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LOCAL
NEWS
Fruithurst once wine capital of the South
Wayne Ruple
12-18-2008
Just 30 years after the Civil War a group of Yankees calling themselves the Alabama Fruit Growers and Winery Association descended on the small Cleburne County community of Zidonia, (“the healthiest spot in the United States”) now known as Fruithurst, and set about buying properties for what they dreamed would become the world’s second best vineyards.
As their numbers and influence grew a contest was held to rename the town and denote its relationship to the fruit industry.
The company offered a $25 prize to anyone coming up with a new name and “Fruithurst”, meaning “fruit” and “hurst” for a “grove of trees” became the town’s lasting title.
In her book, Fruithurst, Alabama’s Vineyard Village, author Virginia Voss Pope said clearing of the land for the vineyards began in 1895 under the direction of supervisor C.W. Farcist.
“Promoters and investors began to arrive so fast during this time that homes could not be constructed rapidly enough to meet the demand and many of these new arrivals had to be ‘put up’ as boarders,” wrote Pope
Most of the influx of new arrivals were Swedes, Danes and Norwegians and their numbers were so great that on Aug. 6, 1895 a Swedish Lutheran Church was founded.
The first child born in the “new” community on Sept. 26, 1895 was christened Lizzie Fruithurst Youda in the local Catholic church.
According to Pope’s research, the promoters planned the entire layout of the city right down to the smallest detail including erection of a flag pole.
And right behind the flag pole came the magnificent Fruithurst Inn, a showplace for the whole town and a masterpiece of Victorian architecture.
Pope said the three-storied structure contained 80 rooms with steam heat, baths and outside balconies offering magnificent views; a restaurant, an elaborate running water system, billiard room, bowling alley, barber shop, a large rotunda lobby, winding staircases and several business offices.
Additionally, the inn served international cuisine and gourmet delicacies featuring wild goose a la Farmiere, queen of soufflé, sabayon, a number of clarets, puree of tomatoes a la Riene, a variety of roasts, shrimp salad, Columbia River salmon and gourmet items such as bisque a la prince, supreme of veal aux pillis sois, Bartlett pears a la conde and boiled leg of mutton among their other 58 items.
With the town’s motto “Here We Rest” hanging above its’ large fireplace, the hotel, built at a cost of $40,000, claimed to be one of the finest hotels in the South.
People began coming to Fruithurst from all across the nation. One hundred delegates of The Farmers National Congress toured the town in October 1895. One hundred and twenty-three people came in one day. The town incorporated in December of that year and by year’s end 46 buildings had been built and 18 under construction.
Businesses included a freight depot, two blacksmiths, post office, Hotel de Noblet, the Fruithurst Inn and a cigar factory.
`By 1898 the Fruithurst was a real boom town made up of 800 residents from around the nation and Europe.
“It was meticulously laid out into gardens, parks and an experiment station,” records Pope who reports that the station had 105 varieties of grapes, orchard, berry patches, rose beds and vegetable gardens. “Central Avenue, the city’s main street, was lined with two rows of maple trees and single row of magnolila trees. There was even a rainbow-colored summer house which was used for public gatherings. . . Many of the streets had boardwalks and gas street lights.”
Pope said 1898 was a “vintage year” in her chapter on “The Great Grape Rush.” There were over 100 varieties of grapes grown in Fruithurst.
By that time the town included the People’s Bank, New York Store, Stephens Hardware, Hamburg Barber Shop, J. Grant Planing Mill, laundry, Blackmarr Furniture, Scandinavian Supply Company, Koentz Pharmacy, Keese Livery Barn, Prebelich Brothers Meat Market, Lawson Grocery, Fruithurst Bakery, Wager Drugs and Watch Repair, Ferris and Anderson company, a tinning business, several boarding houses, train depot, telegraph office, basket and crate factory, vineyard contractors, canning factory, Asseltine hotel, Muus Hotel, and of course the vineyardists and several wineries.
Among the vineyardists were E. B. Hammitt and G.W. Morris along with several wineries, corporate and independent and several packing houses to handle the 3,000 acres of grapes. Pickers were paid 30 cents per day.
The town also had a dentist and three doctors.
As for churches, there was the Swedish Emanuel, Swedish Lutheran Elim Society, People’s Service, Union Service, Catholic, First Baptist, Methodist Episcopal as well as Knights of Pythias and the Masons.
Wine yields were “staggering” with one vineyard producing 8,324 pounds in one year alone. Most were shipped by train to the North. In 1903, 2,885 crates were shipped and in 1904, 3,574 crates.
In 1898, 23,000 gallons were produced by five wineries.
