Looking back at Healdsburg’s prune blossom tour

As Healdsburg delves into spring, yellow mustard pops up from a carpet of greenery, buds break on grape vines and poppies and other flowers start to bloom, but spring in Healdsburg looked quite different in the mid-1900s.

In Alexander Valley and throughout Healdsburg, the white blossoms of prune trees would burst out and busloads of visitors from the Bay Area would visit Healdsburg for the Prune Blossom Tour, an event that happened each year from 1961 to 1995.

The event was organized by the Healdsburg Chamber of Commerce and the Russian River Farm Bureau and featured a welcome reception at the Villa Chanticleer, a 30-mile self-guided tour of the area’s blossoms and a hearty luncheon at the Alexander Valley Community Hall.

“Here in Alexander Valley, before there were grapes there were prunes. The Prune Blossom Tour was held by the farm bureau, that was one of their big fundraisers,” said Susan Sheehy, whose family came to Healdsburg in the 1850s and grew prunes, and later on, grapes.

The Healdsburg prune dates back to 1846 when Cyrus Alexander first planted prune trees in the valley that now bears his name. From then on, several more trees were planted and Healdsburg eventually became known as the “buckle of the prune belt for Sonoma County,” according to an article in the March 20, 1975 edition of The Healdsburg Tribune.

According to the same article, the idea for the tour was brought up by Larry Carson, who at the time was the publicity chairman for the Healdsburg Chamber of Commerce.

The first Prune Blossom Tour was held in March of 1961. News of the tour was announced in the March 2, 1961 edition of the Tribune.

“A Prune Blossom Tour, to acquaint Bay Area and Peninsula residents, as well as others, with the beauty of Healdsburg’s Prune Blossom Season, has been set for March 18 and 19. The Prune Blossom Tour, sponsored by the Healdsburg Chamber of Commerce, will cover an area of approximately 25 miles,” the article states.

The tour started at the chamber of commerce office at 217 Healdsburg Ave. and went around Fitch Mountain, through Alexander Valley, Geyserville, Dry Creek and Asti. The 1975 Tribune article states that only around 300 people came to view the blossoms, but after a few years, the popularity of the event grew.

In 1963, the Russian River Farm Bureau started serving a full luncheon at the Alexander Valley hall as a way to cap the event and raise funds. The lunch was prepared by volunteers and members of the Ladies Aid group and included ham, potato salad, a green salad, jell-O and desert, which often consisted of prune cake or prune cookies made by 4-H members.

“It was a tremendous amount of work. We fed up to 2,000 people on some of our weekends. They came in busload after busload after busoad and there were even a group of pilots that flew into the airport. It was a big affair,” said Alyce Cadd, one of the volunteers who helped prepare the luncheon. “Two, three dozen eggs and 10 pounds of potatoes always faced me. I was on the salad group. Everybody had their particular role to play — getting the salad dressing put together, ordering the different items needed and of course cleaning and set up.”

Cadd, whose family dried prunes, said it was a lot of work.

“It was a lot of fun, we giggled and laughed in the kitchen in the back,” she said. “They (the lunch guests) were very friendly and they always had questions to ask. I’m a people person — I like people — so it was a special day for me.”

The first luncheon in 1963 served 274 people, according to Tribune archives, and by the next year, 1,500 visitors from 19 states and seven foreign countries were making the tour.

“They brought in buses from all over like from San Francisco and areas like that, they came to the Prune Blossom Tour. It was a huge fundraiser, it took the whole community to put this on,” Sheehy said. “My family’s involvement was my mom, Gertrude Young, was the one who always decorated the hall. She sort of single handedly would transform it every year with something different, prune blossoms hanging from the ceiling, umbrellas with prune blossoms coming out, things on the walls ect. She was very creative that way and every year was something different.”

In 1966, the Prune Blossom Tour was rated as one of the top 10 travel events in the nation by the National Association of Travel Organizations, according to a Sonoma County Farm Bureau article by Katherine Rinehart and Meredith Driesback. 

In fact, prunes were so popular that in the fall of 1966, the City of Healdsburg paid tribute to the prune industry by holding a prune pie baking and eating contest. For her winning pie, Rose Cattalini won an electric broiler and rotisserie. The Sept. 15, 1966 Tribune article on the contest reported that Fitch Mountain Road resident Derl Henderson was the winner of the prune pie eating contest and for his efforts, he won a transistor radio.

At the peak of the tour’s popularity, in 1971, the tour attracted 4,000 visitors, according to the farm bureau article.

Cadd said of the spring-time blossoms, “It really was beautiful. The entire valley would be white.”

The shift from prunes to grape started in the 1970s and in 1973 the Prune Blossom Tour was renamed the spring blossom tour.

Sheehy said Cadd told of a story of when Sheehy’s mother put her hand in her pocket and pulled out a wad of money, saying it was part of her grape money. “People were just beginning to plant grapes,” Sheehy said.

The Young family of course went on to establish the Robert Young Estate Winery. In 1963, the Young winery was the first to plant cabernet sauvignon grapes in Alexander Valley. The winery was established in 1997 by Robert Young’s son Fred and his siblings JoAnn, Susan and Jim.  

“I would always tell people when they’d come for barrel tasting I would tell people ‘you know people came to this valley in the 1800s. They came for the geysers, that was the big draw, and then they came for the prune blossoms and now people are coming for wine tasting. It has always been a beautiful valley, always welcoming to visitors so we just transitioned from prunes to grapes,” Sheehy said.

She said her family ranch has one prune tree left. “We transitioned. We were three generations of prunes. Our family has been here since the mid-1850s and we had prunes. When I was growing up, there were still prunes out here. My dad planted the first grapes on our ranch in 63’, just when I was still in high school. Now you can hardly see a prune tree out here. As we always say, there was more money in grapes than prunes.”  

In 1986, the Alexander Valley Farm Bureau took over hosting the spring blossom tour and the final blossom tour was held in 1995.