~†The Great Apple Industry†~
Amost from the beginning, Benton County has been a leading farm county in the state. They plaved first in the amounts of many crops and over the years have won many first place ribbons for their crops the world over. Perhaps no other county in the state has made as many changes in the crops grown as cask crops as Venton County has. At one time or another every known crop has been raised in the county (Black 75).
Although the rain damaged the crops badly in 1898 and there were few apples shipped; the srops were much better in 1899, and by 1900 there was a cast crop to harvest. in 1901, the apple crop for Benton County was listed as two and a half million bushels. This was the largest apple yeild in a single county in the history of the United States. Rogers shipped 375 carloads of first grade apples and 65 carloads of dried apples that year.
From then on Benton County was known as "The Land of the Big Red Apple". Benton County had more apple trees than any other county in the United States; it shipped the most apples, both fresh and dried (Black 83). By 1870, there were just a few good-sized orchards, but as other men saw these few making a big return for their labor, then they, too, set out trees, By 1880. there were several hundred acres of apple trees in the county. This was more than the freighters could haul. Many farmers took their apples into towns as far away as the felt they could drive them. Many of the farmers in Benton County could only haul 30 bushels to the load, so it ws hard for them to sell many. Consequently, many bushels of apples rotte in the fields, as there was no market for them (Black 84). The area was covered in apple orchards. It wasn't unusual to see three or four railcars being loaded with peaches, apples, and strawberries each day (Beaver 62).
There were many, many small towns in Benton County that based their entire economy on the production of apples as well as other fruits.
Gentry is located five miles from Oklahoma and nineteen miles from Missouri. The elevationn, 1,350 ft., was ideal for growing fruits and berries. When the railroad came through Gentry in 1894, merchants moved from the many surrounding towns to start their businesses in this growing and prospering town (Beaver 62). However, the town did not boom as expected by Mr. Stillwell. The division point for the railroad was moved across the border into Indian Territory in Watts, OK, a few miles southwest of Siloam Springs.
Decatur, one of the many small towns in Benton County, had numerous money crops. These crops changed through the years. First, there were strawberries. The Kansas City, Pittsburgh and Gulf railroad built a loading dock and furnished refrigerated cars for the many carloads of strawberries that were shipped out of Decatur on a daily basis. Later, peaches became important. Many carloads of peaches were sent out of Decatur, some as far as Canada. The severe weather with unusual cold spelss ruined the peach business. The year 1919 became the biggest apple year; apples flourished afer teh downfall of the peaches until disease took its toll on the trees (Bredehoeft 47).
In Centerton, another one of the many small towns in Benton County, the Coffelt apple took top honors at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904. Centerton was called "The Apple Capital of the World" when it won prizes at the World's Fair in Paris, France (Adams 44). Even more prizes were won at the Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco in 1915. Certainly, 1919 was the apple's greatest year. However from this year on, apples began to decline due to unfaborable weather and diseased. Centerton, with its one-crop economy, was struggling to find other sources of income just ast the Great Depression hit the area in 1932 (Adams 45).
In Gravette, after WWI, "fruit farms" as they were called, began appearing everywhere. Some of the fruit farms were probably fifteen to twenty-five acres, and some were as large as 100 to 200 acres. Many varieties of apples were grown there, such as the Transparent, Mainden Blush, Winesap, Jonathan, and the Red & Gold Delicious. It was said in Benton County there were 300 different types of apples being grown (Faggala 39). Other businesses related to the growing of apples prospered, such as farm machiner, all kinds of sprays and fertilizers, a tremendous number of apple baskets, liners and lids. The railroad and trucking business flourished, as apples had to be taken to markets as far away as Tulsa, OK, Joplin, MO, and Wichita, KS (Faggala 39). Texas was also a good market for the Arkansas apples as the people there had been buying apples from Washington Couny so they knew how good the apples were (Black 84). The vinegar plant in Rogers, AR, that processed the "cull", or non-edible, apples from the area, was at one time the largest plant in the world.
Many laborers were hired to pick apples for 25˘ a day. Women also would grade apples on huge cultication tables (Fagala 39). The editor of the Gravette News wrote in a paper in the fall of 1894 about the amount of apples that were going to waste that year because there was no ice or storage to take care of them or the cars to ship them. The editor said that with the way things are going, he didn't think they could ship over six cars that year, leaving at least 50 carloads that would go to waste in the Gravette area. Within a few years, most of this was taken care of and there was a market for all the apples. As more railroad lines covered the county, there was cold storage houses to hold apples. Cull apples and tree runs could be sold to the evaporators, vinegar plants and the brandy distillery. By this time, a grower could sell all of his apples somewhere (Black 86).
Like all the small towns on Benton County, the apple industry came to an untimely end during the mid-forties becuase the demand was being met from other areas of the country. Also contributing to the downfall of the apple industry were diseases such as blight, scab, scale, worms, and the ineffectiveness of the insecticides used in the control and eradication of insets that were ruining the crops (Faggala 40).
Back l Bibliography