How a family feud took down the Nut Tree

 

    If you ever visited the Nut Tree, two words will bring all the memories flooding back: marshmallow sauce.From 1921 to 1996, the fanciest place to grab a bite, a souvenir and a bathroom break on the drive between the Bay Area and the Sierra was the Nut Tree. And that soft, fluffy sauce, draped over fresh fruit, was the epitome of the high-end roadside stand, a concept that didn’t really exist until Nut Tree invented it. 

    According to legend, the first seeds of the Nut Tree were planted by migrating pioneers passing through Vacaville in the 1860s. A single black walnut tree sprung up near the side of what would become the Bay Area’s main thoroughfare, marking the property of the Harbison family Helen Harbison grew up on that farm, and in the late 1910s attended UC Davis, where she met a man named Edwin “Bunny” Power at a tree-trimming class. They married and moved back to the Harbison farm, where Helen ran the family business. 

Just a few years into their marriage, nature took a toll. A harsh spring frost in 1921 wiped out much of their fruit crop. Normally, the Power family shipped their peaches, pears, apricots, nectarines and figs back east for sale, but now they didn’t have enough viable fruit. They held a family meeting to figure out what to do, and Helen proposed the idea of opening up a fruit stand for the Fourth of July weekend. 

“To our surprise we sold all we had on the stand and when we counted our receipts at the end of the day found that we had taken in $15,” Edwin Power reminisced to the Los Angeles Times a few years later.

They began expanding their offerings, adding oft-requested items like ice cream and chewing gum. Thirsty drivers started stopping for water, so they also kept a bucket of ice cold water on hand. “Whenever a thirsty-looking person approached the stand, he was offered a well-filled cup even before he asked for it,” Power said. “We beat him to it.”

They found this strategy paid off: Usually the person would then spend a few cents on fruit before heading back out onto the road. 

Speaking of the road, the family also solved a problem there. They realized cars were zipping past at up to 35 mph (“By the time they see our fruit and make up their mind to purchase are too far past to stop,” Power lamented), so they added signs in both directions farther down the road, alerting drivers to the upcoming Nut Tree stand. A few years after its grand opening, the Los Angeles Times called it “one of the most unique and profitable fruit marketing stands in the country.”

After a summer of brisk sales, they added prepared food and the first of their specialty items. In 1924, you could have the Nut Tree ship their 3.5-pound gold nugget replica, filled with nuts, raisins and candied fruit, anywhere in the country.

The Power children, Edwin Jr., Mary Helen and Robert, also contributed to the family business. In the 1950s, Edwin Jr. added an airstrip to lure in aviators. During that era, the Nut Tree Restaurant boomed, serving millions of visitors their famed chicken curry, turkey tamales, chocolate fudge layer cakes, tiny individual loaves of bread and, of course, the marshmallow sauce.

The stunning dining room, designed by Dreyfuss + Blackford Architecture, featured a glass aviary in the center. Sometimes, a live cockatoo strutted about inside. Once done with their upscale meal, families could head outside to ride the kids’ train to the airport and back, flop around on the hobby horses or visit the gift shop.

At its height, the Nut Tree even catered lunch for a royal visit to California, setting off several culinary tizzies in the process. 

“Northern California Anglophiles evinced concern Wednesday that two types of shellfish will be served at the state Capitol luncheon March 4 for Queen Elizabeth II, who supposedly does not like to eat shellfish,” the Sacramento Bee reported in 1983. 

Luckily, the State Department reassured them that the queen only disliked uncooked shellfish, and the Nut Tree’s planned menu of California sole stuffed with Dungeness crab and Pacific Bay shrimp crepes were perfectly acceptable. More consternation came in the form of staffing, after several female Nut Tree employees complained that only 40 male wait staff were invited to serve the queen. The news went public, and the restaurant allowed women to join the lunch service, too. 

In the end, it all went off without a hitch, besides a snarky column from Herb Caen the next day questioning the Nut Tree’s choice to serve croissants with crepes.

But those were the halcyon days. In the early 1990s, trouble was brewing within the Power family. The business was by then split between the surviving Power children, Edwin Jr. and Mary Helen, and Robert’s widow, Margaret. 

In 1994, Margaret Power filed a lawsuit in the Solano County Superior Court alleging her business partners (and in-laws) had lost $5.5 million over the past seven years. In the suit, she demanded they sell the Nut Tree immediately and split the profits.

"There's this family animosity going on and it throws logic out the window," an anonymous source told the Sacramento Business Times. "The current cash flow for the owners is not a problem."

After nearly two years in litigation, the case was settled out of court. The terms of the settlement were never disclosed, but it doesn’t seem coincidental that two weeks after the deal, the Nut Tree was officially for sale. Buyers came out of the woodwork, prominent among them developer Bill Poland, credited by the Bee as the man who created “the South of Market renaissance in San Francisco.” Poland was reportedly ready to turn the Nut Tree into a theme park, complete with roller coasters. He’d even tentatively hired an executive from the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk to help with the new project.

Family drama aside, the bell was perhaps already tolling for the Nut Tree. Officials from the business told the media in 1996 they were a victim of their own success; they’d brought so many visitors to Vacaville that the city green-lit the massive outlet stores development across the highway, which was drawing foot traffic away. And, frankly, the Nut Tree’s mid-century glory was feeling pretty dated.

In June 1996, Poland’s deal fell through. Although the media reported at the time that Poland failed to secure the $16 million needed to buy the property, Poland says he terminated the contract after exorbitant demands from the city of Vacaville to pay for surrounding road improvements. For years, the Nut Tree was the very sunny and hot location of occasional renaissance fairs, and by 2003, most of the main buildings had been demolished.

Today, the Nut Tree exists in a new iteration: a strip mall. Opened in 2009 under the name Nut Tree Shopping Center, it’s a mishmash of national retailers and eateries. A few relics of the old days remain. The train, fully restored, still runs, although on a much smaller circuit. If you get a poke bowl at Okashi Fusion (which you should, it’s excellent), you can eat it in a food court under a large vintage “Nut Tree” sign. 

The food court is little more than a collection of picnic tables in the shade, but the view is a distinctly Bay Area one — golden fields framed by low rolling hills and the Vaca Mountains beyond. Sometimes, a small plane takes off or lands at the Nut Tree Airport. And for just a moment, it’s like the marshmallow sauce is still steps away, by the glass aviary and the gift shop selling tiny gemstones.