RESETAR, MIKE-MITCHELL-LOUIS

Hotel Fruit Packer Produce Businessmen

The opening of Watsonville’s beautiful new Resetar Hotel on Saturday, June 4, 1927, was marked first by a public inspection and then by a banquet. Hosts at that banquet, at which about 15 of the city’s most prominent men were served, were Mike, Mitchell and Louis Resetar, the brothers who had combined to provide the city with its new hotel, at that time, and still, a showpiece for a community of this size.

Mike also was instrumental in other new construction on Main St. He built the building at 543 Main St., now occupied by McMahan’s Furniture Store. He built the building at 433-435 Main Street where Jansen’s and Olander’s stores are now located. And at one time he might have bosted that he owned all four corner locations at Min St. and Lake Ave. Mike was the one who laid the foundation for the widespread farming interests of the Resetars. Their produce packing business, West Coast Farms, he believes, now empoyes the largest number of people of any firm in the valley. Mitch Resetar was known as the King of Lettuce.

Not bad for a man who came to California penniless in 1901.

When he first came to Watsonville he worked for the Scuriches picking apples for 10 cents and hour, working again 6 to 6. Later he contracted for apple picking and was hireing others to work along with him.

He started in the apple packing business for himself in 1909. His first location was at Rodriguez and Walker Sts. and the second on Walker St. between Second St. and Wall St. A later move was to Beach Road next to the Granite Construction Co. and the company’s present plant on the Beach Road. Mike is proud of the fact that he was able to bring his brothers over here from Croatia. First came Mitchell, then Louis and finally Antone. In Croatia, near Dubrovnik, he still owns property- the home which he and his brothers built for their parents.