Business View Magazine | January 2020

276 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE JANUARY 2020 SANTA CLARA , CAL I FORNI A on the Pacific Coast, supplying quality lumber, mill work, sashes, doors and moldings, as well as coffins and caskets. That business closed in 1960. The South Bay became famous for its acre-upon- acre of flower and vegetable seed farms. J. M. Kimberlin and Co. was the first seed company to establish in Santa Clara in 1875, and it eventually became the largest seed grower on the Pacific Coast. The abundant fruit crops that Santa Clara orchards produced were either shipped fresh, dried, or canned. Levi A. Gould, a Santa Clara orchardist, shipped the state’s first carload of fresh fruit east in 1869, shortly after the transcontinental railroad was completed. Block Fruit Packing Company, established in 1878 on Gould’s orchard land, became renowned for the pears and cherries it packed and shipped to the East Coast. Pratt-Low Preserving Company, established in 1905, sent canned apricots, pears, peaches, cherries and plums to all parts of the United States, England and Asia. During harvest Agrihood Mixed Use Development Project Civic Center Complex