Vintage 1960s Swallow Crate Label 🐦 – Redbanks Packing, Woodlake, California

Why a Swallow? 🐦 Vintage 1960s Crate Label, Redbanks Packing, Woodlake, California

Size: 13" x 4" ~ little to no wear.

Original 1960s fruit crate label produced for the Swallow brand by Redbanks Packing Company of Woodlake, California.

This label measures 13 inches × 4 inches and was used on California fruit crates during the mid‑20th century.

This is a New Old Stock example, unused and unmounted, with strong original color and clean edges. Stored flat.

The Redbanks company behind this label goes back to the early 1900s and became one of the major fruit‑packing operations in Tulare County. The company was known for its early adoption of irrigation infrastructure and for marketing fruit under distinctive brand names such as Swallow.

It began as the Redbanks Orchard Co., organized in November 1903 by Dr. William Wheeler Squire, Charles Joannes and Phil M. Baler on the south slopes of Colvin Mountain, just west of Woodlake. To lay out the orchards they hired Isaac H. Thomas, known as the Luther Burbank of Tulare County, and planted 15 varieties of plums, 14 kinds of table grapes and several peaches. Electric pumps pulled water from a string of 75-foot wells into cement flumes, and later from the Wutchumna Ditch. The Visalia Electric Railroad reached Redbanks in 1910 and a packing house went up, and in 1913 the Santa Fe ran a spur right into the packing shed. Redbanks had the biggest deciduous fruit ranch in Tulare County by then, and its peaches were the first ripe anywhere in the country. The holdings grew from 1,350 acres to 4,000, much of it grazing land up on Colvin Mountain.

My favorite bit: in 1928 they hired ex-army pilots from Texas to fly four crop-dusting planes over the orchards, which made them real pioneers at it. One of those planes crashed on Colvin Mountain a few years later. The Depression caught up with them in the winter of 1931-32 and the bank took the place over. In 1937 it sold to 16 men, 13 of them from the Arena family, and with Joe Arena managing it became the Redbanks Fruit Co. It was still going strong in July 1955, when 17 carloads of fruit a day rolled out of Redbanks. Then in 1966 the Griffith Brothers of Anaheim bought it and renamed it Redbanks Packing Co. That is the name printed on this label, so you know it came off the press in 1966 or later.

Swallow crate labels are collected for their bird imagery and representation of California’s agricultural packaging during the post‑war period.

📋 What Is Printed On This Label

• SWALLOW
• (registered circled-R mark)
• BRAND
• CALIFORNIA
• PACKED BY
• REDBANKS PACKING CO.
• 34825 ROAD 192
• WOODLAKE, CALIF.
• PRODUCT OF U.S.A.

A packing-house brand. It was printed for the packing house, not for a single crop, so it doesn't name a fruit or vegetable. The trade knew what was in the box.

A printed street address, which is unusual on a crate label. The packer's block gives the full address out on Road 192 in Woodlake, not just the town name. CALIFORNIA is separately printed beside the brand as a source statement, and PRODUCT OF U.S.A. runs along the black bottom band.

SWALLOW carries a circled-R registered mark immediately after the wordmark, with BRAND in yellow capitals below and to the right.

The blank stamping panel. A cream rectangle outlined in orange sits at right-center and is completely empty. That box was for the packing house to stamp a grade, size or count when they packed, and nothing ever got stamped in it - the best sign there is that this label never went on a crate.

The picture. A barn swallow flies across with its wings swept back over soft clouds and rows of green orchard running back to the trees.