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The apple once was king in Clarksville.
But the number of people who were part of the industry or had direct knowledge of it is dwindling.
So, as the town prepares for this weekend’s 32nd annual celebration of the fruit that put Pike County on the map, that history is being brought to life.
Erin Garrison owns Great River Road Pottery and Wood Shop with her husband, Bud, and is one of the organizers for Applefest.
“I think it’s beneficial to communities to remember their heritage and where they come from,” Garrison said. “It’s a vital link to our past.”
Nathalie Pettus warmly recalls her family’s critical role in the apple trade, and she’s doing her part to keep the spirit of that era alive.
“The fact that this place has its story makes it authentic,” Pettus said. “It’s not a created past. It’s real. There’s a reason we’re here.”
A legacy sprouts
Orchards known the world over had their humble beginnings in 1816.
James H. Stark and other Kentuckians moved to the unsettled Missouri territory along the banks of the Mississippi River. They brought along apple scions from orchards back home.
Stark founded the nursery just up the road in Louisiana that still bears his name. Today, Stark Brothers holds the rights to many patented varieties of fruit.
The pristine area that became Clarksville had featured settlers since at least 1800, but it wasn’t until 1817 that it got a formal moniker.
The town supposedly was named for William Clark of the Lewis and Clark expedition, but some have claimed his older brother, George Rodgers Clark, was the inspiration.
No matter, the community soon began to attract attention. John C. Carter set up a mercantile that in 1820 was shipping goods to New Orleans.
The early frontiersmen found perfect conditions for apples and other fruit The loess soil was just right, and there was plenty of sunshine in the valleys and peaks aside the limestone bluffs overlooking the river.
“The climate of this county, being much like that of sunny Italy or France, it is but natural that it should abound in luscious fruit of many kinds,” reported the book “The History of Pike County 1883.”
The apples were “of great size and of the finest quality,” the book offered. “In short, there is no good reason why this county should not become a very paradise for fruits, large and small.”
The city was incorporated in 1847 by Gov. John Miller on land patented to him by President James Monroe, and received a charter three years later.
By then, Clarksville was known as “Apple City” because “of the amount of apples that used to shipped from the docks,” wrote “The History of Pike County.”
The apple once was king in Clarksville.
But the number of people who were part of the industry or had direct knowledge of it is dwindling.
So, as the town prepares for this weekend’s 32nd annual celebration of the fruit that put Pike County on the map, that history is being brought to life.
Erin Garrison owns Great River Road Pottery and Wood Shop with her husband, Bud, and is one of the organizers for Applefest.
“I think it’s beneficial to communities to remember their heritage and where they come from,” Garrison said. “It’s a vital link to our past.”
Nathalie Pettus warmly recalls her family’s critical role in the apple trade, and she’s doing her part to keep the spirit of that era alive.
“The fact that this place has its story makes it authentic,” Pettus said. “It’s not a created past. It’s real. There’s a reason we’re here.”
A legacy sprouts
Orchards known the world over had their humble beginnings in 1816.
James H. Stark and other Kentuckians moved to the unsettled Missouri territory along the banks of the Mississippi River. They brought along apple scions from orchards back home.
Stark founded the nursery just up the road in Louisiana that still bears his name. Today, Stark Brothers holds the rights to many patented varieties of fruit.
The pristine area that became Clarksville had featured settlers since at least 1800, but it wasn’t until 1817 that it got a formal moniker.
The town supposedly was named for William Clark of the Lewis and Clark expedition, but some have claimed his older brother, George Rodgers Clark, was the inspiration.
No matter, the community soon began to attract attention. John C. Carter set up a mercantile that in 1820 was shipping goods to New Orleans.
The early frontiersmen found perfect conditions for apples and other fruit The loess soil was just right, and there was plenty of sunshine in the valleys and peaks aside the limestone bluffs overlooking the river.
“The climate of this county, being much like that of sunny Italy or France, it is but natural that it should abound in luscious fruit of many kinds,” reported the book “The History of Pike County 1883.”
The apples were “of great size and of the finest quality,” the book offered. “In short, there is no good reason why this county should not become a very paradise for fruits, large and small.”
The city was incorporated in 1847 by Gov. John Miller on land patented to him by President James Monroe, and received a charter three years later.
By then, Clarksville was known as “Apple City” because “of the amount of apples that used to shipped from the docks,” wrote “The History of Pike County.”
A business grows
Apple City was an integral part of the Industrial Age.
A year after the Civil War ended, H.S. Carroll and Fred Haywood founded the Missouri Vinegar Manufacturing Works.
In 1869 – the same year the Clarksville & Western Railway Co. was formed – a man named John A. Wirick came to town to manage the operation. Under his leadership, the vinegar works prospered and expanded.
“The History of Pike County” called the plant “an enterprise of which the citizens of Pike County have great reason to be proud.”
In 1882, tankage capacity was increased to 100,000 gallons. It shipped cider, vinegar and dried fruit around the world.
Demand was so great in the West that a train car full of green apples was sent to Butte City, Ariz., at a pre-paid freight cost of $630 – the equivalent of more than $70,000 today.
The factory employed dozens of people, including women and boys, and operated around the clock. It could produce 200 barrels of cider a day, and once put out 50 tons of evaporated apples and 30,000 barrels of green apples.
The book “People, Places and Pikers” reported that Clarksville cider and vinegar won prizes at the 1896 World’s Fair in Chicago.
“For cider apples alone, this firm has paid to the farmers of the county hundreds of thousands of dollars, which is almost a clear gain, as apart from the vinegar mill, there is not one who could afford to purchase them and the grower would be forced to sustain the loss,” according to “The History of Pike County.”
