Did you know?

 

Most of us know a little something about the area’s citrus history. But did you know that peaches and other stone fruits were successfully grown in the area too? Peaches were so popular around the turn of the 20th century that the process of pitting the fruit became a hot issue, which led to the invention of a wire pitting machine in Ontario in the early 1920s. The pits from stone fruits were coll...ected for other uses such as to manufacture gas masks to protect soldiers from chlorine gas used during war time. Stone fruits could be canned or dried, and drying yards like this one located on South Bon View in the 1890s existed in Ontario well into the 1940s. Fruits were picked, brought to the yards and cut and pitted, then placed on large drying trays left in the warm California sunshine to dry. Drying fruit was often used as an alternative to canning, particularly during the war years when rations of sugar were short.