Crozet Cold Storage and the Fruit Growers Express

Refrigerated storage, more than any other piece of infrastructure, made Crozet's commercial orchard economy possible.

Crozet Cold Storage opened in 1929, providing the warehouse space needed to hold apples and peaches between harvest and shipment. The C&O Railway's "Fruit Growers Express" rail cars, refrigerated by ice, carried Crozet fruit across the country.

The combination of orchards, cold storage, and refrigerated rail allowed western Albemarle to ship to markets it had never reached before. The fruit packing industry employed hundreds in the region throughout the early and mid twentieth century. The Cold Storage facility itself would later become Crozet's industrial flagship under Morton Frozen Foods.