All across Western Oregon, forgotten apple trees grow amid blackberry bushes, by roadsides, and in untended backyards. Some landowners consider the trees a nuisance, and many have been cut down. But come springtime, those that remain burst with vibrant colors and sweet smells, foreshadowing their fall produce. The blossoms seem to convey a message from the tree: I have a history. I produce fruit. I still have worth.
In north Tillamook County, a group of locals see the worth of these trees, some of which date back to the earliest European settlers in the Nehalem River Valley. Among them is David Hendrickson, a local winemaker whose business, Carola Wine & Cider, produces ciders from what he calls “found” apples.
“My first production [in Tillamook County] was in 2020, and I mostly focused on forgotten fruit around old, large homestead sites; abandoned orchards; and very old, wild trees growing on public land,” Hendrickson told me. “I honestly love wild apples the most, especially ones that grow on the roadside or in hedges.”
Hendrickson recalled driving around the area when he first moved to town. He saw immense amounts of unpicked apples rotting on the ground and was inspired to collect this produce and make hard cider.
In the fall, truckloads of apples make their way to Hendrickson’s cidery, a rustic setup in an open-air garage near his home. The space is lined with wooden barrels, abundant piles of apples, and surfboards in the rafters (evidence of his other passion). The apples are pressed in batches sorted by the location where they were harvested, then placed in oak barrels for up to a year, where wild fermentation is allowed to do the work. If you listen closely, you can hear the soft sound of popping bubbles as carbon dioxide escapes the fermenting cider.
Hendrickson in his cidery. Photo by Chelsea Yarnell
While we spoke, Hendrickson picked up an apple from each pile and explained the characteristics that make them a good cider apple. Small and tart: great for cider, sometimes not so great for eating. He often knows more than just what type of apple will make a good cider. There are stories attached to the apples.
For instance, he once harvested apples from a tree growing alongside the tracks of the historic Oregon Coast Scenic Railroad in Garibaldi. That tree may be the result of a passenger discarding an apple core while traveling on the train.
While Hendrickson was exploring the cider-making potential of the valley’s trees, members of Nehalem’s White Clover Grange—the local branch of the National Grange rural fraternal organization—launched an oral history project documenting residents’ memories of heritage apple trees in the area. Hendrickson joined in, bringing his established relationships with apple-tree owners and his knowledge of the locations of additional trees to the project. With support from the Tillamook County Cultural Coalition, Grange members created a map indicating the general areas where heritage apple trees can be found and elaborating on their histories.
Apple trees came to the Nehalem Valley with the homesteaders who began arriving in the early 1860s, displacing the Nehalem band of the Tillamook people. The Homestead Act of 1862 allowed settlers to claim up to 160 acres if they built a habitable dwelling, lived on the land for five years, and cultivated the land. These early settlers planted orchards of fruit trees to prove their homesteads, particularly hearty apple trees.
“An apple tree is easier to judge the age of,” White Clover Grange member Travis Williams told me. “If someone is trying to prove to the government that they’ve been there for ten years, you can point to a ten-year-old apple tree. An apple tree stays put and is like a timber clock. Gardens and animals come and go and are harder to prove age.”
For these families, apples had many uses: They could be eaten as fresh produce, baked into pies, cooked down and used as a sugar substitute, or fermented into cider.
“Apples in general are such resilient trees,” Hendrickson said. “They can make fruit for hundreds of years with little to no attention or agricultural input. In our climate, they don’t need spraying. A single tree can produce thousands of pounds of apples.”
Today, heritage apple trees in the Nehalem River Valley are a strong indication that a homestead once existed on a piece of land.
“We were interested in knowing where and who homesteaded in our neck of the woods in north Tillamook County,” White Clover Grange member Marie Scovell said. “We wondered if any of the apple trees from homestead orchards were still around.”
Members of the White Clover Grange interviewed local elders, asking them to recount their memories of local apple trees. They took drives together and located trees in the area.
Among the stories they gathered is that of Mary Winifred (Winnie), great-grandmother of Nehalem resident Janay Myers. Sometime in the 1890s, Winnie unintentionally planted an apple tree. The story goes that she was walking toward what is now Highway 53, east of Nehalem, eating an apple. When she finished, she threw the core down and ground it into the dirt with her foot. The apple tree that sprouted in that spot still produces good apples today.
Marie Scovell’s father, Clifford, now ninety-eight, was also one of the interviewees. Together he and Marie relayed stories of their family’s homesteading roots. The Scovell family is believed to be the second family to homestead in the upper Nehalem River Valley. Marie’s great-great-aunt Margaret Jane Scovell sold honey and apples from her farm’s orchard. By boat, the products were shipped down the river to the Boyakin store at Upper Town, the original location of the town of Nehalem. The partnership is documented in one-cent postcards sent from the store to Margaret, thanking her for her products.
