Creating an Orange Utopia: Eliza Lovell Tibbets and the Birth of California's Citrus Industry

by Patricia Ortlieb, Peter Economy

California’s citrus industry owes a huge debt to the introduction of the navel orange tree—in fact, to two trees in particular, the parent trees of the vast groves of navel oranges that exist in California today. Those trees were planted by a woman named Eliza Lovell Tibbets.
Born in Cincinnati in1823, Eliza’s Swedenborgian faith informed her ideals. Surrounded by artists and free thinkers, her personal journey took her first to New York City, then south to create a better environment for newly freed slaves in racially divided Virginia, and onward to Washington, DC, where she campaigned for women’s rights. But it was in California where she left her true mark, launching an agricultural boom that changed the course of California’s history.
Eliza’s story of faith and idealism will appeal to anyone who is curious about US history, women’s rights, abolitionism, Spiritualism, and California’s early pioneer days. Follow Eliza through loves and fortunes lost and found until she finally finds her paradise in a little town called Riverside.

Genres: Biography, Agriculture

136 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2011

Reviews

[Donald Harwick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Family history rambled somewhat and the focus often moved away from Ms. To betts, but it was a fast read and held my interest.

[Adele · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just finished reading this one yesterday. Quick read. Informative about how ELT's life intersected various cultural and historic threads of the time, in particular about 1850s era utopian communities, the failures of some tone deaf antebellum initiatives, the acquisition of women's voting rights and development in southern California around the turn of the century. If you follow the history of water rights in CA or of Riverside, it's great because it pulls out documentary evidence of ELT's contribution to the development of naval oranges industry, which didn't always get credited fully, and gives the reader a great feel for how the development of irrigation infrastructure changed the region and the country through one particular story.

[David Allen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This gathers the known facts about the woman (the author's great-great-grandmother) who was an early suffragist and who successfully raised the first two navel orange trees in the U.S., creating a citrus boom in Southern California. There is not a tremendous amount of information about Eliza Tibbets, typical for women of her era. But this account is smoothly written, which is unusual for local history.

[Margo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book. The life of Eliza Tibbets and the Washington navel orange trees she planted to create the orange industry of Southern California.

[Steven Yoder · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the story of how Riverside, California came to get the Navel Orange due to the efforts of Eliza Lovell Tibbets. It is a brief book that follows her life story but suffers some from the lack of sources on her life. The Agriculture Department sent two trees to her in 1873 and buds were taken from these trees to create the huge groves that covered Southern California from the 1880s to the 1970s. Tibbets was also an adherent to spiritism, the practice of consulting the dead through seances which had a heyday in the U.S. from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s.

[Sandra Petterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic read!