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Apple Hill

Roots, the food history behind Sacramento menus By , checked November 7, 2026 Apple Hill and El Dorado farms, map and what’s in season

The foothill orchards around Camino and Placerville, where the pear crop fell from 52,000 tons in 1958 to 19,000 in 1962.

Aapél

The Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians, whose Rancheria is at Placerville, teaches Nisenan and Northern Sierra Miwok through its Language Department. The Department’s plant signs give the apple, an introduced fruit, two Nisenan names. Speakers adapted the English word into aapél, and some borrowed the Spanish manzana as mansaaná. Aapél grows today in the Tribal Community Garden.

The Nevada City Rancheria Nisenan Tribe’s site describes the Nisenan as the Indigenous People of the Sierra Nevada foothills, with a territory reaching south to “the northern banks of the Consumnes River.” Tribal communities moved with the seasons, “following the food” up and down elevation, and acorns from the oak woodlands were a staple, tended with cultural burning and pruning.

In the Tribe’s history, “This balance was violently shattered in 1848 with the ‘discovery’ of gold in the Sierra Nevada foothills.” Ancient oak groves, “the backbone of Nisenan food systems,” were felled. The Camp Union Treaty of 1851 was never ratified.

“The names aapél and mansaaná mean the same thing.”

Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians Language Department

Gold Rush Apples

Seven years into the Gold Rush, in October 1855, El Dorado County had 1,608 apple trees and 34 pear trees. At the county Agricultural Society’s fair in Placerville in September 1862, J. W. Foster of Upper Placerville showed forty-two varieties of apples, and J. M. B. Wetherwax of El Dorado brought twenty-four varieties of apples and nineteen of pears.

In 1969 a Rhode Island Greening one mile north of Camino was calculated to be 109 years old, and the Larsen family had farmed it for 104 years. The Larsens trace their farm to the 1860s, and it is now Larsen Apple Barn.

By 1914 orchards and remnants of orchards stood along the Sierra Nevada from about 2,000 to 6,000 feet. The pioneer orchardists had given up hauling their crops long distances, and the orchards that no longer paid were neglected.

“Raymond, who as a boy, slept in the tree on warm summer nights, says the tree has an unusually heavy crop this year.”

Folsom Telegraph, September 24, 1969

Bartletts

In 1913 an acre of El Dorado County Bartletts netted $900.

The pears averaged about 450 boxes an acre that year and sold for $2.40 a box at Placerville, and A. Carlson of Camino won the county pear show’s prize for the best 50 boxes of Bartletts. A standardization fruit alliance had formed in 1910, and by 1915 all fruit shipped from the Earl and Producers’ fruit companies was inspected, stamped and labeled.

In 1919 the Camino farm centers planned a fruit evaporator to take care of cull fruit and to furnish an incentive for rejuvenating “the old apple orchards in the county that are menacing the pear industry because they are neglected and serve only to harbor fruit pests.” Silas Larsen and Emil Larsen sat on the committee.

In 1959 the county had 3,734 bearing acres of pears, with a crop worth $4,579,312, and 344 bearing acres of apples. In 1960 Dick Bethell, the county farm advisor, put pears at more than half of El Dorado’s farm income and the county fourth in the state in pear volume. Before pear decline, he said in 1963, the pear harvest gave work to 3,000 people.

Pear Decline

The first recognized case of pear decline in El Dorado County was found in the summer of 1959, and by the end of the year 1,000 trees had died of its quick form. Dr. Thomas A. Shalla of the University of California said it could kill a healthy, bearing tree in three days, and that trees on oriental rootstock planted between 1920 and 1930 were the most susceptible. By October 1960 Lee Veerkamp had lost half the trees in his 11-acre block on Japanese roots.

That month Ted Hodapp, manager of the Placerville Fruit Growers Association, told the Oakland Tribune he had predicted a few months earlier that the growers would be out of business in five years. “Now, I am willing to change my estimates to one year.”

The county’s pear crop fell from 52,000 tons in 1958 to 19,000 in 1962, Edio Delfino, the agricultural commissioner, wrote in that year’s crop report. A county committee worked on decline-resistant rootstocks, the removal of abandoned orchards and low-interest loans. In 1961 Bob Tuck’s orchard near Placerville was set for a replanting trial, with young pears going into the holes the dead trees came out of. In 1965, a hail year, the county’s Bartletts came to 8,435 tons, and the next winter a University of California survey counted 87,800 pear trees lost in El Dorado County, the highest county loss in the state.

