Dan G. Overall

Compiled from "The Early Days" by Nora Montgomery. Presented on March 21, 2015 at the Lemon Cove Women's Club Annual Open House, and enacted by students from Sequoia Union School, Lemon Cove, California.

Dan G. Overall here. I’m originally from the Visalia area. A group of us men from Visalia founded the Kaweah Lemon Company (of which I was Superintendent) and started off with a planting of 160 acres to lemons. There was another group of investors from Ohio who planted about the same time. We packed in the old adobe barn down the road. In 1905, we built a new packing house on the railroad – just a little southwest of where we are standing now. My wife and I lived in the company home for several years. In 1906, along with JWC Pogue, JE Pogue, TA Pogue and six other local growers, we formed a new association, the Lemon Cove Association (of which I was President) and we rented packing space in the new Kaweah Lemon Company packing house. In 1910 we bought the packing house from Kaweah Lemon Company and made it strictly an orange packing house. And while all that was happening, I came to own the first automobile in Lemon Cove – a Pope Overland!

And even better than that, my son Orval was a pitcher for the Chicago Cubs. Made quite a name for himself. And after he retired from baseball, he even bought 100 acres of lemons from that Ohio Lemon bunch!