiration that led to the lad’s subse- rants, and gooseberries. He left school tole Valley, he noticed a vast area of prime was on this twenty-acre ranch in Fern- quent career.”3 two years later and worked at the home unworked land. “He sent at once for a Opposite, left: Albert Etter sought dale, California, where Etter found his While plant breeding came naturally to advice in 1897 from Edward J. place in Ferndale for the next seven township map of the area and selected Wickson, who was the Dean true passion. Etter, school did not. He often quoted When Etter was seventeen, fired by the years. At fifteen (1887) he grew his first a parcel that included a stretch of the of Agriculture at the University the naturalist Louis Agassiz, stating possibilities he saw, he resolved to devote seedling strawberries, from a cross of Mattole River. Then, undaunted by the of California. Photograph from 5 Wickson’s 1921 book California Ferndale was an up-and-coming agricul- that he was a student of the University his life to plant breeding. Having read Sharpless x Parry.” According to Darrow, depression that gripped the economy in Nurserymen and the Plant Industry, tural town in the 1870s. Two decades of of Nature where we “study nature, not an article by John Muir on what a man Etter gained access to a unique straw- the 1890s, he secured a contract to cut 1850-1910. logging had cleared most of the Eel River books.” Etter wanted to spend every could do were he to devote his whole berry variety through a sea captain who one hundred cords of wood at seventy- Opposite, right: Portrait of Albert Valley by then, and the vast alluvial plain moment in the garden. His father Benja- lifetime to the breeding of such a fruit as brought the berry to Eureka from Callao, five cents a cord, and walked twenty-five Etter, circa 1900. Courtesy of the had been converted to dairy farms and min had his own green thumb and was the apple or plum, young Etter—with Peru. Etter’s exposure to the Peruvian miles to Eureka to file his claim.”6 It is Etter Family Archives. cattle ranches. The Etter place was no dif- credited as the first person to grow lentils the hope and the exuberance of youth beach strawberry, Fragaria chiloensis, important to note that this account ferent. Tucked away along Coffee Creek, in Humboldt County, but he found it odd and the cool calculation of a man of sparked an interest in primitive germ- comes from the writer Gladys Smith, the Etters ran a successful farm before that Albert would rather work with his fifty—decided to found the world’s great- plasm. By cross-breeding known varieties who is the only known person to have expanding into a dairy operation, and plants than play like the other children. est apple experiment station and only with wild species and their primitive read Etter’s missing autobiography. Other each of the ten children did their part. Wilhelmina and a local schoolteacher awaited his majority to begin operations. bloodlines, Etter believed he could speed accounts of the story mention a fishing provided support when it came to Etter’s However, he did not lay by and wait but up the process of creating better hybrids. trip with friends that led to the discovery. Etter enjoyed farm life. According to passion.