  1. 3,734bearing acres, 1959
  2. 2,092acres, 1965
  3. 99acres, 2024

The Apple Hill Growers

Floyd Bolster retired to Camino in 1951 and bought a farm with 10 acres of producing apple trees. He died six years later, and his son Gene left his job in Southern California. Gene Bolster remembered the decline as a blight: “We had an awful pear blight about 36 years ago and we had to do something to survive. Our major crop was pears.”

In 1962 Bolster and Edio Delfino visited Oak Glen in Southern California. “They had a successful marketing program, so we got a copy of their bylaws and improved on them,” Delfino said. That year Edio and Joan Delfino bought a 20-acre farm in Camino, now Delfino Farms, and opened it to visitors in 1964.

In 1964 Bolster, Delfino, the farm advisor Dick Bethell and Bob Tuck, a retired army officer, formed the Apple Hill Growers. The name was Tuck’s. By late September twenty-five apple growers had joined, with Bolster as president. Growers’ wives handed out litter bags with maps at the State Fair, and a returned bag would be filled with two pounds of apples, free. “By selling on our ranches we can offer better quality fruit at nominal prices,” Bolster said, and the growers saved the cost of shipping fruit to distant markets. Visitors could tour a seven-mile drive, or up to 15 miles, and in October a narrow-gauge logging train, the Camino, Cable & Northern, carried them 1.2 miles on the Michigan-California Lumber Co. right of way.

In 1965 the district’s crop was estimated at close to 400,000 forty-pound boxes, about half of them Golden Delicious, and the county’s apple crop of 7,314 tons was nearly twice 1959’s. In 1968 the growers’ Smorgasbord drew 20,000 people, and many more were turned away. The first Apple Hill Cookbook came out in 1969, when Roswell Larsen, the association’s president, said “we think that by banding together we have proven that the independent orchardist can compete successfully.”

“Everyone worked together and Apple Hill rose like a phoenix from the ashes of disaster.”

Gene Bolster, Apple Hill Growers

Apples Now

El Dorado County picked 3,186 tons of fresh apples from 764 acres in 2024. Yields fell to 4.17 tons an acre from 10.23 in 2023, when the crop came to 8,027 tons. With juice, cider and other apple products, the crop was worth $12.4 million, second among the county’s crops after livestock.

The Apple Hill Growers count 50 small farms in the Camino and Fruitridge area today. Apple Hill is the association’s name; the growers say it “is not and has never been a geographical area.”

Carl Visman Sr., who came from the Netherlands, began farming Boa Vista Orchards in Placerville in the early 1900s, when its main crop was potatoes. By 1960 it was planted almost all in pears, and after pear decline the Vismans planted apples. Five generations have farmed it.

In Sacramento, Mulvaney’s B&L served Fogline chicken with “Braeburns from Apple Hill” on its October 2026 menu.

The Apple Hill trail: seven farm stands from west to east

Apples in season: who grows them and where to buy them

Timeline

  1. 1848 Gold is “discovered” in the Sierra Nevada foothills. The first people
  2. 1851 The Camp Union Treaty is made; the Senate never ratifies it. The first people
  3. October 1855 El Dorado County counts 1,608 apple trees and 34 pear trees. Apples · Pears
  4. About 1860 A Rhode Island Greening is planted a mile north of Camino, on what becomes the Larsen ranch. Apples
  5. September 1862 J. W. Foster of Upper Placerville shows forty-two varieties of apples at the county fair. Apples
  6. 1913 El Dorado Bartlett land nets $900 an acre. Pears
  7. July 1919 Camino farm centers call the neglected old apple orchards a menace to the pear industry. Apples · Pears
  8. Summer 1959 The first recognized case of pear decline in El Dorado County. The county has 3,734 bearing acres of pears. Pears
  9. 1962 The pear crop falls to 19,000 tons, from 52,000 in 1958. Gene Bolster and Edio Delfino visit Oak Glen. Pears · Apples
  10. 1964 Bolster, Delfino, Dick Bethell and Bob Tuck form the Apple Hill Growers. Apples
  11. 1966 A University of California survey counts 87,800 pear trees lost in El Dorado County. Pears
  12. 1968 The growers’ Smorgasbord draws 20,000 people, and many more are turned away. Apples
  13. 1969 The first Apple Hill Cookbook comes out. Apples
  14. 2024 El Dorado County farms 764 acres of apples and 99 of pears. Apples · Pears

Where the Food Goes Now

Follow each El Dorado farm’s food to the Sacramento restaurants and markets that name it.

Pick a farm

Farms in the Apple Hill and El Dorado and where their food goes: read it as a list

Sources

Checked November 7, 2026. Quotes from old newspapers keep their spelling.