22. Fruit Orchards

Date: 1909

Spraying fruit trees in Douglas

The earliest peach trees were planted locally by Indigenous people at Peach Orchard Creek.

Much later, in the 1860s, Saugatuck, Douglas and surrounding countryside blossomed as one of the most productive fruit growing areas in the Midwest — shipping tons of fruit (in locally-made baskets and boxes) by ship and rail to Chicago and other distribution points. For example, the Williams Farm on Campbell Road had over 2,000 peach trees in 1875. Plus enough grape vines to send 10 tons of grapes to market that year. About the same time more than 10,000 peach trees were being harvested in the village of Douglas. Everyone was raising peaches — including two ministers who quit the ministry to become fruit farmers. Fruit growing became such a central part of the local economy that the area’s principal bank (in Saugatuck) was known as the Fruit Growers State Bank — and one of the largest factories in the village after 1900 was the Fruit Exchange where fruit was sorted and stored prior to being loaded at the local shipping docks.

A 1900 report stated that from Mack’s Landing “to Lake Michigan it is a dense peach orchard all the way. Farmers that used to raise grain are now converting all their farms into peaches and other fruit.” Nothing “ever presented a lovelier sight than this — the famous fruit belt of Michigan — for the western portion of Allegan county is really the crème de la crème of this great fruit region — the paradise of western Michigan. The grand scenery with which Nature decorates herself on the banks of the Kalamazoo and grand old Lake Michigan … presents a prospect that would inspire a poet.”
(Report of the Pioneer Society of Michigan. V.III. 2^nd ed. 1900. “Notes on Saugatuck”. Pg. 306-07, 309)