Jules A. Sandoz successfully developed fruit trees that thrived in the Sandhills. Unlike most orchards, Sandoz allowed branches to bend close to the ground which provided protection from wind and hot sun. Sandoz also discovered that the trees grew better if not planted so low that the roots drown in the undercurrent of water, and not so high that they would lack moisture.
A TRUE STORY OF SERVICE RENDERED NEBRASKA BY A PIONEER.
To be first in any achievement, is an honor. To be first to give the world something needful and beneficial, is almost divine.
Through ages past, men have been ridiculed, spurned, persecuted and punished because they advocated something new--something different. A thought unlike all other thoughts may be the beginning of making or breaking of a nation.
The divine spark of originality comes to but few, and those view are often not appreciated until after long years of neglect.
To be the one who makes it possible to raise the value of a region of land from a three or four dollar an acre value, to five hundred dollars an acre, seems almost like fiction. Nebraska has a total area of about 20,000 square miles of Sandhill region valued at from $3 or $4 an acre, and in the midst of this Sandhill region a fellow citizen has actually demonstrated that it can be made the value of $500 an acre. The total area of all Nebraska lands is 77,510 acres, so that the portion included in what is known as "Sand Hills" is a large percent of the whole.
Jules A. Sandoz of Sheridan County, Nebraska was the originator of successfully developing fruit trees to a splendid perfection in the Sandhills, where others had failed. He was told that it would be impossible to raise trees in these hills which were good-for-nothing, but grazing of stock, and besides, this was part of the "Great American Desert", long since given that name by early geographers.
Not only did Jules Sandoz have thrust upon him all the discouraging evidence that his efforts at raising fruit trees, or any other kind of trees in the Sand Hills, was time and money wasted, but he was constantly threatened with his life. The big cattle men did not want regular farmers in their country, and so they used crude methods to discourage settlement. Usually the rancher won, either by threat or action, but Sandoz had gone to the "Hills" when the Indian was still roving over the country, and he continued to stay by it, even after the ranch men claimed the big open country as cattle ground.
And so it was, that his own family never saw him without his gun, his trusty preserver, that was to protect him and his household until the time when he should prove to his neighbors and to the world that trees--fruit trees, could be successfully grown in the Sand Hills.
Jules Sandoz acquired his love for fruit trees through his ancestors who lived in the beautiful mountains of Switzerland. He never ceased to dream dreams of reproducing to some extent those hills of bearing fruit. When he selected his orchard sites, it was in the biggest and sandiest Hills of all the surrounding white covered uprising of windswept blow-outs.
Mr. Sandoz came to Nebraska in 1881 and took a homestead on the Niobrara, and there planted his first orchard. When the Kinkaid Act was passed in 1905, he filed on three-quarters in the shifting sand hills thirty-five miles north of Ellsworth, six miles from the Cherry County line. His ranch was extended to include 2,600 acres of land.
Sandoz was born in Switzerland in 1858 and died November 14th, 1928. He was educated at Berne University, in Switzerland, studying medicine and farming. His people were of importance and force in their community.
This man lived to realize his great ambition--that he could produce fruit of many varieties, second to none in the States of Nebraska, Washington, Idaho, Colorado or any other locality. He lived to know that he was recognized and addressed as the "Burbank of the Sand Hills". Furthermore, he enjoyed the personal intimate correspondence with Burbank, and exchanged nursery stock with him. Sandoz experiments were of great interest to Europeans, as well as Americans. He was Experiment Station Director of the Eighteenth Nebraska District, and a life member of the State Horticulture Society. He was also an honorary member of the National Forestry Association.
Sandoz never peddled his wares. He did not need to hunt his market--his buyers came to him, some as far as Missouri and Kansas. One day this summer there were seventy-five cars on the grounds, the people picking their own fruit and eating all they wanted. Incidentally, the orchards are in such sandy land cars cannot get in between the rows, so sod paths have been laid along the sides of the plat. The roads into the hills are pure sand and seem almost impassable to a novice in the country.
Here are a few facts in relation to the Sandoz orchards, the three different plats having more than fifty acres in all:
* The trees are never sprayed. * The trees are never trimmed but are allowed to grow low to the ground. * In one season there was sold more than $1000.00 worth of cherries, at ten cents a pound. His Wragg cherries are among the most choice in the orchard. This particular fruit cannot be grown in Eastern Nebraska on account of the blight, but that pest is not known in these Sand Hill orchards. * The "Omaha" plum brings first prizes at the Nebraska State Fair. This fruit is about the size and color of a peach. * The Sandoz orchard produced over one-thousand bushels of crab apples this summer. * Rows and rows of plum trees, sixty varieties of them, produced abundantly. Mr. Sandoz had tried out more than four-hundred kind of plums before satisfying himself with his result. * Great beds of strawberries; Sandoz worked for forty years to find red raspberries which would thrive in the hills, and at last succeeded. He began these experiments on his Niobrara fifteen-acre orchard. * There are quantities of green and blue grapes. * Twelve varieties of pear trees. There are in the orchard forty varieties of apples, many of the branches laden to the ground with the weight of the fruit.
