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46
winter
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spr ing
“a huge building of stone. This is built especially for lemons. It is 250 feet long
and made of stone that is to be hewn on the spot...The great warehouse will be
used for the curing of fruit, and will be a profitable adjunct to the hothouses.
In Europe there are warehouses where lemons are cured, but in California this
is almost unknown. At Las Fuentes lemons will be gathered in their green state,
and left to be ‘cured’ for six months or so, that they may have thin skins at their
maturity. The hothouses and greenhouses will be equally elaborate, and besides
the many delicious fruits of the tropics named there will be many others that
may be brought from Africa and the Indies.”
The natural artesian wells of Las Fuentes provided more than adequate water
for such crops, and in fact an enormous reservoir was built to better manage
the irrigation. It was said to measure the length of a football field, at a depth of
fourteen feet.
The west end of the original Crocker-Sperry packing house was identical to the east end,
but was sacrificed to expand the building when it was converted to the clubhouse for
Birnam Wood Golf Club. The stones, along with those from the upper two stories, were
re-used to build the gatehouse on East Valley Road, and for retaining walls around the
clubhouse (photo courtesy of Birnam Wood Golf Club).
The packing house just before its conversion to the Birnam Wood Golf Club clubhouse.
Arthur Page Brown, the original architect, designed the cupolas to resemble lemon
halves. With the surrounding lemon trees torn out to facilitate the construction project,
the building’s state of disrepair is readily visible. Note the snow-capped mountains to the
north; this undated photograph was probably taken in the winter of 1964-65
(photo courtesy of Birnam Wood Golf Club).