09/04/2026
On November 28, 1869, a steamer called the Orizaba docked at San Diego carrying 110 beehives and the man who would rewrite the county's economy.
John S. Harbison was already famous in beekeeping circles. Back in Pennsylvania and then in Sacramento, he had developed the section honey box — the small wooden frame that lets comb honey be sold as a clean retail package — and patented it as part of his California Hive during the winter of 1857-58. Eastern grocers loved it. What he needed was flowers.
He found them in San Diego County's chaparral. Wild buckwheat, black sage and white sage bloom across these hills in quantities that stagger a beekeeper, and Harbison scaled up fast: 2,000 colonies across five apiaries by 1874, eventually 3,750 hives in twelve locations. In 1873 he shipped 21,000 pounds of comb honey to Chicago — the first transcontinental rail shipment of honey in American history. By 1876 he was sending more than 25 carloads east a year.
In 1874 he homesteaded a small valley on the Sweetwater River about 23 miles from town. People call it Harbison Canyon.
By 1878 the county was producing over two million pounds of honey a year.
