University of California Riverside Obtains Archives Relating to Eliza Tibbets

Eliza Tibbets

The University of California at Riverside has received more than 5,000 documents and photographs relating to Eliza Tibbets, the woman who introduced navel orange trees to Southern California. The archives were assembled by San Diego author Patricia Ortlieb, the author of Creating an Orange Utopia: Eliza Lovell Tibbets and the Birth of California’s Citrus Industry (Swedenborg Foundation, 2011).

Tibbets, a member of the Swedenborgian Church, moved to Riverside, California, in 1870. She had been an abolitionist and was a strong believer in women’s rights. She obtained navel orange trees, that were native to Brazil, from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and planted them in Riverside. The trees easily adapted to the Southern California climate and within a decade there were more than a half million citrus trees in California.