Domestic peaches go back at least 7,500 years in China, and National Eat a Peach Day on Sunday, August 22, 2027, celebrates the fruit. Georgia made it famous in America.
Peach Season’s Holiday
August 22, every year. Nobody knows who first put it on the calendar.
From the Yangtze to Georgia
Ancient China
Peach stones from the Lower Yangtze River Valley, near Shanghai, show the fruit splitting from its wild ancestors as early as 7,500 years ago. The work appeared in the journal PLOS ONE.
Yunfei Zheng of the Zhejiang Institute of Archaeology led the study, with Gary Crawford of the University of Toronto Mississauga. They compared stones from six sites spanning about 5,000 years.
The peaches got steadily bigger. The closest match to modern fruit comes from the Liangzhu culture, about 4,300 to 5,300 years ago.
Roughly 3,000 years passed before domestic peaches resembled today’s, the researchers think.
Arrival in Georgia
Franciscan monks brought peaches to St. Simons and Cumberland islands in 1571, the New Georgia Encyclopedia reports. By the mid-1700s, the Cherokee were growing peaches and plums.
Shipping was the hard part, because the fruit bruises easily. Raphael Moses of Columbus, among the first to market peaches within Georgia in 1851, packed his in champagne baskets instead of powdered charcoal.
New York markets got their first Georgia peaches between 1858 and 1860. Near Marshallville, seeds from a Chinese Cling tree were planted in 1870.
By 1875, grower Samuel Rumph had the result, the Elberta. It was a yellow-fleshed peach with a crimson blush, named for his wife, Clara Elberta Moore.
A trial shipment of Elbertas to New York that year sold for fifteen dollars a bushel. Rumph also designed a railcar with ice bunkers at each end. He never patented it.
Its fame spread. The Elberta became the most widely planted peach variety ever introduced, the University of Georgia says. In 1886, Eugene Hiley of Marshallville added the Hiley Belle.
Georgia’s harvest peaked at almost 8 million bushels by 1928.
A Fruit With a State Behind It
Georgia earned its “Peach State” nickname in the three decades after the Civil War. It became official in 1995.
Fort Valley, seat of Peach County, calls itself the “Peach Capital of the World.” It hosts the annual Georgia Peach Festival, complete with a huge cobbler.
California grows the most, though. It produced 75% of U.S. peaches in 2024, with South Carolina second and Georgia third, USDA economists found.
Two main types fill the market. Clingstones go almost entirely to canning and freezing, while about three-fourths of California’s freestones are sold fresh. Freestones have outweighed clingstones there for several years running.
Peach Ideas for August 22
- Seek out an Elberta: Rumph’s Marshallville peach is a bite of Georgia history.
- Plan a Fort Valley trip: the Georgia Peach Festival there serves a giant cobbler.
- Compare the two types: eat a freestone fresh and a clingstone from a can.
- Visit St. Simons Island: it’s one of the spots where Georgia’s peach story began.
- Pack them like Moses: cushion ripe peaches in a lined basket so they don’t bruise.
- Read the PLOS ONE study: it shows how ancient farmers slowly enlarged the fruit.
Frequently Asked Questions
When was Peach County created?
The Georgia Legislature formed it on July 18, 1924.
How many peaches does Georgia grow now?
About 2.6 million bushels a year, well below its peak.
When did peaches first reach the Americas?
Spanish explorers are credited with bringing them in the early 1500s. The fruit had already traveled from China to Europe.
Where is the Georgia Experiment Station?
In Griffin. Opened in 1888, it was among the first state agricultural experiment stations in the country.