California, 1853. Henderson Lewelling sets off to sell apples and ends up sparking a revolution.
In this fourth episode of our multi-part series, John and Patrick trace the astonishing rise of the Lewelling family in California’s fruit frontier. They follow Henderson’s ambitious leap from Oregon to Alameda, where he builds the legendary Fruit Vale estate, and his brother John’s transformation of a Spanish mission orchard into a commercial powerhouse of cherries, currants, and citrus.
But as fortunes bloom, tensions mount. Henderson becomes entangled in free love, clairvoyants, and a failed utopian voyage to Honduras aboard a doomed schooner called The Santiago. Meanwhile, Seth Lewelling and William Meek battle shifting markets, falling prices, and the rise of California's orchard empire.
Join John and Patrick as they explore an era of extraordinary agricultural innovation - and personal implosion. From Osage orange hedges to egg-fueled mutinies, this is the wild, weird, and deeply fruitful story of how the West was really grown.
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