From the Archive: Olives Strike Oil in Texas (2009)

In 2009, a Texan named Jim Henry was planting olive orchards in the Hill Country while everyone told him it couldn’t be done. He was part of a quiet, stubborn movement proving that the olive is no longer just a Mediterranean tree.

What was reported

Jim Henry — who’d earlier been told that grapes couldn’t grow in Texas — planted olive orchards around Marble Falls in the Texas Hill Country, betting the Lone Star State could grow olives. Plenty called it folly. He didn’t listen, and helped kick-start a small Texan olive-oil industry.

What I make of it now

This is one more nail in the coffin of the idea that olives belong to one sea. They now grow across California, Texas, Arizona, Georgia and beyond in the United States alone — and on five continents worldwide. The honest footnote, which the early boosters sometimes glossed: Texas is genuinely tough olive country, prone to hard winter freezes that can kill young trees outright, and the industry has had brutal setback years because of it. Pioneers like Henry weren’t wrong that olives can grow there — just that doing it reliably is a fight. The map keeps widening anyway. (See American olives.)

Originally reported March 2009 (John Griffin, on early Texas olive growing). The original article is no longer online.