2021 CAMELBACK EAST VILLAGE ANNUAL REPORT

On January 5, 2021, the Camelback East Village Planning Committee unanimously approved a request to place a Historic Preservation (HP) zoning overlay on the property located on the southeast corner of 44th Street and Devonshire Avenue, also known as the Frank and Emma Avery House. The property was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in June of 2020, and the City of Phoenix Historic Preservation Commission subsequently voted to initiate the HP rezoning on September 21, 2020.

Frank W. Avery was born to Earl W. and Melissa Avery in Lowell, Michigan in December of 1858. He later moved to Elk Point, Dakota (South Dakota) where he worked as a farmer. He met Emma Rosalie Benton in Elk Point and the couple married in 1887. Following their marriage, the couple moved to Wyoming where they applied for land patents south of the town of Beulah, not far from the South Dakota border, and established a ranching and farming enterprise.

The Averys visited Phoenix early in 1910 and decided to purchase Lot 4 of the Orange and Lemon Grove tract from their friend from South Dakota, Henry Leppla, who had recently relocated to Phoenix in 1909. The 10-acre piece of land had a small home and had already been planted in citrus. When the Averys permanently relocated to Phoenix in the fall of 1910 they were able to harvest a citrus crop for sale. While the orchard had originally been planted with trees, approximately 30 feet apart, Frank Avery felt the property could be more efficient if the trees were closer together, and he replaced the existing stock with Navels with Marsh Seedless Grapefruit between.

A fire destroyed the house and a large part of the Avery orchard in 1913 and the Averys subsequently built a modest, wood-framed, temporary home on the property. Between 1919 and 1920 the Averys constructed a new, “modern” Craftsman bungalow on the property at a cost of $15,000. The Avery house was built with 12” thick concrete walls, sheathed with brick and stucco. It had a full basement, with concrete walls rising 19” to support a raised first floor level. This is the home that is still present on the property today.

In the period between the fire and the construction of the bungalow, Frank Avery experimented with a new orange variety. Purportedly Avery developed his namesake variety, the “Early Avery,” from a tree or trees he found on his citrus ranch. The trees he budded were well suited to the desert climate, flavorful and had the distinction of early maturation. Avery’s oranges ripened in early fall, and during the 1920/1921 season his crop was one of the earliest picked, which caught the eye of local growers. The roughly two-week harvest advantage of the Early Avery allowed Arizona growers to beat California growers to the market. An article in the Arizona Republic from 1922 touted Avery’s property as an “example of the best type of citrus culture” in the Salt River Valley and stated that Avery’s attention to detail and scientific methods allowed him to profit more than $500/acre (Arizona Republic April 16, 1922:10).

As an independent grower, it is evident that Avery also recognized the economic importance of cooperatives for marketing and shipping citrus crops. He was one of the founders of the Arizona Fruit and Storage Company in 1919, which reorganized as the Arizona Citrus Growers Company the following year. The company owned a packing plant at 831 East Jackson Street near the rail line to ship locally grown fruit. Frank Avery was elected president of the Arizona Citrus Growers Company in 1922 and the following year the members voted to re-organize without stock and remove “Company” from the name, fully reflecting a shift to a cooperative. Avery oversaw the organization’s development of a new, larger, packing plant at 6th and Jackson streets in 1924 which packed and shipped 85% of the Salt River Valley citrus crop that year.