Three World's Fairs, Three Blue Ribbons: Julian's Apple Kingdom
Near Julian, California
When the gold ran out in the eighteen eighties, Julian nearly died. The mines closed, the miners left, and the population fell from hundreds to barely a hundred people. What brought the town back was an experiment with fruit.
James Madison, a widower who had come to Julian from New Orleans, planted apple trees on his land in the early eighteen seventies. The elevation of the Cuyamaca Mountains, just over four thousand feet, produced a growing season with warm days and cold nights, precisely the conditions apple trees need to develop deep flavor. Orchards spread across the hillsides.
By the eighteen nineties Julian growers were shipping apples to markets as far as Los Angeles, and the quality of the fruit was becoming known beyond Southern California. At the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in eighteen ninety three, Julian apples took a blue ribbon. They won again at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in Saint Louis in nineteen oh four.
A third blue ribbon came at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in nineteen fifteen. Three World's Fairs, three victories. The American Pomological Society added a bronze Wilder Medal in nineteen oh seven.
By the early twentieth century, publications were calling Julian the greatest apple belt in the world. From those growers and those orchards grew a tradition of apple pies that has outlasted everything else the gold rush left behind. Every October the town holds its Apple Days festival, a tradition that began in nineteen forty-nine and has continued for more than seventy-five years.
