by Wesley Harris
How Lincoln Parish became Peach Country and why almost all its orchards have disappeared
Before Ruston peaches became a festival emblem, a roadside sign, or a summer ritual, they were family work. They were mule-drawn barrels of pesticide, long days of pruning, children pressed into orchard duty, and fathers teaching sons how to read a tree.
One of the earliest remembered peach families in Lincoln Parish was the Roane clan. In 1972, U.S. Roane, then 75, recalled his father, the late Henry S. Roane Sr., as “one of the first peach growers here.”
“He always had peaches,” Roane said of his father—a simple recollection of the position peaches held in everyday farm life in Lincoln Parish. The Roane farm lay along Rough Edge Road, near what became U.S. 80 and on toward Choudrant.
The Roanes grew more than peaches. Their farm produced apples, pears, and other crops. But peaches became the family marker. Henry Roane grew early and late varieties, canned peaches at home, and sold to people who drove in from St. Louis and Kansas City. In one remembered transaction, Roane said his father sold a man a truckload of peaches for $300—only to have the check bounce.
On the Roane farm, a mule pulled an insect spray barrel through the orchard. Grass was not allowed under the trees. Diseased trees were cut out and burned. When the family tried “Indian peaches,” they abandoned the fruit as too large for canning. They grew what worked.
That model became the pattern for Lincoln Parish’s peach industry.
By the middle of the 20th century, peach growing had spread across the parish. Some growers operated on a small scale, selling directly to consumers. Others expanded into large commercial orchards, shipping fruit out of state and experimenting with varieties. In 1947, area growers organized the Louisiana Fruit Growers Association, and the first Louisiana Peach Festival followed in 1951, giving Ruston’s crop a public identity that outlasted most of the orchards themselves.
Elmer Hollis represented the smaller grower. In the spring of 1950, he planted his first peach tree on Cooktown Road, and by 1972 he had 10 acres of trees. His varieties included Spring Gold, Early Red, Cardinal Red and Dixie Red—early-season fruit that ripened from mid-May into early June. Hollis described the peach year as a 12-month job: pruning, burning brush, spraying, and tending trees long before harvest.
Mack Caraway Jr. used location and direct sales to make a small acreage pay. His roadside stand enticed motorists on U. S. 167 south of Ruston. A major thoroughfare, Caraway called it “one of the best methods of advertising possible,” especially after “Ruston Peaches” gained their reputation. Caraway farmed five acres, mostly Red Globe, with some experimental trees. He had planted his first peach tree in 1958 and, by the early 1970s, sold all his peaches to individuals at roadside.
Caraway’s experiences showed the fragility of the business. He fertilized but did not irrigate. Birds ate fruit. A peach picked too early shriveled. Rain, or the lack of it, could determine the year’s profit. Location was everything in roadside sales.
A. B. Larance Jr. of Hilly grew up in the peach business and described it in plain terms: “rocky ground with clay close under it, lots of fertilizer, hard work and lots of nights without sleep worrying if your peaches are going to make.” His father, A. B. Larance, and C. F. Alexander, both of Hilly, had started growing peaches in the early 1930s, giving Larance his start in the business.
By the seventies, Larance had 100 acres in peaches, a mix of new and old trees. He grew Island, Dixie Red, Coronet, Red Globe, Red Cap, Red Haven, Red Skin, Fire Ball, Southland and Early Red. His picking season stretched from the first two weeks of May until the first or middle of August, depending on the previous winter. Like the other growers, Larance said there was no quitting in the peach business.
Mitcham’s orchard was one of the parish’s major commercial operations and, in time, became the surviving name most closely associated with Ruston peaches. Arnold Mitcham planted a home orchard in 1929 in Claiborne Parish near Summerfield. His son J. E. Mitcham planted his first commercial orchard in Claiborne Parish in 1943, then his first commercial orchard off the Cooktown Road in 1947.
By the early seventies, Mitcham had 290 acres of peach trees, with 155 acres of producing age. He added another 135 acres in the Greenwood Community. His orchards contained 40 varieties to ensure a steady stream of ripe fruit throughout the summer.