Clifford also remembered the tale of a settler in the area known as “Mr. Sellen.” Sellen owned a farm up the valley, and he is believed to have grafted and sold apple trees to many of the early settlers. The story corroborates evidence that Hendrickson has found in some of the remaining local trees today.
Hendrickson has harvested apples for cider from this “feral” tree in Garibaldi. Photo courtesy of Carola Wine & Cider
“One apple tree in particular is planted all over Tillamook County,” Hendrickson said. “It’s a fantastic apple, and nobody knows what it is, myself included. But it’s found from the south part of the county to the Nehalem River Valley on the original homesteads. I’ve probably come across fifteen of these trees, and they’re all approximately one hundred years old.”
The presence of so many trees that resemble each other and produce similar apples is a sign of human intervention.
“Scientifically speaking, if you plant a seed from an apple, the tree that comes from that seed is a random slice of its parentage. It will not be the same type of apple that it came from,” Hendrickson said.
The only way to reproduce an exact variety of apple is through grafting.
“When one grafts a new apple tree, you take a nursery rootstock that controls the height and often disease resistance of an apple tree,” Williams, from the White Clover Grange, explained. “Then the scion [a little branch of the desired fruit variety] is grafted onto the different apple’s rootstock. The scion controls what type of apple the tree will produce and the rootstock controls the growing patterns.”
This means someone, perhaps Mr. Sellen, was grafting and selling a popular apple variety all across Tillamook County. Hendrickson named the variety “Stoppi-yellow” (and another “Stoppi-red”) after the local Stoppiello family, whose property in Nehalem is home to two of the biggest and oldest trees of this variety. He says the apples are among his favorites in the area.
“I really like multipurpose apples. They’re fun to eat on their own, good for baking, good for juicing, and storing for a long time. They also have a general adaptation to living here, with big rains and clay soil. And of course, as a cider maker, I want a large fruit set.”
In addition to documenting the locations of these heritage trees, the White Clover Grange and Hendrickson have continued Mr. Sellen’s work by grafting local varieties.
“There’s a huge difference between what you buy in the grocery store and what is grown in a community space over decades,” White Clover Grange President Jennifer Childress said. “The varieties that develop or that do well here are the ones that people talk about and keep going.”
A grafting project to preserve the varieties found in the Nehalem River Valley is underway, with young trees for sale to the public and grafting classes led by White Clover Grange members.
“I’m an agriculturalist and care a lot about the fruit and agricultural history here,” Williams said. “The idea of collecting apples or scions from trees that are overgrown or in the back of someone’s house that they don’t ever harvest is really interesting. There are unique varieties out there of apples, potatoes, tomatoes, everything you can think of. There have been millions of edible varieties around the world in the past; every time one goes away there’s a chance that a really unique and interesting one is lost.”
Where homesteaders once reveled in the abundance of apple trees, today heritage apples are often left to rot. The fruit goes unused for many reasons: Sometimes it’s due to a lack of equipment or a lack of knowledge about a particular variety’s best usage. Sometimes it’s simply because the amount of fruit the trees produce is overwhelming. But Childress says this modern burden has created an opportunity for community.
“Old apple trees everywhere are such an amazing food source for community gathering. It’s an incredible amount of food that comes off of one tree. A tree often produces more than one family can eat.”
Childress told me her own apple orchard in the Nehalem River Valley produces so much fruit that, after making applesauce for her family, she passes on bags of apples to others. Their small family cider press circulates among other community members during the harvest season.
“You’ll drive around during the fall, and so many apples are lying on the ground, and people aren’t using them,” she said. “There’s an underrecognized value there. So we need to come together.”
Jennifer Childress (left) at the Heritage Apple Festival at White Clover Grange in Nehalem. Photo by Trav Williams, Broken Banjo Photography
The White Clover Grange’s annual Heritage Apple Festival aims to help the public learn about the history of apple trees in the Nehalem River Valley and how to use local apples. At the second festival, in October 2024, visitors were treated to fresh-pressed juice and sampled slices of heritage apples. Locals were invited to bring and share their excess apples. Grafted heritage apple trees were sold. (I purchased two.)
“If people live on a property with an old apple tree and don’t know that there’s a story behind it, or that it’s really tasty, or know what variety it is, those trees could be pulled up or cut down,” Williams said. “We want to create awareness that these trees have a history. The most important thing is the recognition of the value of these old trees: It’s a part of the pioneer story.”
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