Finding Work in California: Women in Packinghouses 1895-1909

This temporary exhibit, which was once in the California Citrus State Historic Park visitor center, features archival letters that help piece together the story of women’s work in the earliest citrus packinghouses in Redlands. While the very first packinghouse workers were Chinese, Japanese, and Korean men, at the turn of the century more packinghouses began to hire women from the United States’ east coast and midwest. Soon packingwork would be considered “women’s work” and packers were often paid substandard wages for difficult work. After exploring the exhibit you can read more about women’s packinghouse work in the essay “A Woman’s World: A History of Female Labor in Citrus Packinghouses”