Mitcham’s operation showed the industry’s direction: ponds for irrigation, attention to insects and disease, and mechanization. His overhead sprinklers for watering were eventually replaced by drip irrigation as he constantly sought new mechanical equipment, predicting technology and mechanization were the future of the peach industry.
Dennis Owen, whose farm lay near Hico and Dubach, represented another large-scale grower. Owen had 325 acres of peach trees of 18 varieties by 1972, with about 250 acres in production. Owen entered the peach business with his father, J.C. Owen, in 1946 and took over the farm in 1960.
Owen’s peaches went to jobbers in Shreveport and to anyone else who wanted them. He described a strong local market for the good crops produced each year from 1946 to 1972 except in 1965, when a freeze killed his peaches. His comments reflected the optimism of the time: demand was strong, and growers expected the industry to expand.
Mickey Sumrall carried on another family line. His father, W. H. Sumrall, had been in the peach business in Arkansas before moving to Lincoln Parish in 1940 and planting the family’s first local orchard. By 1972, Mickey Sumrall had about 300 acres south of Grambling, all producing.
Sumrall grew 14 varieties, from early peaches such as Moore’s Early Red and Spring Gold to the later Red Globe, Keystone and Jersey Queen. In addition to selling to locals, he shipped them to New Orleans, Houston, Fort Worth, Dallas and local buyers. Like Mitcham, Sumrall expected the industry to grow and become more mechanized.
By the seventies, the peach market had captured Lincoln Parish with a recognizable peach belt from Hico and Dubach to Cooktown and on to south of Ruston and Grambling. In those days, local peaches were not nostalgia. They were a vital industry.
For decades, it was not unusual to see an old pickup at roadside in Mississippi or Alabama with a hand-painted sign announcing “Ruston Peaches.”
Today, those named orchards have vanished, with one exception: Mitcham Farms. Joe Mitcham still maintains one of Louisiana’s largest peach orchards but the acreage has been reduced drastically. It remains a Ruston institution, but Mitcham reports he is down to a mere eight acres of trees, having lost 280 trees last year to an uncontrollable root rot disease. Mitcham remembers when his family’s operation constituted a large percentage of the more than 1,000 acres in Lincoln Parish at the industry’s height.
Several factors play into the reduction in the local crop. Peaches demand year-round labor. Small orchards like Hollis’s and Caraway’s depended on direct local sales, family labor, and roadside traffic. Large orchards like Owen’s, Larance’s, Sumrall’s and Mitcham’s had to manage labor, equipment, transportation, packing, wholesale markets, and weather risk. As older growers retired, the next generation faced a harder calculation: high costs, high risk, short harvest windows, and no guarantee that a good crop would pay for the year. There are easier ways to make a living.
Weather adds another risk: dry weather can be helpful during ripening, but winter weather could be ruinous. Freezes in 1954, 1955, and 1965 killed nearly all the peaches in the state, followed more recent years when late frosts destroyed crops, including this year’s crop which was totally destroyed by a late freeze in March. But, on the other hand, insufficient chill hours during the winter can result in low yields.
Disease has become another defining threat. The modern Ruston peach decline is closely tied to Armillaria root rot, also known as oak root rot or mushroom root disease, which attacks the roots and can kill trees with few effective controls. With government bans of some pesticides, growers lost access to their best fumigation tools. LSU AgCenter guidance still describes peaches as high-maintenance fruit trees requiring well-drained sites and frequent spraying to control insects and diseases.
The industry did not disappear overnight. It thinned, like a tree being cut back limb by limb: a freeze here, a fungus there, a retired grower, a lost market, an acreage reduction, and new generations choosing not to spend 12 months working for a six-week harvest.
The Peach Festival survives because it has become culture, with strong backing from the Visitor’s Bureau, Chamber of Commerce, and local government. The orchards did not survive on the same scale because they were agriculture, and agriculture has to pay its way every season.
But the old peach dynasty—Roane, Hollis, Larance, Caraway, Owen, Sumrall, and the sprawling Mitcham acreage of the seventies and eighties—belongs mostly to history now. Lincoln Parish did not lose its peach story. It lost the broad agricultural base that once made the story true from one end of the parish to the other.
That is why U. S. Roane’s plain recollection of his father carries so much weight. “He always had peaches,” he said. For a time, so did Lincoln Parish.Top of Form
