Fruit was cut, laid on wooden trays and dried in the sun in yards beside the railroad. The Fleming brothers opened the first big works here in 1887, and the growers’ union took over 16 acres of yards in 1892. Sawyer’s 1922 county history says twenty-five thousand trays of fruit could be laid out at one time.
Drying gave way to dehydrators in the 1930s and 1940s; by 1948 the Campbell Cooperative Dryer had forty-eight tunnels. The yards stood where Water Tower Plaza and the streets around Orchard City Drive are today.