“The Great Big Red Apple that grows in the very top of the tree” (1917)

The moniker of “Land of the Big Red Apple” (for apple-growing regions) and the saying of “Big apples are top of the barrel/tree” were very popular in the 1900s and 1910s. Peter Morris of the American Dialect Society listserv, in July 2026, found the New York City market described as “The Great Big Red Apple that grows in the very Top of the Tree” in Associated Advertising in June 1917.
 
“New York is merely one of the fruits of that great tree whose roots go down in the Mississippi Valley, and whose branches spread from one ocean to the other, but the tree has no great degree of affection for its fruit.  It inclines to think that the big apple gets a disproportionate share of the national sap” is an earlier “big apple” metaphor that was printed in the book The Wayfarer in New York (1909) by Edward Sandford Martin (1856-1939).
 
New York City would not be consistently called the “Big Apple” until track writer John J. Fitz Gerald made this his catch phrase in the New York (NY) Morning Telegraph in the 1920s, but earlier metaphors are worth recording.
 
 
Google Books
June 1917, Associated Advertising, p. 79
“The Great Big Red Apple that grows in the very Top of the Tree”
 
In this graphic sentence, Mr. P. S. Florea, Secretary of the Associated Advertising Clubs of the World, described the City of New York and its position in the United States market, for the American manufacturer. Said Mr. Florea:
 
“You men in New York City, who know the New York market, do not appreciate the timidity with which some of the otherwise well-informed business men, in other sections of the country, look upon the New York market.
 
“To them it is like A GREAT BIG BEAUTIFUL RED APPLE; but an apple that grows IN THE VERY TOP OF THE TREE. It looks far away and hard to reach, and they need someone familiar with that market, to tell them HOW TO CLIMB THE TREE and reap the harvest of rich fruit that looks so inviting.”