What a Packing House Was

What a citrus packing house was: A packing house was the building where citrus fruit was prepared for market — and during the citrus boom (see the Lost Citrus Empire lesson), these buildings were the heart of the citrus trade. The function: A packing house took in fresh-picked citrus from the groves and turned it into shipped fruit. The steps were: receiving (fruit arrived by wagon, later by truck), washing (the fruit was washed), sorting and grading (workers sorted the fruit by size, color, and quality, grading it), packing (the graded fruit was packed into wooden crates — later cardboard boxes — with colorful labels), and shipping (the packed crates were loaded onto railroad cars or trucks). The building: A packing house was a large wooden structure — often two stories, with open interiors to handle the flow of fruit. The ground floor was for receiving, washing, and sorting; the packing happened on the floor or a mezzanine; the packed crates were loaded out the other side to the railroad siding or the truck dock. The packing house was designed for the flow of fruit — in one side, out the other. Where they were: Packing houses were built along the railroad (which shipped the fruit north) and near the lagoon (the earlier steamboat route). Every citrus town had at least one; some had several. A packing house was usually the biggest building in a small citrus town. The scale: At the peak of the citrus boom, the lagoon region had dozens of packing houses, employing hundreds of workers (many of them women, who did much of the sorting and packing). The packing houses ran flat-out during the harvest season. The building, not the industry: This lesson is about the packing houses as buildings — their design, where they stood, what happened inside them, and what's left of them now. The industry story (the boom, the freezes, the brand) is in the Lost Citrus Empire lesson; here, we focus on the structures themselves — the abandoned citrus packing houses.