Cuttin' 'Cots and Pickin' Prunes

Steve Jobs announced recently his intention to bring an apricot orchard back to Cupertino when Apple's new headquarters are built, but to learn why he finds the fruit so endearing take a walk back in history at the Cupertino Library.

Saturday a collaborative event unveiled The California Western Americana Collection at the . Together, through purchases and donations the library, Cupertino Historical Society and the Cupertino Library Foundation amassed a rich assortment of books, artifacts, photos and other material that illustrate Santa Clara Valley's history.

“This collaboration is unique. It's a hodge podge, really a wide breadth collection,” says Mark Fink Cupertino community librarian.

The Cupertino Library Foundation was the catalyst in getting the collection catalogued, housed and displayed, Fink says. It's a project that germinated two or three years ago, according to Eno Schmidt, president of the Foundation.

It took that long to get the material inventoried and catalogued, and with the help of a new identification system at the library and many volunteer hours, the collection now will be displayed in vignettes in a museum-quality display case on the second floor of the library.

"We are all very excited to see this come to fruition," Schmidt says, noting there was no pun intended to the reference of the valley's agricultural roots.

The collection includes materials not just of Cupertino, but the entire region and state. A wide variety of materials are included such as documents of the American trek west to California, large format photos of the region's apricot and prune orchards (which are on display on the first floor), inventory and accounting books of local farms, cans of "Leonard's prepared prunes," the 1935 edition of the Letters of Western Authors, the 1915 catalogue of the Panama-Pacific international exposition, and Yosemite illustrated in colors, published in 1890.

Some of the books are in locked cases in the reference section and can be requested at the reference desk.

Other items will be rotated and housed in the display case featured in themes, changed about twice per year. The library plans to hold educational and entertaining programs around the themes two or three times a year, also, Fink says.

Saturday was the first of such programs.

Darlene Thorne, a Cupertino resident and Historical Society board member, presented Postcard Vignettes of the Valley of the Heart Delight; a video view of a small sampling of her vintage postcards that took a tour of the valley's cities, and historical events.