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Rhubarb originally came from
Eastern Europe, where its name came from a word meaning
“barbarians of the Volga River.” It was consumed by
Germanic people in Europe while in China, it was used for
medicinal purposes as early as 2700 B.C.
History in Sumner
In 1893, Adam Knoblauch shipped
the first field rhubarb to Seattle in gunny sacks. Ben
Benthien of Fife had the first wine and strawberry roots
that he shipped in from Germany.
Henry Knoblauch, Adam's son, was the first
grower of commercial hot-house rhubarb in the Sumner area.
He was going down the road one day and saw smoke coming from
a root shack of an old German farmer named Bill Dodson. Henry
wondered if Dodson was smoking salmon or what and found out
that he was forcing rhubarb. So, Henry went home and built
a 12’ x 24’ hot house on
his farm on Wahl Road. In 1914,
he put roots in, cut them up and sold it commercially.
Albert Knoblauch, Henry's brother, delivered this first
hot-house rhubarb to Tacoma and Seattle in a Model T Ford.
From there, an industry boomed.
Other early rhubarb growers
included Charles Orton, Jacob Stelling, Warren and Charles
Ryan, Fred Mattson, J.A. Forehand and Bill McClane. In 1919, Leslie Brothers started
their rhubarb farm in the Valley. One of the brothers,
John, retired the farm to his son Allen and daughter-in law
Winona. Allen’s son Ron eventually took over the business,
and today, he continues the farm with his son Nik. They are
now known as Leslie & Son.
For many years, there were two
growers associations involved with rhubarb. Puget Sound
Vegetable Growers organized as a cooperative in 1924 with
rhubarb as one of their major products. The other group
started in 1926 and then reorganized in 1930 as Sumner
Rhubarb Growers Association, a corporation with Fred Mattson
as the manager and Bill McClane as secretary. In 1937,
Henry Knoblauch went on a sales trip that took him all over
the country, including the Kansas State Fair, where he
passed out pamphlets encouraging Sumner rhubarb.
Many of the farmers in 1900s
were of Japanese descent. During World War II, several were
sent to internment camps. Their neighbors rented out their
farms and kept them going in their absence. At the end of
the war, some Japanese families chose not to return, but
many did come back to take up their farms again. After the
war, though, farmers of Japanese heritage took their rhubarb to
the Puget Sound Vegetable Growers.
In 1954, Henry’s son Clayton and
his wife Hazel returned to the family’s farm to build two
new large rhubarb hothouses. Hot houses were traditionally 20-24’ wide
with wood-burning pot-bellied stoves to provide heat. The Knoblauchs were the first to build them 60’ wide by
100’/110’ with furnaces instead of stoves.
It was during this time that the
Sumner Rhubarb Growers increased their national visibility.
Amiel Goettsch took over as manager of the association
in 1948, but he
refused to travel. The farmers knew they had to get a man
on the road to be successful. George Richter lived in
Puyallup and was big into field rhubarb. He used to travel
independently to promote his crops. Hazel and Clayton
plus
George and his wife went all over Washington and into Idaho, trying to
recruit for the job. They talked to men working in the
produce departments of Safeway, but no one wanted to leave
their stable job. Finally, Clayton told George that he
should do it, so George turned his farm over to his son Ed and
worked promotion for Sumner Rhubarb in 1956 and 1957. By
the late 1960s/early 1970s, Sumner Rhubarb Growers had the
distinction of hosting the American Rhubarb Growers in
Puyallup.
In 1957, the two associations
took their first step toward working together when they
combined their promotion and marketing into the Washington
Rhubarb Growers. However, they would still maintain
separate financials and organizations for many more years.
Clayton was president of the
Sumner Growers from ’63 to his death in ’65, and actually in
1965, he was both president of Puget Sound Vegetable Growers
and Sumner Sales Director. Hazel had 14 hot-houses to run by then.
In 1966, she went to work for the Sumner
Rhubarb Growers, and stayed there for nine years until her
retirement in July of 1975.
Finally, in late 1974, the two
associations merged completely into the Washington Rhubarb
Growers Association that we have today. At that time, less
than 60 remained of the Puget Sound growers, and they were
mostly growing rhubarb. Min Terada had served as their
manager since 1958. The association’s directors were Tom
Shigeo (president), Mike Oto, Frank Komoto, Joe Nishimoto,
Min Uchida, George Yamamoto, Joe Clerget and George
Kawasaki. Their secretary, Mrs. Gloria Hubner, continued
working after the merger. Of the Sumner Rhubarb Growers,
there were 37 active members and 50 capital stockholders at
the time of the merger. Hazel set up the books for the
combined merger before her retirement, and Dick Craig came
and trained for the manger's position, taking over George's
place at the end of 1975.
Today, the association has only
a handful of farmers left, and the rhubarb now travels by
trucks rather than train. However, families such as the
Leslies are still growing and farming, and the majority of
rhubarb in the country is still grown around Sumner in the
Puyallup Valley.
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IN SUMNER
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RHUBARB
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