New Hadley Fruit Orchards Store In Cabazon

Above, the old Hadley Fruit Orchards store building sitting idle for four years. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

For over 50 years, since we visited my grandmother in Twentynine Palms, we stopped at Hadley Fruit Orchards store in Cabazon, California (along Interstate 10) to have a date shake and buy some nuts and fruit items.

Above, the new Hadley's store in Cabazon. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

I was last there four years ago and the store was as I remembered it back in the 1960s.

Yesterday, after entering California to spend Christmas with my family, I stopped at Hadley's and found that they are no longer in the building they've always been in. They were in a new building next door.

Above, inside Hadley's new store. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

I liked the look of the old building. It had a rustic and kitschy look to it. Like a country store.

I went inside the new store to pick up a few things. The store was nice and modern and the products are the same as they always were, but there was just something missing. It doesn't have the character of the old store.

Above, the new store is nice, but it lost the character of the old store. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

I talked with the clerk at the date shake counter and she said they moved out of the old building four years ago as it was "falling apart." She agreed with me that it should be restored and preserved as a museum. She said that the general consensus of longtime visitors was that they preferred the old store.

It is interesting that the whole area along Interstate 10 is so built up from Indio on west to Beaumont. I remember when there was nothing along that route except for Hadley Fruit Orchards store and the Cabazon dinosaurs. One can barely see each along the road as there are buildings around each.

I guess that's progress for you.