A French winemaker said the product was “the best wine he had seen in the South”
According to Pope there remain unanswered questions as to why the founding association folded in 1998 at the height of success. “The boom was in full swing and the inn was making money” she notes.
Not only were the wineries in boom and attracting visitors but people came to enjoy the climate, excellent food and hospitality. The air around Fruithurst was described as “like champagne.”
Entertaining in such a bubbly atmosphere was the Schubert Orchestra from Washington, DC.
According to Pope the town was also a “well-read community” with three newspapers – the Fruithurst Reporter established in 1896, the Fruithurst Weekly Enterprise, established in 1998 and the Fruithurst Vineyardist, established in 1899.
To give one an idea of the vastness of the vineyard business one has only to look at a list of the owners. Pope was able to research a partial list covering only 1898 and there were 47 representing New York,New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Maine, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Missouri, Michigan and Sweden.
Pope asked, “What lured these Swedes, Norwegians and Danes to Fruithurst as if it were their New World mecca? This is a baffling question which will probably never be answered, yet it only tends to add to the city’s ‘juicy’ history.”
One Swedish native, Ernest Rudolph Carlson, invested in the winery business and was elected mayor in 1902 and in 1911 became superintendent of the Cleburne County school system and was the first county agent in Alabama and promoting what would later become 4-H clubs.
According to Pope, “The first grape harvest festival ever held in Alabama, and perhaps the entire South, was observed in Fruithurst on Sept. 1, 1898.” The event attracted over 400 people.
In 1898 the governor of Alabama had this to say, “No better evidence of the fruitfulness of immigration work can be found than in the colony planted in Fruithurst in Cleburne County, where a large body of land has multiplied more than six found in assessed values within about two years.”
The local paper, The Vineyardist, noted in their May 26, 1899 issue, “Never in the history of Fruithurst has laboring men been so scarce as now. Vinyard contractors are sending to Atlanta and Anniston for help and still they have not received enough of them.”
The quality of grapes was so good that they were compared with those “brought back from the promised land of Caleb and Joshua.”
The housing boom in Fruithurst saw over 150 houses built in the latest fashionable Victoria style, two stories with central head, electric lights, running water and large wine cellars.
But all was not well. Pope writes, “as each yeaer brought an increasing yield of grapes the profits did not run in proportion to the harvest. Something was terribly wrong, and it did not take an expert economist to figure it out. The grapes were of excellent quality, and they were converted economically into thousands of gallons of choice wines. But there was no good market for the wine, so profits were held to a bare minimum.” And according to the author, “It was for this one reason that Fruithurst ceased to be a boom town and reverted to the rural community it once was.” The collapse was gradual.
Local growers also had to compete with other areas in the country where cheaper wines were made using low cost chemical methods and Northern agents were suspected of not coming through on their promises to sell the wines and whole grapes, shipments of which rotted in unrefrigerated box cars before they could be sold.
The inn, once a main attraction for the town, fell upon hard times, was turned into a sanitarium which also folded and became an inn again where on Jan. 23, 1903 the town celebrated their first place wins in the Alabama State Fair exhibitions with music provided by the Edwardsville Brass Band.
The final blow for the inn came when the Borden-Wheeler Springs Company purchased it and actually moved the massive structure to Wheeler/Borden Springs where it never was a financial success, was abandoned for a time and finally burned.
Many homes were also moved in a similar fashion, so many in fact that the town council had to pass an ordinance forbidding the practice.
While Northern promoters dreamed of a close-knit financially successful community free of crime and other evils, there were a large number of thefts and a few murders.
In 1909 the town was in decline and with the passage in 1919 of the Eighteenth Amendment, which stopped the legal sale of all liquor in the U.S., the nail was driven in the coffin and, as stated by Pope, “forever seal the doom of Fruithurst as a wine-producing town.”
The town continued to have excellent railway service and shipments of huckleberries help see the community through until final unincorporation in the late 1920s.
With the coming of U.S. Highway 78 the town re-incorporated in October 1931. Souvenir views of Fruithurst
This book belongs to Ruth Holder
of Carroll County, Ga. This book has been in her
family a very long time. Ruth is very active in the History of Haralson County, Georgia. www.lifesadance.net
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About Wayne Ruple
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Cleburne News editor Wayne Ruple is a native of Ashville. Before coming to Heflin, he worked for three years as a computer systems manager in Birmingham. Ruple has worked for The Sand Mountain Reporter in Albertville, and was the editor of The Independent in Robertsdale. He has also worked for the Shades Valley Sun, the St. Clair News-Aegis and The Daily Home in Talladega.
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