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~ By about 1910, the "fruit bubble" of the North Fork was close to • bursting. 7rie ultimate collapse of the fruit industry may be attributed t to several factors, but the killing blow was simply overproductiai as I part of the "band wagon" aspect of the boom. Additionally, the advent of the Pacific Northwest fruit industry resulted in national surpluses, and far more fruit was produced locally than wuld be handled by the railroad I without damage to the product. Pests increasingly became a problem, and the "big freeze" of 1912 destroyed most of the peach orchards. 77ti s was the first serious freeze to affect the industry since it started, and it I virtually devastated the valley. Many people lost all their property as a result of the collapse of the fruit market. Orchards acre plowed up and the land put into general fa,,,» r,q ground. By 1913, the North Fork I Valley was gripped in bitter depression. Although the fruit industry eventually managed to recover, the production of recent decades has only been one-third to one-quarter of what it was in the boon period from about 1906 to 1910 (Rockwell 1975:120 and 1938). Local informants today stress that Overproduction was responsible for killing the fruit industry. The physical evidence for intensive development of the fruit industry includes the break up of the larger land holdings in the North Fork Valley, increased population, and development of numPSOUS small orchards and yeoman-like family farmsteads throughout the Valley. 24~e urbanization and increased population density which seems to have characterized the fruit boon was augmented by the arrival of unemployed miners who cane in from the mining regions in the 1690'x. Coal Mining • Other than fruit and stock ranrhim, the only significant means of intensively exploiting the North Fork regioa has been through the munirx~ of opal. Coal m; n;~; is an intensive form of ecnnanic activity which has had, and still is having, significant impact on the North Fork Area. According to one local historian, the first settlers in the region were unaware of the vast ccal deposits in the Valley and used overgrown willows to make charcoal for their forges (Rockwell 1975:161). The regionally-prominent Sanerset and Baaie mines were not diswvered until the fall of 1883. Ranchers filed on the opal claims of the area but abandoned them, and it was not until Hoch later that indications for appreciable wnoern for coal are noticed in the local history. The arrival of the railroad in Sarerset in 1902 (Beebe 1962:374) made commercial mining on a large scale feasible by opening up distant markets. Rockwell does note sore active speculation in advance of the railroad regarding the Sarerset mane properties. The Crystal River Railroad had intended to run a spur into the North Fork fran the Crystal River in order to tap the vast potential in coal there. Major opal production seems, hcx.Aever, to have started with the Utah Fuel Company wtuch acquired tkie Sarerset property iu. 1901. Utah Fuel built a crnpany town at the mine in 1903, and the rune operated continuously for the next b.,enty years acid is said to have product~d nearly 1,000 tons of coal per day (Rockwell 1975:161-163). Other sigr~iiicanc cotmercial producers ui the Valley were the Gliver . and liowie mines. Scnetime prior to 1902 the Juanita Coal and Coke ~ Conpany opened a ntii~e a few miles below the Scnerset. After the arrival ~ of th~ railroaa, unu Alexzu:der Bowie gained contrui of this co~iy, acid 26