In short, there are many varieties of many kinds of fruit, but one must not hold the impression that all this came about by magic. It meant hard work in constant study of conditions peculiar to the country. Many parts of the world contributed to the success of the orchards. Canada, Japan, France and other distant lands have been sought for hardy plants, not once, but many times.
Much of the credit is due to the co-operation of the family, in this success of the orchard. Mr. Sandoz had six children, and each was taught to handle a gun. At the age of seven years the child would be given instructions and presented with firearms suitable to his or her strength. This was not only done as a personal protection, but each member of the family helped slay rabbits, to keep them from the trees. The Sandoz home had in it as many as forty guns in good repair, at one time. Mrs. Sandoz has always been a good business companion to her husband and continues to manage the large ranch.
One cannot help wondering about the pests which must surround a table of such tempting delicacies. Perhaps the families of the worms and bugs usually attracted to these fruits have not yet found their way through the sand dunes, but the rabbits and the birds know the way, and are much in evidence.
The prairie chicken is one of the best feeders in the orchard. There has not yet been an invention whereby the birds and prairie chickens are prohibited, and there are the game laws which must be considered. The prairie chicken eats the buds from the branches during the winter, but in the summer the same chicken hunts the bugs on the trees, which helps some. The tent caterpillar is one of the persistent pests, and the family were taught how to roll newspaper torches and to burn the webs. Around the lakes nearby can be seen wild ducks, mud hens in great number, and occasionally gulls and blue herons. All of the birds love to be on friendly terms with the Sandoz orchard, and among these, none surpass the grouse.
One of the problems for Mr. Sandoz, was the climate of that locality. The altitude is 4,000 feet, and the wind blows almost constantly. One story is told as a joke, but which most of the residents translate as a fact, in about these words: "At Alliance the wind died down suddenly one day, and everybody tumbled over".
The Sandoz orchards are all planted on the north slope or on the level ground. The freezing and thawing frequently, is what causes the most damage, and for this reason, the trees are not planted in the valleys. Also, the hills are free from alkali or acid in the soil, except in the wet valleys, where the fruit would be in more danger of blight. The "Warming-up" in January often brings the small insects out to work, and then the heavy cold freeze follows, invariably destroying this pest life. This warm and cold season is always expected in Northwest Nebraska.
Unlike most of the orchards, these sand hill trees are not trimmed, and the branches are allowed to bend close to the ground, to better protect the tree from wind and hot sun. When the first five acres were planted to orchard, Mr. Sandoz lost many trees from winter kill, but these were continually transplanted by hardier stock, until the game of experimenting was learned. The trees were found to be better if not planted so low that the roots would be drowned by the undercurrent of water, and not so high that they would lack moisture.
The wind frequently would uncover roots of trees, leaving them exposed. Then the family was brought to work hauling straw and manure, piling it properly about the precious tree trunks.
The personality of this wizard of the sand hills is interesting. He cared not for outward appearances. He did care that all who visited his orchard should appreciate it, enjoy it, but not destroy it. If he found someone had taken fruit from trees he had set aside for some special reason, he would grieve over the loss. He knew every tree in the orchard, and his children also knew every tree. The conversation or directions about the orchard would be given as to "the tree the cow broke branches off", "the tree which had the branches broken off two years ago by the wind", or "the third tree from the end of the sixth row". Each member of the family knew what was meant by these directions; everybody in the family knew the orchard intimately, as the horseman knows his animal. The Sandoz hospitality is of the early western kind. Everybody is made welcome, he is allowed to pick his own fruit, and while in the orchard is invited to eat all he wants.
Mr. Sandoz suffered an injury to one of his feet, when he fell into a well, many years ago. He spoke a broken language, carried from his native country. He had the progressive and independent instinct in his make-up, as was shown by his way in building his home in the hills, unlike any about him. The frame house, sheds and barns were all connected, as in the custom in France, northern Germany and other cold country regions. He successfully grew much alfalfa, among the first in that part of the state to do this, and he raised about 8,000 bushels of corn each year.
The people who have lived many years in the Sand Hills are probably the most appreciative of this orchard. To those who have fruit in abundance every day, it is hard to realize what it means to be without these necessities—luxuries. One woman, in telling about the Sandoz orchard, has expressed herself in these words; "To one who has known month after month without fruit of any kind—a bearing orchard located in those same Sand Hills, seemed short of a miracle. We approached the orchard with a sort of awe".
That the man Sandoz, modest and retiring, has given to Nebraska the best years of his life, and the experiences of an active brain, whereby the Sand Hills—the desert lands of the State comprising 20,000 square miles of the 77,510 total square miles—may be transferred into a land of great wealth; that the land may be advanced from a valuation of $3.00 an acre to a value of $500.00 an acre, this man has, unconscious of himself, done infinite value to the state of Nebraska.
Should we forget entirely the money value, the proving to the Nebraskans and to the world the fact that superior fruits can and is being raised in the Great American Desert—is of far greater value.
The writer of the article has obtained facts from the following sources: Marie Sandoz, Lincoln, daughter of Jules Sandoz, Conservation and Soil, department of University of Nebraska. State Historical Society, various publications, and other sources.
