History :

When Thomas Orton, an emigrant from England, landed in Boston harbor in 1635, he had little idea that one of his descendants would be planting the first of many orange trees some seven generations and 245 years later, in Lindsay, California, 3,000 miles to the west.

Julius Orton, a seventh generation descendant of Thomas, was born in Ohio in 1825. The family moved to Missouri in 1838. Julius enlisted as a teamster in the U. S. Army when the war with Mexico began in 1846, then serve as a guard for a pack train crossing the plains for Placerville, a booming California gold mining town.

Finding no gold, Julius moved to Soquel, a lumber town near Santa Cruz, where he worked as a laborer and eventually developed his own herd of cattle. In 1859, accompanied by his wife and two small daughters, and driving a small herd of cattle, he walked more than 200 miles from the coast to a homestead along the Tule River southwest of Lindsay.