Shades of Scarlett
The Pettuses have owned property in Clarksville since 1890, but their connection goes back much farther.
Relatives were granted land in the region by the King of Spain in the late 1700s.
Pettus’ grandfather, Eugene “Pops” Pettus, was a real estate agent in St. Louis. But he paid great attention to his 1,000 acres of orchards in Clarksville.
Her grandmother, Marguerite Pettus, was a queen of the debutante Veiled Prophet Ball in St. Louis. But, unlike most other society girls, she was something of a tomboy, and she also loved Clarksville.
For Pettus, the land was a real-life version of the fictional plantation Tara for headstrong Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone With the Wind.” Her father, also named Eugene, felt the same.
“My father used to say this was a cross between England, Vermont and Virginia because it’s stunningly beautiful,” Pettus said.
The vinegar factory burned in 1905 and the town’s other major business, a flour mill, shut down in 1920.
But the orchards remained productive, and in the late 1920s a new partnership was formed.
Pops Pettus joined William Weakley, Dr. Malvern Clopton and Mrs. Edward Robert to form the Pike County Producers.
Farms that belonged to the association were Falicon, Overlook, Applehill, Brookhill, Oakland, Kissenger, Shepley and Mallinckrodt, among others.
The business quickly grew, and the partners decided to build The Apple Shed along Highway 79 at the south edge of Clarksville using lumber and beams salvaged from a grain elevator that had once been there.
Pops had a unique way of denoting that a customer was getting Clarksville apples. He put a stencil on them as they grew. Once they ripened, a letter or picture was left on the fruit.
One specially marked batch found its way to President Harry S Truman.
“I had a farmer tell me he drove a wagon full of apples from my grandfather to Truman in Washington with a stenciled ‘HST’ on every single apple,” Pettus said. “Isn’t that a great story? I love it.”
Marguerite Pettus apparently wasn’t as impressed with modern technology as her husband, especially when it came to electricity.
“She would ride a white stallion with pearl-handled revolvers and a pack of dogs and shoot at the transformers,” Pettus said with a laugh.
Like her grandmother, Pettus loves horses. But does she shoot?
“Just skeet,” she claims. “Nothing live.”
Seeds of foment?
The fruit industry still was profitable in the 1950s.
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But major changes were in store.
In the 1960s, the Dundee cement plant opened. It offered the kind of wages Clarksville had never seen, and the fruit producers couldn’t compete.
“Apple production was a labor-intensive industry,” Pettus explained.
Without all those hands, profits soured. Robert Mallin was brought in as a member of the Pike County Producers. His father, Louis, owned a fruit business in Kansas City, and bought the processing plant from the Weakley family.
The Mallins continued to operate the facility, but the writing was on the wall. The Apple Shed sent out its last produce in 1978.
“It’s such a shame,” said Pettus, who owns Clarksville Station restaurant, which sits within view of The Apple Shed. “It was something very special.”
In a bitter twist, the cement plant, which had been bought by Swiss-based Holcim Inc., announced in November 2008 that it was shutting down production and eliminating 181 of those good-paying jobs.
As with many of her neighbors, Pettus was embittered. In splitting her time between Clarksville and St. Louis, she became convinced that Holcim took with it from Pike County something intangible.
“I love coming home after spending a couple of days in the Central West End, where I know no one, and pulling in and seeing every kid on bikes wave,” she said. “The teenagers do it, too. It’s the neatest thing. It’s definitely a community.”
Everything apple
Applefest runs Friday through Sunday throughout town.
Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days, with the parade from Clarksville Antiques to the parking lot at Lock and Dam 24 at 10 a.m. Saturday.
Dozens of crafts booths and art exhibits will occupy the space at The Apple Shed where boxes of fruit once were stacked.
Vendors will sell everything from applesauce and apple fritters to caramel apples and fried apples. Many businesses are adapting to the theme.
Cool Beans coffee shop was out of caramel granny apple bars one day this week. But owner Tresa Vaughan promised to have plenty of appropriate goodies on hand this weekend, including a caramel apple flavored cup of Joe.
The festival “is just fun,” said Vaughan, whose shop also features a book entitled “Old-Fashioned Apple Recipes.” “It’s a way to bring that history to life.”
Pettus also has a few recipes ready at her restaurant, including apple-glazed barbecue ribs and a bratwurst braised with apple cider.
Pettus doesn’t produce her own cider anymore, but says she still whips up a tasty apple butter.
“It’s what you do every fall,” she said, matter-of-factly.
One more thing
The Mallins deeded The Apple Shed to the Raintree Arts Council.
The former fruit cooling room has been used since the early 1980s to stage everything from “Showboat” to “Grease,” and the former production area is the site of concerts and other events.
There still are a few groves of apple trees around Clarksville, but nothing like there used to be.
Something else is even more endangered, however.
Pettus, 58, is divorced. And while her two grown sons are keenly interested in their heritage, neither carries their mother’s name.
“That’s a sad thing for me,” Pettus admits, the smile running away from her usually bright face.
Still, Pettus finds a measure of comfort in the dirt that has been her terra firma for more than a half-century.
It started last fall, when she planted 35 apple trees on 200 acres near Clarksville Station. Plans call for a few more trees to be added each year.
“I love those stories of my family, but I want my own.” Pettus said. “I want to show that I just haven’t passed through on a breeze.”
Scarlett would be proud.
“This is my Tara, too,” Pettus said, the jubilant grin returning.
