Graber Olive House

The longest continuously operating olive cannery in the United States, the Graber Olive House is a small compound of wooden curing-house buildings on a quiet residential street north of downtown Ontario. The free self-guided tour walks you past the original grading and packing machinery and explains the slow tree-ripened curing process. October and November, during harvest, is the most interesting time to visit.

There is a small museum room with photographs and old labels, a gift shop selling olives and olive oil, and a shaded picnic area under century-old olive trees. Address: 315 East Fourth Street. Free; open daily.

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A story
The Graber family has been hand-curing tree-ripened olives on this site since 1894 — the same wooden curing vats, the same brine recipe. Most US table olives are picked green and treated with lye for a few days; Graber's are left on the tree until brown-purple and then cured for months in salt brine, which is why they taste nothing like the canned black olives you get elsewhere.

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