Canned History: A Tale of Two Labels
April 16, 2009
During the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, the lower Columbia River was deemed the “Salmon Canning Capitol of the World.” This title has long since passed to more northern waters, but for nearly a century, beginning in the 1860s, packing the over-sized salmonoid in hermetically-sealed receptacles was big business. Although Astoria was the undisputed hub of canning activity, numerous packing houses dotted both sides of the lower river. In 1895, production peaked with 635,000 cases-each case holding 48 one-pound cans. Declining salmon runs and refinements in alternative preservation methods caused the number of canneries to dwindle until the last major salmon cannery closed in the 1970s.
Throughout this century of salmon packing, a paper label was pasted on each can identifying its producer and contents. These labels represented the canners’ best opportunity to distinguish their product from their competitors’ in the eyes of the consumer. During the early decades of the fishery-from the 1870s to the 1910s-competition was especially fierce. This resulted in a period of colorful and highly stylized labels that represented a unique interface between art and commerce.
Lithographers from across the nation produced these labels for the canners, often rendering illustrations that were as fanciful as they were beautiful. Many early labels featured a whimsical rendering of a Chinook salmon that looked more like a scale-covered shad. Fishermen, Indians, eagles, and sailing ships also became popular adornments for cans. According to the late Jack Edwards, the undisputed authority on the matter, most early tin cans sported a red label to disguise the discoloration caused by rust. As canning technology and lithography evolved, the illustrations became more refined and the colors more diverse.
Sadly, these labels are among the handful of physical reminders of the Columbia River’s salmon bonanza. Only a very few old-time canneries remain-most either went up in flames or down through the ravages of neglect. The labels’ peculiar quality as both a historic relic and eye-pleasing work of art have made them highly sought after collectibles.
The two labels you see here are from the Pillar Rock Packing Company. Located along the rugged Washington shoreline, the firm borrowed its name from the bastion of basalt rising some 25-feet above the river’s surface about 1000-feet off the cannery. The site, 22-miles upstream from the river’s mouth, had been used by the venerable Hudson Bay Company as a salmon saltery-one of its many far-flung export enterprises-and before that as a Native American encampment. In 1877, a salmon cannery took shape there.
The older of the two is the “Boss Brand” label, dating from the 1890s. The bewhiskered gent sporting the bowler is John T.M. Harrington, founder of the Pillar Rock Packing Company. Called “Red” by his friends, Harrington was a hulking Irishman who began fishing the rich waters of the lower Columbia River in the 1860s. He watched as canneries multiplied and canners made fortunes. In 1877, with the backing of his brokers in Portland, Sylvester Farrell and Richard Everding, Harrington built a cannery on the site of the old saltery. The venture paid handsomely.
John Harrington became so identified as the “Boss” of Pillar Rock that his image became a brand. In 1907, the “Laird of Pillar Rock” purchased a country estate in Northumberland County, England, where in 1910 he took up residence and lived out his final years.
The other label, which far outlived its originator, featured the iconic rock that stood off the cannery’s wharf. It dates from the first decade of the 1900s. On the label you will notice the can’s net weight, a requirement after the passage of the federal Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. Both the “Boss Brand” and “Pillar Rock Brand” labels are representative of the labels produced around 1900, though far from the most colorful examples from that period.
The Pillar Rock brand doesn’t end here, however.
In 1930, the New England Fish Company (NEFCO) purchased the cannery at Pillar Rock. Despite diminishing runs, the new firm continued to pack salmon at the plant until the 1940s. The cannery languished and was eventually sold, but NEFCO kept the Pillar Rock brand. The firm folded in 1980, but the brand lived on. Ocean Beauty-an international seafood company based in Seattle-still cans wild Alaskan salmon under the Pillar Rock brand and markets it in the Midwest and southern reaches of the United States. The label still features sailboats circling the basaltic column in the rich waters of the Columbia River.
For additional information on Pillar Rock and historic salmon canning labels, see Carlton E. Appelo’s Pillar Rock: Wahkiakum County, Washington (1969) and Jack Edwards’ How Old is that Label? A Celebration of Pacific Northwest Salmon Labels & Dating Guide (1994, 2006).
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