Hatheway & Associates

Historical Background

The first orange trees were planted in California in 1804 at the San Gabriel Mission, but Californians did not begin to export citrus to the east in significant quantity until 1877, after the opening of the transcontinental railroad. Soon after, citrus fruit became California's chief export and provided a significant economic base for the young state. The earliest California orange crops, Navel and Valencia oranges, were grown and harvested in Riverside and Orange County.

Distribution complications in the early 1890s resulted in financial hardship for many growers, which led to the emergence of local association packing houses, known as grower's cooperatives, allowing growers to pool their resources and crops for the sole purpose of improving the outcome of sales. The Southern California Fruit Exchange was established in 1893 to unite local grower's associations into one general marketing cooperative, which sought to establish high production standards for both growers and packers in order to obtain the highest sale prices back east. In 1908 at the advice of an advertising agency, the Exchange adopted the Sunkist trademark, and in 1952 the organization officially changed their name to Sunkist Growers, Inc. As part of Sunkist's federated structure, local associations like the Yorba Orange Growers Association were licensed to pack only the fruit of the Sunkist growers belonging to the association.

The Yorba Orange Growers Association (YOGA) emerged to replace the Associated Anaheim Growers after the AAG packing house was destroyed by fire in July 1943.The AAG board acted swiftly to establish YOGA with the Santa Fe Land Improvement Company and construction progressed rapidly on a new packing house which was operational by October 1944. At that time the YOGA Packing House was a state-of-the-art packing facility, which remained technologically competitive through the next three decades. No significant additions or upgrades were made after 1979. The YOGA Packing House closed on April 28, 2000. By the end of 2001 the packing house had been torn down and a business park had been built on the property.

The historic significance of the packing house led to a Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) project in 2000 in accordance with the guidelines set forth by the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service. HABS is administered by Heritage Documentation Programs, the Federal Government's oldest preservation program. HABS was created in 1933 to document America's architectural heritage by recording the history of significant built environments prior to their destruction.

From the guide to the Historic American Buildings Survey report on the Yorba Orange Growers Association Packing House, 1934-2000, bulk 2000, (University of California, Irvine. Library. Special Collections and Archives.)