Five years after devastating floods washed through the small town of Gays Mills, the community continues to celebrate its unique economy and culture. This year marked the 55th Gays Mills Apple Festival.
Apples have been an important crop in Wisconsin for far longer than 55 years. The fruit came to North America with European explorers and colonists who couldn’t bear to leave home without their favorite varieties. Everyone had an orchard and used apples for eating, drinking, and preserving. These settlers also planted millions of seeds as they moved west.
Apples came to Wisconsin as early as 1800. Just as in colonial times, nearly every farm had its own orchard growing many different types of apples, including some found only in that orchard.
Only the hardiest apples could survive the harsh Wisconsin climate so commercial orchards developed much slower than home orchards for local use. Discouraged fruit growers organized locally in the 1850s to figure out how to successfully grow apples for market in Wisconsin.
Attention to fruit turned elsewhere during the Civil War but in 1865, the Wisconsin State Horticultural Society, the forerunner to the Wisconsin Apple Growers Association, formed. The Society planted three trial orchards around the state to test apple varieties. Grower confidence in Wisconsin apples grew and by the 1870s, consumer demand for the fruit created a flourishing commercial apple industry. New varieties – many from Russia – and new growing techniques helped Wisconsin apples thrive in the 1890s. Specific growing regions formed in Milwaukee, Door County, Bayfield, and Gays Mills based on the specific geographic and weather conditions in these areas.
Apples from Gays Mills won first prize at the Wisconsin State Fair in 1905. These prize-winning apples were then loaned to the Wisconsin State Horticultural Society to exhibit at a national apple show in New York. The apples again took the blue ribbon. These wins encouraged the planting of more apples and put Gays Mills on the national apple map.
