This resource provides information about registering orchards or single fruit trees in the National Register of Historic Places. It also showcases the historical context of some orchards in the U.S. One such orchard is the Buckner Orchard at North Cascades National Park Service Complex here in Western Washington.
“In Lake Chelan National Recreation Area of the North Cascades National Park Service Complex, the Buckner Homestead Historic District contains a 90-year old apple orchard that reflects the revolutionary event in the modern period of orchard fruit growing: the discovery of the Delicious apple variety by the Stark brothers. This discovery transformed the growing of apples in the 20th century. Among the oldest trees of the Buckner orchard are the trees of the Common Delicious strain of the Delicious variety – Stark Brothers Nursery's name for the early, unimproved variety they acquired as “Hawkeye,” a red and yellow apple. The Buckner orchard is the oldest and largest known plantation of the variety in the United States and represents the advent of the Delicious variety before it was turned into a red apple, or Red Delicious variety, through strain selection in the 1920s.”
Citation:
Pacific West Regional Office, & Dolan, S., Fruitful legacy : a historic context of orchards in the United States, with technical information for registering orchards in the National Register of Historic Places (2009). U.S. Government Printing Office. Retrieved October 26, 2023, from https://hdl.handle.net/2027/pur1.32754081199857.
