It’s graced countless Thanksgiving feasts and serves as the official Massachusetts state fruit, but the history of the humble cranberry began long before European colonization. In fact, in many Indigenous communities, the fruit was much more than a sweet treat, let alone the iconic, jellied sauce sold in aluminum cans.
“There was a food called pemmican that the Indigenous people used,” said Brian Wick, executive director of the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers Association. “And they would take cranberries mixed with some animal fat, and it would help to preserve the meat so it would last a lot longer … Beyond that, the cranberries were used as a dye, and also [for] medicinal purposes as well.”
In the early 1800s, Revolutionary War veteran Captain Henry Hall became the first person to successfully cultivate cranberries, having turned the wild-growing fruit on his Cape Cod property into a commercial crop. From there, Massachusetts became the epicenter of cranberry cultivation after the decline of iron-ore mining on the East coast.
According to Wick, cranberries happened to grow in “natural, wet swampy areas,” and there suddenly happened to be an excess of abandoned mining pits. With the publication of the 1856 guidebook “A Complete Manual for the Cultivation of the Cranberry,” more and more landowners began cultivating the fruit successfully.
“I think [the guidebook] really helped spur their thinking that they could really use these barren lands and turn them into thriving cranberry bogs,” Wick said.
Nowadays, there are more than 300 cranberry growers in Massachusetts, and Wick estimates that 65% of these growers belong to the industry-leading Ocean Spray Cooperative. This growth is due in part to the work of scientists at the University of Massachusetts’ Cranberry Station, founded in 1910.
Before breakthroughs in pest management and plant nutrition, Katherine Ghantous, research associate and extension educator at the Station, said an acre of bogland in 1910 could only yield 20 barrels — about 2,000 pounds — of berries. Today, with a more diverse range of hybrid cranberry varieties, the state average is 200 barrels per acre.
“It’s been over a century of trial and error that is still actually happening today” Ghantous said. “Our cranberry growers are huge innovators. They like to experiment on their own farms … Because there’s no two farms that are the same. They’re not the same water, it’s not the [same] soil. So there’s all these nuances.”
Many of these farms are tended by fifth- or sixth-generation farming families, whose products serve a multitude of purposes: juices, sweetened-dried trail mix add-ins, and treatments for conditions like urinary tract infections. Still, both Wick and Ghantous acknowledged the financial strain that rising fuel and labor costs place on the industry, which is causing some growers to offload their businesses to larger companies or government wetland reclamation programs.
“The price that the cranberry grower is receiving for their fruit is declining from what it had been,” Wick said. “And that does go up and down in cycles, so it’s a tough point right now.”
Nevertheless, with “loads and loads of really exciting research” from the UMass Cranberry Station, and a legacy of farmers they both call just as tough and resilient as their fruit, Wick and Ghantous predict production will remain steady long-term.
“I think the Massachusetts cranberry industry is here to stay,” Ghantous said. “I just don’t know if it’s going to look exactly the same in 10, 15 or 20 years, as it does right now.”
Guests
- Katherine Ghantous, research associate and extension educator at the University of Massachusetts Cranberry Station
- Brian Wick, executive director at the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers Association.
