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By Miriam Raftery, Editor, East County Magazine
September 15, 2018 (Julian) – Is Julian losing its roots? The historic gold rush town has dropped its Apple Days, a tradition dating back more than a century, replacing it with a season of other harvest celebrations.
Since 1909, this small mountain town has been celebrating Apple Days. Even before that, Julian apple took first place in the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893 and St. Louis in 1904. Wyatt Earp, the famous lawman, was a judge at San Diego’s first district fair in 1889—when Julian apples won 88 first and second place awards. That first Apple Days included an all-night dance, a baseball game against Ramona, rooster pulling, foot races, and trick riding.
That’s according to history formerly published on the Julian Apple Days website – now gone. The website still exists: https://visitjulian.com/to-see-do/special-events/apple-days/. But the history has been scrubbed.
Through the years, a single-day celebration expanded to two full months. Visitors flocked to Julian to pick or buy apples, taste apple cider, watch pie eating competitions, savor candied applies, bring home jars of apple jelly or apple butter, and participate in a variety of activities that changed over time. Since 2008, the season culminated in an Apple Days Festival held at Menghini Winery where activities included live music and more.
We asked the Julian Chamber of Commerce, which runs the www.VisitJulian.com site, what happened. They responded:
Thanks for your inquiry. This year we are more literally celebrating our season of apples by offering a number of harvest celebrations designed to provide a range of enjoyable experiences to our residents and our visitors.
Focusing on family fun, our apple harvest events include:
- season-long scarecrow building
- pie baking contests
- our 49th Julian Music Festiva
- a kid’s fishing derby at Lake Cuyamaca
- a hayride, apple or vegetable picking, dinner and old-fashioned dance lessons at Julian Farm and Orchard
- several opportunities to learn about life on the frontier and the journeys of Johnny Appleseed
- a series of Halloween Pumpkin Patch activities, including pumpkin and gourd picking, fruit picking, hayrides, tomahawk throwing, archery, etc.,
- Julian’s Old-Fashioned Country Fair with old fashioned games, a petting zoo, quilt displays and more
- The Fern Street Circus, a professional circus troupe that combines performance and education for kids of all age
- Julian’s 23rd Annual Octoberfest
We are excited about our expansion of Julian’s harvest season and encourage people to visit our website at https://visitjulian.com/to-see-do/special-events/apple-days/ to get more details and plan their Julian apple season adventure!
The new activities all sound like positive ways to promote the town’s agricultural heritage and new farmers offering up crops from pumpkins to wine grapes, as well as educating visitors on the area’s pioneer heritage and some modern twists such as the circus performers.
But scrapping Apple Days, a tradition that dates back well over a century, and deleting that rich heritage off the website is a loss of heritage for our region. Why not have both an Apple Days celebration for future generations to enjoy--whether for a day, a week or a month, while also offering all of the other delightful new harvest season activities?
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