VACAVILLE HOMEBREW SHOP DRIVERS

Speaking of the road, the family also solved a problem there. They found this strategy paid off: Usually the person would then spend a few cents on fruit before heading back out onto the road. “Whenever a thirsty-looking person approached the stand, he was offered a well-filled cup even before he asked for it,” Power said.

VACAVILLE HOMEBREW SHOP DRIVERS

Thirsty drivers started stopping for water, so they also kept a bucket of ice cold water on hand. They began expanding their offerings, adding oft-requested items like ice cream and chewing gum. “To our surprise we sold all we had on the stand and when we counted our receipts at the end of the day found that we had taken in $15,” Edwin Power reminisced to the Los Angeles Times a few years later.

The entrance to the Nut Tree roadside attraction in Vacaville in a postcard from the 1960s. They held a family meeting to figure out what to do, and Helen proposed the idea of opening up a fruit stand for the Fourth of July weekend. Normally, the Power family shipped their peaches, pears, apricots, nectarines and figs back east for sale, but now they didn’t have enough viable fruit. A harsh spring frost in 1921 wiped out much of their fruit crop. Just a few years into their marriage, nature took a toll. They married and moved back to the Harbison farm, where Helen ran the family business. Helen Harbison grew up on that farm, and in the late 1910s attended UC Davis, where she met a man named Edwin “Bunny” Power at a tree-trimming class. A single black walnut tree sprung up near the side of what would become the Bay Area’s main thoroughfare, marking the property of the Harbison family. Dreyfuss + Blackford/CourtesyĪccording to legend, the first seeds of the Nut Tree were planted by migrating pioneers passing through Vacaville in the 1860s.

Tables inside the Nut Tree Restaurant in Vacaville in the 1960s.

Vacaville homebrew shop