Two centuries of the
olive in San Diego

Note of warning to the unwary: If you have a supposed friend who owns olive trees and he asks you in a friendly fashion, "Wouldn't you like to try a nice fresh olive right off the tree?" Don't!

    It'll be just about the worst thing you ever tasted. Your mouth will pucker up as if you had swallowed a double handful of bitter alum, and your subsequent expectorations will resemble the worst moments of the Johnstown Flood.

    Olea Europaea has the distinction of being the only edible fruit in the world that cannot be eaten raw or cooked, but must be especially processed. Tannic acid, or something like it, permeates the meat, and this must be removed by soaking the fruit in a strong solution of lye, that stuff you use for opening clogged drains.

    Now, some people will tell you that the first thing Fr. Junipero Serra did after arriving in San Diego 200 years ago was to rush out and plant a mess of olive trees. Actually, he had nothing to do with olive culture here. The first trees were planted at the mission about 1794 and, by the turn of the century, the oil was being shipped to other missions in California. The last crop from these trees was harvested in 1966. The few trees remaining were eliminated by a housing development, but cuttings from them were planted elsewhere at the mission.

    Cuttings from this grove were shipped all over California in the early 1800s, and in a few years the Mission olive was famous; it still is.

    The olive is a tough tree that likes sea air and flourishes in rocky soil. In Europe, some trees are still going that are 600 years old. So, if you plant an olive tree, your great-grandchildren may still be enjoying it 100 years from now.

    Almost all olives grown in the United States come from California, with a few grown elsewhere in the Southwest. (The San Diego County Farm Bureau reports no local commercial olive groves operating today.) These are bottled and canned as ripe olives, but oil and green olives come almost exclusively from Spain, Italy and Greece, where labor costs are low.

    Early canners and bottlers went a bit overboard when it came to classifying olives. There were none classified as Small. They ran: Medium, Large, Extra Large, Mammoth, Giant, Jumbo, Colossal and Super Colossal. The last, if you believed the superlatives, must have been the size of a basketball. Now, they're just Standard, Family Size, Mammoth, King Size and Royal.

    Frank A. Kimball, the developer of National City, can be called the father of the non-clerical olive growers here. After an 1869 visit to the old mission, he brought back some olive branches and planted them in his back yard. They soon flourished and he planted more. Soon, Frank was in the olive tree business and shipped cuttings all over the state.

    The great California historian, Hubert Howe Bancroft, had one of the largest groves in the county in the 1880s. It embraced more than 200 acres in Spring Valley, but for some reason was never particularity successful.

    At the Serra Museum, in San Diego’s Presidio Park, is the battered oil press used by the Padres at the old mission. The fruit was dried in the sun, placed in the press, and the screws were turned. The "first run" oil was beautiful, but subsequent runs mashed the pits and the product tended to be on the bitter side.

    There are some 200 olive trees in Presidio Park which began bearing fruit in the 1930s. There was no park rule forbidding the public from taking the fruit, so Depression times made Presidio olives a welcome food item for many busted San Diegans. Some hoggish vandals, however, ripped off whole branches from beautiful trees, so the rule now is look, but don’t pick.

    Aside from use in salads and olive pimento sandwiches, most imported green olives are used in martinis. In fact, enough imported olives move across Los Angeles harbor docks each month to garnish about 48 million martinis.

    And, what’s that famous morning after excuse? "Must have gotten hold of a bad olive." (Copyright by Bailey & Associates)

    Longtime newspaperman "Woody" Lockwood has forgotten more about San Diego history than most historians remember. Two years retired from daily newspaper work, he is researching a book on military food.