In 1873, Eliza Lovell Tibbets received two small navel orange trees through the mail. She planted them outside her kitchen door in Riverside. They were among only a handful imported to California from Bahia, Brazil, by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Every Washington Navel orange tree in California traces its lineage back to those two trees. A century and a half of California's commercial citrus industry has its origin in Tibbets's backyard.
She's also one of the most under-celebrated historical figures in the city.
Who she actually was
Per Wikipedia's biography and the California Citrus State Historic Park, Tibbets was:
- An abolitionist before the Civil War
- A suffragist in the early American women's rights movement — "among the first wave of American feminism inspiring women such as Susan B. Anthony"
- A spiritualist (the 19th-century religious movement that emphasized communication with the dead)
- A horticulturist with no formal training but a sharp eye for what would grow in Riverside's soil
- An early Riverside settler, building the intellectual life of the young colony alongside her husband Luther
In other words: a woman who, in the 1860s and 70s, was already openly progressive on the most important moral questions of her era — and who happened to also start a state's defining agricultural industry on the side.
What's there now
One of the original trees still stands at the corner of Magnolia and Arlington Avenues, encased since June 2019 in a 22-foot protective tent designed to shield it from citrus diseases that have devastated commercial groves elsewhere in California. It's California Historical Landmark #20. Maintenance is shared between UC Riverside and the Riverside Parks Department.
Most current Riverside residents have driven past it without knowing what it is.
Why we're noting it
Two reasons.
- Tibbets's name is on far less than she earned. There's a tribute marker at the tree. A grave at Evergreen Memorial Historic Cemetery. A 2011 biography by Patricia Ortlieb (Creating an Orange Utopia). But she's not on a major street, school, or building proportional to what she actually did.
- The tree is worth visiting. It's a quiet, weird, beautiful thing — a 152-year-old fruit tree in a glass tent, tended by a major research university and a city parks crew. If you've lived here for years and never stopped, stop.
The951 will be covering more of this — the people and places whose work or presence built the city you see today, but who don't get the recognition they earned.