Preview
Creation Date
1905
Description
The town of Hilton, a part of the larger township of Parma, New York, shares Parma’s renown for having highly productive farmlands, being considered a part of the United States’ breadbasket. The area cultivated wheat and a wide variety of fruits, including crops such as peaches, cherries, and apples. This lantern slide depicts possibly a seasonal worker at a Hilton apple orchard spraying apple trees to protect the valuable crops. Fruit farming and the hiring of seasonal workers died out around 1934 when a cold season killed half the crops, and the changes brought by the Second World War shifted the agricultural focus from fruit to first cultivating poultry and dairy products, and then to growing corn, which remains the most significant crop cultivated in the region today.
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