Vintage 1930s Evening Star 🌟 Lemon Crate Label San Fernando Heights CA Litho For Sale

A mission under a blazing white star, framed by palms, with the grove running off to the hills. This is an original, never-used 1930s crate label from the San Fernando Valley packing house that later brought in Hollywood film crews to solve a worker shortage.

• Brand: Evening Star
• Packer: San Fernando Heights Lemon Ass\'n., San Fernando, California
• Grade mark: CALIFORNIA Red Ball (red disc, lower left)
• Also printed: GROWN IN U.S.A.
• Fruit: lemons
• Era: 1930s
• Type: color lithograph on paper
• Size: 12 1/2 x 9 inches

New old stock. Never applied to a crate; blank back. Please see the photos.

Cream stucco walls, red tile, two red domes and a square bell tower sit between a pair of tall fan palms. A dark sedan is parked out front. Rows of lemon trees roll to the right toward blue hills, and a white five-point star sends out a sunburst of thin rays over a deep blue sky. Collectors believe the building is a stylized Mission San Fernando Rey de España, founded 1797, which stood just north of the packing house. The lithography is unparalleled — every color printed in its own pass — which is why museums and art institutes exhibit these labels.

The California Fruit Growers Exchange used two quality marks. Sunkist marked its top fruit. California Red Ball marked the mid grade — satisfactory juiciness and sugar, decay under two percent — and Exchange inspectors checked the packing houses to hold them to it. The Exchange became Sunkist Growers in 1952.

The brand came first. The Pacific Packing Company opened a lemon plant just south of Mission San Fernando about 1911. When the Los Angeles Aqueduct began delivering water in 1913, the Valley\'s citrus boom was on. Pacific sold the plant in 1915 to the newly organized San Fernando Heights Lemon Association, and Evening Star came with it, along with Silver Moon, Blue Moon and Southern Cross.

The boom. A new 80 x 172 foot building went up in 1922 for $24,000. In June 1925 the association was reported to be getting over $14 a box for Cleveland shipments, believed to be a record. By September 1926 it had sent out 450 train loads. A three-story packing structure was added in 1936, and in August 1938 about 1,000 picketers — many not employees — came out for higher wages.

The people. The packing line was mostly women, much of it Latina. Luz Mendez Calvo (1896–1982), born in La Colorado, Sonora, is shown about 1930 packing a Sunkist crate at San Fernando Heights in a photograph now at CSUN. She and her husband Antonio went on to sell home-cooked tacos and tamales to the packing crews, and that trade grew into Las Delicias Café in downtown San Fernando. Jacoba Llamas worked there too, with family and friends. Herbert S. Sykes managed the plant for about thirty years.

The legend. Short of workers after the war, the association contracted with Hollywood studios to film at the plant, a 1950 article reported. Once people heard, applicants flooded in hoping to be discovered while wrapping lemons. Among label collectors the lore is that Silver Moon, Evening Star and Blue Moon were the first trio, that Morning Sun replaced Silver Moon, and that Blue Moon is the great rarity.

The end. At the start of World War II the Valley held 11,000 acres of citrus and ten packing houses, and a quarter of its fruit supplied vitamin C to U.S. and Allied forces. Postwar subdivisions transformed the Valley. By 1956 citrus was down to 6,000 acres, and the Heights plant\'s closing was reported in May 1961. Its picker and packer families left a lasting legacy — some of the first suburban neighborhoods in Southern California.

• Framing for a kitchen, breakfast nook or California-style room
• San Fernando Valley and Los Angeles history collections
• Citrus label collectors building the celestial set
• Gifts for families with roots in the Valley\'s groves and packing houses