A recent “Buffalo Niagara Guide to Regional Pride” described Loganberry as a “sweet, deep purple, and non-carbonated fruit drink made from loganberry juice.” Like most attempts to explain Loganberry, it seems to raise more questions than answers.
It might be easiest to start at the beginning. There really is a loganberry – the result of the accidental breeding of North American blackberries and the European raspberries in the Santa Cruz, Calif., garden of James Logan in 1881.
The summer of 1939 was a hot one in Buffalo, which meant people were figuring out almost any way to cool off. By the hundreds, unofficial and unpatrolled beaches were filled with bathers making their ways into the cool waters of Lake Erie.
Farmers began growing the fruit in the northwestern U.S. and British Columbia, which is a part of the indirect line from Logan’s backyard to Buffalo’s top summertime drink. Six decades after the first berries grew, two Crystal Beach snack stands became famous for loganberry in the years immediately after World War II.
William Cronfelt was born in Denmark and worked as a machinist at Buffalo’s Pierce-Arrow factory. Around 1924, he and his son Ken began operating a waffle concession stand while spending summers in Crystal Beach. A short walk away at 16 Derby Road, longtime Buffalo tavern owners Clarence and Jennie Smeader ran a hot dog stand in the '40s and '50s.
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Early on, both Cronfelt and Smeader hired local youths to mix huge batches of loganberry drink by hand. Through the 1980s, grocery store shelves in both Southern Ontario and Western New York bore bottles of the two battling Crystal Beach loganberry syrup makers.
But while loganberry is strongly associated with summers in Canada – it also arrived in Buffalo at about the same time.
The Harvey & Carey chain of pharmacies had more than a dozen locations scattered through every Buffalo neighborhood. In 1948, the drug store debuted the new loganberry flavor – “full of tangy goodness” – at all of their soda fountains. The same year, Buffalo-based Queen-O Beverages started offering a loganberry-flavored drink syrup.
Buffalo-based Pfeiffer Foods also started manufacturing loganberry syrups by 1950– including the syrup used by Ted Liaros at the original Ted’s location near the Peace Bridge as well as the “new” suburban location on Sheridan Drive.
Along the way, loganberry became one of the quintessential tastes of Buffalo. The Crystal Beach Amusement Park, which generations of Buffalonians associated with that taste, closed in 1989, but the flavor lived on. At first with Auntie Rosie’s – named after local Pepsi distributor Al Pastor’s wife, his company started putting the stuff in cans in 1987. PJ’s Crystal Beach Loganberry hit pop shelves in 1998.
The flavor remains as popular as ever in Buffalo, not just in the original drink, but also as a flavoring for beer and distilled spirits and anyone looking to add Buffalo flair to any food or drink.
But what put the wheels in motion causing loganberry to all of a sudden appear on the scene around Buffalo and Crystal Beach in such a big way after World War II? Three key facts might have played a role.
First, in 1947, Oregon State horticulturist George F. Waldo was able to reproduce the cross-breeding of the loganberry and create superior and larger versions of the fruit, making the sometimes difficult-to-farm plant more desirable.
A more direct reason there were more loganberries available – the British Navy stopped claiming first dibs on all of the loganberries grown in British Columbia. Throughout World War II, vitamin C-rich loganberries were included in the rations fed to British sailors to help prevent scurvy. With the war over, there were fewer sailors and a reduced demand for loganberries.
Loss of a government buyer sounds like a problem for loganberry growers and it might have been had it not been for a member of parliament from Victoria, B.C. Later Canada’s ambassador to Japan, before he was elected to parliament, Robert Wellington Mayhew was the vice president of the Victoria Chamber of Commerce. It might very well be R.W. Mayhew’s love for and promotion of the loganberry that put the fruit on a trajectory to become an all-time 716 favorite.
Mayhew was instrumental in having the loganberry included on the menu at the parliamentary cafeteria, introducing the fruit to lawmakers from all over Canada. After the Royal Navy laid aside its claim on loganberries, the lawmaker worked to guarantee that growers would have the green light to export the fruit to the U.S. if it made sense for them to do so. But he had a better idea, one that would make the loganberry a sort of national fruit of Canada.
“Growers should consider carefully the potential market which awaits them in eastern Canada,” said Mayhew, who said the loganberry growers would be selling in a non-competitive field as one of the few fruits of the sort grown in the country.
He went on to use the loganberry as an example of how patriotic Canadians might begin to free themselves of dependence on imports from the U.S.
Economic independence, Mayhew said, “would depend on our ability to produce and sell."
“To restrict the importation of fruits and vegetables, what can we do about it?” Mayhew asked in a 1948 speech. “I’m referring to the loganberry, which could be sold as a drink all across Canada” to take the place of other drinks, he said. “This and many other things can be done.”
There’s no proof directly tying R.W. Mayhew’s love of his home province’s crop to one of the definitive tastes of the 716 palette, but his unabashed promotion of our favorite sweet, deep purple drink likely plays at least some small part every time we make our meal a “full Buffalo” and get loganberry with our Ted’s, Anderson’s or Mighty Taco.