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Pirate\'s Cove Brand Lake County Mountain Bartletts Crate Label, Lake Cove Growers Inc., Finley, California, 1950s 🍐
10 1/2\" x 7 3/4\" ~ Little to no wear.
No pirate, no ship, no chest of gold anywhere on this label - the buccaneers live only in the name. What\'s actually painted underneath PIRATE\'S COVE® is pure Lake County pear country: a mountain lit gold across the top, purple shadow in its folds, a wide lake below it with a wooded point and one small boat out on the water, green valley rows running off into the distance.
🍐 Everything Printed On It
PIRATE\'S COVE across the top in tall navy capitals edged light blue, the registration mark after the final E, BRAND beneath at the right. LAKE COUNTY in big red capitals over MOUNTAIN BARTLETTS. Along the bottom: PACKED & SHIPPED BY LAKE COVE GROWERS INC., FINLEY, CALIF., U.S.A. and NET CONTENTS 4/5 BUSHEL. A navy pear lettered \"Lakes\" in white sits over a white outline of California with a small star mark. The word \"pear\" never actually appears anywhere on the label - it didn\'t need to. To a produce buyer, \"Bartletts\" already meant pears, and \"Lake County\" told him exactly where they came from. The back is plain cream paper, clean, with the front lettering just barely showing through in reverse.
🏴☠️ Why a Pear Box Has a Pirate\'s Name
Crate labels were basically traveling salesmen glued to a box. Starting in the late 1800s, as railroads carried western produce to markets clear across the country, growers and shippers pasted lithographed paper labels to the ends of their wooden crates so a buyer sorting through a warehouse could spot a brand at a glance and remember it next time. \"Pirate\'s Cove\" was selling adventure with a name alone - the actual painting underneath is a straightforward, honest picture of the lake country the pears actually grew in.
🌋 Clear Lake and Mount Konocti
Lake County was formed May 20, 1861 out of parts of Napa, Mendocino and Colusa counties, with Lakeport as its seat. Its centerpiece, Clear Lake, is 68 square miles - the largest natural freshwater lake sitting entirely inside California. USGS core samples taken in 1973 and 1980 dated its sediments back 480,000 years, which puts it among the oldest lakes in North America; anglers today call it the Bass Capital of the West. The label never actually names its mountain, but the one towering over Clear Lake\'s south shore is Mount Konocti, a 4,305-foot volcanic dome that last erupted around 11,000 years ago. Pomo and Wappo people have lived around it for roughly that same span of time, and the name itself comes from Pomo words for mountain and woman.
📜 The Legends Tied to This Mountain and Lake
The best-known one is a love story. Two giant chiefs, Kah-bel to the north and Konocti to the south, fought over Konocti\'s daughter Lupiyoma, and both were killed - Kah-bel\'s body became the red hills to the north, Konocti\'s became the mountain itself, and Lupiyoma threw herself into the lake in her grief; the bubbling springs of Soda Bay are said to be her tears. A second telling explains the name differently: a mountain woman quarreled with her husband, climbed to the summit vowing he\'d never see her alive again, and her people named the peak after her.
Older lore claims a lightless lake sits hidden inside the mountain, home to blind white fish; that a drought in 1818 dropped Clear Lake low enough to expose a great cave under the mountain\'s eastern slope; and that marked sticks dropped down a shaft inside those caves turned up weeks later floating in Clear Lake itself - Lake County historian Henry Mauldin recorded the explorers\' own accounts of that shaft. Even the county\'s glittering volcanic stones, called Lake County diamonds, have their own legend: moon tears, wept when the moon fell in love with a Pomo chief and had to choose between him and her place in the sky.
🍐 How This Became Pear Country
Lake County Bartletts made their name in 1885, exhibited at the World\'s Fair in New Orleans and proclaimed \"the finest in the world.\" Thomas Porteus gets the credit for the county\'s first commercial pear orchard, four acres in Big Valley, and J.W. Annette of Finley followed not long after. By 1919 the county had 700 acres in pears. Until 1923 most of the fruit was actually sold dried, with early crops shipped to Europe; once packers moved in and iced rail cars became available, more of the harvest went out fresh, packed in wooden boxes exactly like the one this label was made for.
Prohibition reshaped the county\'s farms again - national prohibition in 1920 essentially ended Lake County\'s wine production, and most of its vineyards got ripped out and replanted in walnut and pear orchards. Kelseyville carried the title \"pear capital of the world\" through much of the 20th century, and in 1999 alone the county processed 85,000 tons of pears. Warm summer days and cool nights right before harvest are what give Lake County Bartletts their rosy, sun-kissed blush, and the county remains the largest supplier of premium fresh pears in California and the biggest growing area in the state\'s Mountain District - pears are still packed in Finley today.
🏡 Finley, California
Finley is a small unincorporated community 3.5 miles southeast of Lakeport, sitting at 1,352 feet elevation. It\'s named for settler Samuel Finley Sylar, and its first post office opened in 1907. Lake Cove Growers Inc. printed the town\'s name right on this label as FINLEY, CALIF., U.S.A.
📦 Why Labels Like This Stopped Being Made
Crate labels were printed by lithograph houses from original artwork painted in watercolor - real commercial art, made to be glued to a wooden box and thrown away with it. In the 1950s pre-printed corrugated cardboard boxes took over the produce trade - lighter, cheaper, easier to store flat and break down, and the apple and pear industries were among the very first to switch. Once the box itself could carry the brand printed right on it, the glued-on paper label\'s whole job disappeared. What survives today came out of packing-house storage, lithographers\' proofs and warehouse finds, and collectors started turning up forgotten stacks of them back in the 1960s.
✅ Condition
Little to no wear. The back is clean, with the front printing just faintly showing through the paper.
❓ Questions People Ask
How old is this label? A 1950s crate label. The printed address, FINLEY, CALIF., U.S.A., carries no ZIP code, consistent with a label printed before ZIP codes arrived in 1963.
Is there actually a pirate on it? No. Pirate\'s Cove is just the brand name - the artwork is a mountain and lake landscape with a small boat.
What fruit came in the box? Bartlett pears. MOUNTAIN BARTLETTS names the variety, LAKE COUNTY names the California county they grew in.
What does \"4/5 bushel\" mean? The printed net contents of the box this label was made for - four-fifths of a bushel of fruit.
Who printed it? No printer\'s name appears on the label - the only company named is the packer and shipper, Lake Cove Growers Inc.
How big is it? 10 1/2 by 7 3/4 inches.
Was it ever glued to a crate? This particular label\'s back is clean cream paper with no glue residue.
🎁 Good For
- Clear Lake and Lake County families, cabin owners and visitors
- Fruit crate label collectors
- Kitchen, farmhouse and lake-house walls
- Pear growers and packinghouse families
- Gifts for anyone from Lakeport, Kelseyville or Finley
