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Citrus History To Be Featured During Museum Program

By Janet Lewis
    The Umatilla Museum will host an afternoon talk about the citrus industry on Thursday, August 29, at 4 p.m. Glenn Tyre and John Jackson will take attendees on an armchair journey back to the glorious history of citrus in Umatilla and Lake County.
    For old-timers who fondly remember the acres of orange groves and the fragrance smell of oranges, whether the groves were in bloom or that great smell coming from Golden Gem. Packing houses that once lined Central Avenue had their own style of architectural beauty have all but disappeared. The packing house that stood where the Circle K is now located let the young people in town roller skate on the second floor in the 1920s.
    Mother Nature made several dents in the citrus armor. The citrus industry made a comeback after the 1894 and 1895 freezes where temps fell as low as 12 degrees.
    In the 50's and 60's the citrus industry employed 20,000 to 30,000 people a year. Everyone had a relative who worked at Golden Gem, tended the groves, picked fruit, or moms who worked in the packing houses, a great part-time job that followed the school schedule. And this is what a traffic jam looked like then.
    Yes, the area misses the acres of groves, but Umatilla is still beautiful with 66 lakes in a 3-mile radius of downtown.
    For newcomers, this citrus talk gives them a chance to look back and learn what made Umatilla the former citrus king. But the freezes in the 1980s and falling fruit prices slowly depleted the groves until they were just too much of a risk to pursue financially.
    But there are the memories!