Apple as a fruit isn't new to the region of Shimla as there already existed an apple like native fruit which was said to be sour in taste. With the arrival of British, they brought with them apples which they mostly planted in Kullu. The taste of those apples was said to be very sour and not in tune with the Indian palate. That being so and due to the long gestation period of apple trees, the natives didn't pick up apple cultivation.

 

In Shimla hills, there was a 'Mission Orchard' run by Christian missionaries in Kotgarh which had Pippin varieties exclusively. There was also a small orchard with hundred apple trees owned by a native of Kotgarh named Gudrumal, who was the tehsildar of Kotgarh in 1881. 'Hillock's Head' was another apple orchard in Mashobra owned by a British man named  Alexander Coutt.

 

The commercial cultivation of apple started nearly half a century later and that too only because of the efforts of Satyananda Stokes, an American missionary turned Hindu who settled in the region of Kotgarh and identified as a Pahadi man. Stokes visited America in 1914 and took with him soil samples from his land in Kotgarh to find some suitable cultivar of plants to grow. With the help of his mother Florence Spencer Stokes, he imported 33 varieties of apple from America and experimented with them to find out the most suitable ones for Kotgarh's climate.

 

Out of these 33 varieties, he found Red Delicious and Golden Delicious  to be the most commercialy viable varieties considering the quality and output of the fruits that they bore. In 1921, he imported the delicious varieties of apple from Stark Brothers' Nurseries in Louisiana of which the Golden Delicious saplings were a Christmas gift from his mother. These Delicious apples would later change the fate of whole region and usher an age of economic boom.

 

The first apples from Stokes' orchard were sold in 1926. A year later, he started selling those apples under the trade name of H.H. which was an abbreviation of Harmony Hall. All the boxes were also stamped with the tag 'Kotgarh Apples' as it was his vision to associate Kotgarh's name with the finest apples in India.

 

Stokes wanted the Kotgarh people to adopt horticulture but those people were vehemently opposed to his ideas mainly because of the long maturation period of apple saplings. Therefore, in order to initiate people to take up horticulture, he gave out saplings for free for the first five years and after that charged a very nominal fee. The main varieties being Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Rich-a-Red, McIntosh and King of Pippin.

 

Initially he was very reluctant to provide apple saplings to people of the other regions of Shimla as first he wanted to firmly establish the Kotgarh farmer as the pioneer in the industry, who at that time was amongst the poorest in the whole region. [1]

 

After Kotgarh it was the region of Kotkhai that picked up apple cultivation owing to the regime ties with Kotgarh. The first apple trees in Kotkhai were planted in a village named Kiari in 1931. Later on, Kiari came in the list of the richest villages in Asia and at one time it had the highest per capita income in the state of Himachal Pradesh. From Kotkhai, it spread to the other regions of Shimla such as Maraog in Chopal. [1]

 

The Department of Horticulture in Himachal Pradesh was setup in September, 1970 with the objective of building a prosperous Himachal through scientific development of horticulture by harnessing the natural resources for the development of a sustainable system of agriculture in the hilly areas. [2]

 

 Today Shimla district churns out more than 77% of the total apple production in the state of Himachal Pradesh and is a pioneer in the field of horticulture not only in Himachal but whole of India. In Shimla district, Jubbal Kotkhai block contributes to more than 35% of the total production followed by Rohru block with 13.19%, Narkanda block with 12.54% and Rampur, Chohara and Chopal with a contribution of 9% each. [3]

 

Sources: 1. American in Khadi: Biography of Satyananda Stokes by Asha Sharma.

2. HP Horticulture Department website.

3. District Domestic Product of Himachal Pradesh 2011-12 to 2015-16 by Economics and Statistics Department, Goverment of Himachal Pradesh.