Photograph courtesey of Jan Camp
A fourth-grade class from Lakewood Elementary takes a tour of the Orchard Heritage Park Interpretive Exhibit, or OHPIE. Guide Liz Seymour explained to the students at the history of agriculture in Sunnyvale.
Students get a sweet taste of the city's green history
Lakewood students visits OPHIE exhibit, learn Sunnyvale's roots
By Jana Seshadri
Many of the 25 fourth-grade students from Lakewood Elementary School got a taste of California Gold for the very first time on a bright and sunny spring morning on March 27.
"I've never tasted it before," said Michelle Bedal. "I like it."
What they tasted was a dried California golden apricot during the very first Orchard Heritage Park Interpretive Exhibit school tour. To enhance the fourth-grade curriculum, the Sunnyvale Historical Society offered a tour of the OHPIE this spring to elementary schools to teach students a little about the history of Silicon Valley.
Karen McGough, who has been teaching in the Sunnyvale School District for 20 years, said she thought the tour is very informational and important--so much so that despite scheduling and testing conflicts, Lakewood Elementary fourth-grade teacher McGough decided to take the tour and brought her class in for a lesson in local history.
"We even rode the county transit bus to avoid pollution," she said.
Dressed in spring clothes and carrying sack lunches, the energetic fourth-graders came prepared to spend the day at the Sunnyvale Community Center Arboretum, which houses the OHPIE.
The tour, lead by Liz Seymour of the historical society, included information and pictures of what the valley looked like in the early 1900s and the gradual, but drastic, changes that took place throughout the last century. The exhibit has an informational display, which provides detailed statistical data on the history of the Sunnyvale orchards.
Seymour said the whole area was filled with fields of corn, wheat and fruit trees built around missions. Immigrants from all over the world came to work here in the orchards and fields, making very little money compared to today's standards.
The children were shocked to find out that fruit pickers made 20 to 35 cents per hour or sometimes $2 to $3.50 for 10 hours of work a day in the orchards. The San Jose Fruit Packing Company produced 72 million cans of fruit by 1930, and 20,000 people worked very hard to make that happen. Seymour explained that a full, mature apricot tree produces 300 pounds of apricots annually.
Charles Olson, caretaker of the orchards outlying the Community Center, has a grim prediction for this year's apricot crop.
"We've had a very erratic winter this time," Olson said. "The early frost got the fruit when they were just starting to grow and we can't do anything about that."
Bad weather means a slim crop, which further means less fruit to sell. Several industries, like packing, distribution, canning and preserving grew around the orchard industry, Seymour explained. The industries thrived right up until the late 1930s, when World War II broke out and manpower had to be used toward the war effort. After the war, when technology moved into the valley, the orchards had to make room for homes and businesses to support the new trend, she said.
When the children asked how this orchard was preserved, Jan Camp, president of the historical society, said it was in part due to the community's efforts. The historical society approached the city of Sunnyvale to purchase the land that the orchard is on, she said. To preserve a part of the Sunnyvale orchard history, Camp said she had some of the old cultivators and other equipment brought over to the OHPIE from San Martin, where Burrel Leonard, an orchardist, had his museum. Pearl Gilmore, a longtime resident of Sunnyvale, provided the transportation for all the items.
"[The tour] was fun," said Riddhi Parikh, 9. "It was interesting to find out how hard people worked in these orchards and how they had to struggle for food."
As part of the tour, the children went into the orchard and observed the apricot trees and their newly budding green leaves. Camp, who was a teacher at Columbia Middle School and still volunteers there, emphasized the importance of teachers taking the initiative to take their students on such tours to give them a more hands-on experience about topics they learn about.
Lakewood Elementary is thus far the only school to take part in the OPHIE tour, Seymour said.
"I'm disappointed that many schools did not respond," she said.
However, she added that schools are inundated with the STAR testing schedules at this time.
Tours are offered to groups as well as schools, and can be arranged by calling the historical society at 408.245.6107.
Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
