Corning: California's Olive City

Corning started in eighteen eighty-two when the railroad reached this stretch of Tehama County and a depot was named for a railroad official named John Corning. It incorporated in nineteen oh seven. What gave it a lasting identity arrived in the eighteen nineties, when promoters started the Maywood Colony and advertised fruit land to eastern buyers.

The long hot summers turned out to be ideal for olives. Orchards spread across the valley floor, and by the early nineteen hundreds Corning had earned the title Olive City. Olive growing and processing remain the main local industry, and Corning is home to the largest table olive processor in the United States.