Gilbert Onderdonk: The Nurseryman of Mission Valley, Pioneer Horticulturalist

Gilbert Onderdonk traveled to Texas in 1851 as a twenty-two-year-old invalid in search of health. By the time of his death in 1920 at the robust age of ninety-one, he had been a pioneer botanist and horticulturist, a rancher, a Confederate soldier, a traveler throughout Mexico for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a prolific letter writer and essayist, a travel writer for newspapers, and a man of family, property, international recognition, and fame among horticultural experts in Europe for his work in South Texas. It was Gilbert Onderdonk who began and developed production of fruit in Texas and contributed much to the knowledge and later work of Luther Burbank in California. Onderdonk literally planted the foundation of the vast production of Texas fruit today.

From Onderdonk’s letters and travelogues, Oppenheimer weaves a biography that tells of roping wild mustangs, of growing and shipping fruits and seedlings to growers as far distant as France, and of writing the first popular travel reports on Mexico.

The earliest catalogs from the nursery business that Onderdonk had begun in 1870 are most striking for his sparkling writing and drawings, as well as his astute forecasts of agriculture in the state. His 1888 catalogue is reproduced in the book.