Joe Roman, streets supervisor for Chowchilla, checks out a service window at the Mammoth Orange food stand. He is perplexed about a sudden, impassioned competition to buy and salvage the ersatz fruit. (John Walker / Fresno Bee)
“It was just sitting here year after year” in a municipal storage yard, Roman said. Spider webs drape the ice bin, bird droppings paint the floor and the orange dimple paint is peeling. (John Walker / Fresno Bee)
The City Council will decide this month among hotly contested bids and competing visions of how to honor history and a type of architecture that gave the world doughnut-shaped doughnut shops, elephant-inspired car washes and hot-dog stands in buns. (John Walker / Fresno Bee)
Dale Thomas, vice president of the Chowchilla District Historical Society, talks about saving the landmark. “They were selling a registered California historical landmark without proper notice or bidding. We were really upset when we found out,” he said. (John Walker / Fresno Bee)
The landmark Mammoth Orange is a relic of the post-World War II era, marking a time when people breezed through sprawling groves with backdrops of blue skies, listening to jump blues on the radio, windows down, in cars with no air conditioning. (John Walker / Fresno Bee)
