The Washington State Apple Blossom Festival in sunny Wenatchee is the oldest major festival in Washington State. It runs through May 8.
The Festival offers a grand parade, entertainment, food fair, arts and crafts, exhibits, contests, a car show, golf tournament, and one of the largest carnivals in the country.
The origin of the Apple Blossom Festival goes all the way back to 1907. Wenatchee had already become a major apple growing region, but farmers weren’t getting enough for their crops.
Ernst Wagner had read about exports of fruit across the Pacific and decided to try his hand at increasing the marketplace for his apples. He sent his apples to Seattle, where a shipping agent helped him transport 300o cases to Australia. Ernest took his whole family on the ship with the apples.
At the time, Australians remembered a shipment of damaged California apples – what they considered to be American apples – so Ernest marketed his apples as Washington state apples. The entire experience was a great success, and Ernest returned with signed contracts for 27,000 cases.
By 1912, Ernest was returning home from one of his marketing trips when he met Sue Callahan on board the ship. Sue was a New Zealander who eventually moved to Wenatchee.
Sue started the Apple Blossom Festival in Wenatchee in 1920, the same year that a woman’s right to vote was ratified. Sue continued with the fair for 25 years. Sue and her sisters grew up running country hotels with their family and rumor has it that she created the Festival as a way to mark women’s contribution to the growth of the country.
The Apple Blossom Festival provides a significant economic benefit to Wenatchee. Sue and Ernest together leave a legacy of celebrating apples in Wenatchee.
For more information and the Festival schedule, visit Washington State Apple Blossom Festival
NOTE – the history of the Apple Blossom Festival and the Legend of the Apple as told below are taken from the festival’s
website: http://www.appleblossom.org/history
LEGEND OF THE APPLE
The apple, as we know it, probably originated in Central and Southwestern Asia. Historical evidence shows that cultivation of the apple started with the beginning of agriculture in Europe. The earliest historical records of Egypt, Babylon, and China mention the apples, as do the Bible and writings from the century B.C Greece. We know that stone-age dwellers of Central Europe used apples for eating and preserving. These early apples were probably small and astringent–rather like wild apples or crabapples–far removed from the fine, carefully developed apple varieties we know today.
Apples were introduced to England during the Roman invasion in the first century BC. Later, their cultivation was appropriated by Christian monasteries.
In America, the first apple trees were planted in Massachusetts Bay by the pilgrims, just nine years after the first colony was established. As restless settlers pushed the Western frontier of the nation over the Appalachian Mountains into Ohio, Illinois, and beyond, they took apples with them. Each family unit had its own sack of apple seeds. Often, the family orchard was planted before ground was broken for the rude log dwellings that would be called home. Often, too, settlers in Ohio and Indiana found a thriving nursery of apples waiting for them, carved out of the wilderness, and planted by devout, dedicated Jonathan Chapman–better known by his legendary name “Johnny Appleseed.”
Apples found their way to Washington State in 1826 on a Hudson’s Bay Company sailing vessel. Seeds of a “good luck” apple were planted at Fort Vancouver in the spring of 1827. From this auspicious beginning, the Washington apple industry has grown to national significance, producing about 100 million boxes of apples each season.
Legends surround this delicious fruit. Today, the apple represents hospitality and friendship, health and beauty, and best of all, good-for-you eating!
