Vintage 1950s Mad River Brand Apples Crate Label Pair, Entiat Washington State

Stunning vintage 1950s Mad River Apples Crate Label packed by Mad River Orchard Co. out of Entiat, Washington.

10 1/4" x 8 3/4" each ~ little to no wear.

You get two of them, a set of 2 Mad River apple crate labels to frame or to give.

🌊 A RIVER WITH A TEMPER
This one is all water. A wide white cascade smashes over dark boulders between steep cliffs, a fir hangs on at the left edge, and a couple of shiny red apples sit at the bottom right like they washed up there. For a crate of Washington apples, it's a pretty wild picture, and I love it.

🌲 THE MAD RIVER AND ARDENVOIR
The Mad River is a real mountain stream. It drops out of the Cascades in Chelan County and meets the Entiat River at Ardenvoir, the little sawmill town C. A. Harris founded in 1919 and named for his son Arden. Charles Albert Harris had a sawmill going on Badger Mountain as far back as 1888. The Harris family stuck with that valley for generations: Arden's son Merlin, born in Wenatchee in 1920, became manager and vice president of the Mad River Orchard Co. and president of the Harris Orchard Co., and his obituary in the Wenatchee World in 1978 remembered him as a lifelong Entiat man. The Entiat, sometimes called Rapid Water, tumbles over Entiat Falls on its way down to the Columbia.

🍎 THE ORCHARD COMPANY
Mad River Orchard Co. grew into a sizable outfit, with about 240 acres in fruit trees by the 1950s. It was still a packer and shipper in the 1970s, storing its apples in controlled-atmosphere rooms leased from the Wenatchee Wenoka Growers' Association, and that arrangement went all the way to the Washington Supreme Court in 1978 after ammonia leaks ruined the fruit from roughly 60,000 boxes.

🖨️ WHO PRINTED IT
Look closely along the lower right of the blue field and you'll find STECHER-TRAUNG S. F., CALIF. in tiny type. That San Francisco label house printed under that name until 1966, when it merged with the Schmidt Lithograph Company, so this sheet came off the press before then. Mad River labels came in more than one colorway, and Washington State University keeps five of them from Entiat in its fruit label collection, dated around 1950 to 1953.

WHAT IS PRINTED ON THIS LABEL
MAD RIVER / BRAND / Washington State / APPLES / CONTENTS 1 U. S. BUSHEL BY VOLUME / PRODUCE OF U.S.A. / PACKED BY MAD RIVER ORCHARD CO., ENTIAT, WASH. / STECHER-TRAUNG S. F., CALIF.

These crate labels, once a common sight, are now a treasured relic of a bygone era, and the lithography used to make them remains unparalleled. There's only a finite supply of them left, and once they're on display with collectors or in galleries they will be very difficult to acquire.

Picture this remarkable vintage advertising adorning the walls of your home instead of being confined to a museum - a cabin, a fishing lodge or a Washington kitchen would all suit it.