Mountain View Fruit Exchange
| Business |
Dried Fruit Packer |
|---|---|
| Main Location |
Mountain View |
| Active |
1903-1909 |
| Successors |
Mountain View Packing Company |
Mountain View Fruit Exchange was a Mountain View dried fruit packer, founded in 1903, and dissolved by 1909. The company was incorporated on May 18, 1903 with $75,000 in capital[1]. The officers of the company at the time of the Great 1906 Earthquake were M. Farrell (president), Z.T. Croop, VP, F.A. Poland, Secretary, C. Jesse Titus, treasurer, with H. Morton, J. J. Cutter, and Joseph F. Fritts as directors[2]. The Mountain View Fruit Exchange was short-lived, with its corporation charter forfeited by 1909[3].
B. Milton Smith hinted that the company sold poor-quality prunes. In a 1920 article on cooperatives, he remembered a Mountain View packer from thirteen years before whose poor quality prunes sullied the Santa Clara Valley's name:[4]
"A firm of this sort of packers had the Old Mountain View packing house along about that time on a lease. They bought up prunes whereever they could get them cheap enough, and packed them out of here under the name of "Santa Clara County Prunes". They did more to damage the name of Santa Clara County fruit and spoil the market for it than all causes combined had ever been able to do to benefit it. They were unscrupulous and unfair in their dealings with the growers, and never hesitated to take advantage of them whenever opportunity offered."
Mountain View Fruit Exchange's building was a former grain warehouse. An 1897 Sanborn map shows the site as Mrs. S. E. Bubb's Grain Warehouse (vacant). By 1904, the Sanborn map shows a low warehouse only with a dryer in one corner. The building was levelled by 1906 earthquake, but rebuilt in 4 months[5] . The new building was a three story packing house, with grading on the 3rd floor, box making and storage on second, and packing on first. There was a separate sulfur house, and separate "facing" room (ground floor, better light?).
After the Exchange business collapsed, the plant was used by the Mountain View Packing Company, which became Sunsweet's plant #8.
Locations
| Location | Years | Address | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mountain View | 1903-1909 | end of Oak Street east of Bailey Road |
On Sanborn map. 1904, 1908. |
References
- ↑ Report of the Secretary of State: State Corporations: Appendix to the Journals of the Senate and Assembly of the 36th Session of the Legislature of the State of California
- ↑ Quake Damage at Mountain View: June 11, 1906 San Jose Evening News The packing house was damaged beyond repair by the 1906 earthquake; the directors planned to rebuild it quickly for storing that year's crop.
- ↑ California Secretary of State, Domestic Corporations Whose Charters Have Been Forfeited, November 30, 1909
- ↑ Which Way Will You Go, Mr. Grower: March 19, 1920 Pullman Herald. Opinion piece arguing for grower cooperatives
- ↑ Nicholas Perry, Mountain View, Arcadia Publishing. Shows picture of new building.