Orange Juice

Few Americans drank orange juice before the mid-nineteenth century, mainly because oranges, which were imported from the West Indies, were so expensive. Many of those who did drink orange juice did so in the form of “orangeade” (sweetened, diluted juice, like lemonade). With the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 and the subsequent construction of railroads to Florida, orange growers greatly expanded their groves, and the price of oranges dropped during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.