Capitol Reef: Fruit Trees in the Utah Desert

Studying the patterns in the cliffs can be like cloud-gazing. Let your imagination run wild and you'll see faces and animals, the shapes shifting and morphing in the changing light as the sun moves across the desert landscape.

Once the only access road to Capitol Reef. National Park, Capitol Gorge provides a harsh and beautiful stone causeway that opens up into a world of bizarre and varied stone formations. Desert washes, both narrow and wide, and the types of plants common in the high desert – stunted trees like pinyon, pine and Utah, juniper, prickly pear cacti, and the brilliant orange of globe, mallows and striking red of desert paintbrush.

And then a sight that is unfathomable in the desert – the delicate, showy blossoms of fruit trees.

The blooming and fruiting trees create a strange and wonderful picture, set against the magnificent cliffs and rocks of the high desert.

I'm Jason Epperson, and this is the America's National Parks Podcast.

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In this land of sand and dirt and stone, of limited rainfall and risk of flash floods from summer monsoons, orchards bloom and fruit and thrive. From the earliest spring apricot flowers to cherries, peaches, apples, pears, plums, and quince, as well as almonds, walnuts, and pecans, Capitol Reef National Park produces temperate zone fruit. Why, you might ask yourself, and how? Seeking religious tolerance, Joseph Smith, founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormons, moved from New York to Nauvoo, Illinois, but met the same resistance to the Mormon beliefs and practices there. In fact, the hatred went much further and Smith was murdered in nearby Carthage, Illinois.

Brigham Youngs assumed leadership of the Mormon Church and began a westward odyssey, arriving in Utah, then part of Mexico, via Nebraska. We all know that Salt Lake City became the famed home of the nucleus of the Mormon community, but they settled in small Utah towns spread across the Great Basin as well. Although their petition to enter the United States as the state of Deseret was not successful, their presence remained a stalwart of the future state of Utah. The high plateaus of the American Southwest provided short seasons of farming and grazing livestock, but the lack of reliable water made the conditions difficult. Meanwhile, tiny Mormon communities began to spring up in little towns along the Fremont River, such as Loa, Fremont, Lyman, Bicknell, and Torrey,

inching toward the distinctive water pocket fold that would later secure the designation of Capitol Reef National Park. By the 1880s, a handful of Mormon pioneers settled in Capitol Reef. Although they were not the first people to live there, they strengthened their ties to the land via their unique approach to agriculture for that region. A small community, no more than ten families at a given time, populated the stretch of Capitol Reef National Park along the Fremont River and Sulphur Creek, where they could take advantage of the natural water sources, snaking through the desert. Irrigation ditches spread outward from the river and the creek and collected water from the snowmelt from the surrounding higher elevations.

Looking for sustainable crops to feed their families that could also serve as cash crops for financial income, the early settlers in this harsh environment turned a portion of this desert ecosystem into fertile farming land. The first landholder of record in Capitol Reef was Nils Johnson, who established an orchard in this unique slice of the desert, with its built-in and man-made irrigation and less propensity for seasonal flash floods than other parts of the region. Other families followed, and a small town named Junction grew amidst its orchards, schoolhouse, and community activities. The orchards prospered and the town was colloquially nicknamed the Eden of Wayne County. Eventually, the town was renamed Fruta.

The town remained unincorporated and the local authority was the presiding Mormon elder. Mail was not delivered to a post office, but rather to the mail tree, an enormous cottonwood still standing in the Fruta District of the park today. The success of Fruta remained strong. through the 1930s. Fruit was an important and rare commodity among the towns of the Fremont River, and even when money was scarce during the Great Depression, the fruit could be exchanged in barter for important goods and services.

Once Capitol Reef National Monument was established back in 1937, the situation in Fruta began to experience changes. Although scarce at first due to the difficulty of traveling to the park, visitors began to impinge on the quiet orchard town, especially once the road from Torrey was paved into the park. The National Park Service decided to purchase all Fruta homes and properties that came onto the market in mutually willing sales deals, as opposed to seizing them via eminent domain, which has been done elsewhere. And by the late 1960s, this had largely been accomplished. The last house to sell was the Gifford House, which remains standing in the park today as a museum and store.

In 1971, the park was re-designated as Capitol Reef National Park. The remaining buildings of Fruta became a National Historic District, and the orchards, though not part of the natural geology, flora, and fauna that merited National Park designation, continue to be maintained as an important part of the park due to their status as historical landscape. Today, 19 orchards containing nearly 2,000 trees remain bearing fruit. Many of the trees are heritage varieties from the days of the Mormon pioneers. Some are common types of fruit we find in grocery stores today, like Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, and Macintosh apples, Bartlett pears, Bing cherries, and Alberta peaches.

Others are more unusual, especially to people from outside of Utah. The Capitol Reef red apple is unique to the park, a sweet apple with a yellow base and red cheeks. A clingstone, the Chinese sweet pit apricot, has flesh that clings to an almond-tasting edible pit. In addition to the orchard fruits, mulberry trees are found in the park. Originally planted in many Mormon communities for silkworms, their historical purpose was eclipsed by the decline of the silkworm industry when it became less expensive to import silk fruit than to make it from scratch.

But the trees remain and continue to bear fruit. The Gifford House in Fruita sells jams and marmalades and other packaged fruit items, but, most notably, it sells pies, delectable, small, single-serving, by a slight stretch of the imagination, pies made from vintage recipes, reflective of pies that were baked at the height of the Fruita community. The varieties are always the same, strawberry, rhubarb, Dutch apple, peach, and cherry, generous dollops of sugar-sweetened fruit, and a mouth-watering buttery crust. The line to purchase pies can be long, but worth the wait, both for the sheer deliciousness and for the quirky opportunity. But the pies are not made with fruit from the Fruita orchards.

The answer to the question why not is that Capitol Reef fruit goes to park visitors via another means. The fruit is available to park visitors, mostly via pick-your-own, although the small yield of cherries is only available from what the park staff harvests. If you eat the fruit you pick while you are still in the orchards, it's free. If you take it with you, you pay by the pound. Fruit picking is such a popular activity at the park – after all, who wouldn't want to hand-pick fruit in the desert?

– that there's not enough left of it for pies. The staff will tell you that the fruit is locally sourced, although they don't specify exactly what local means, and it may be a bit further away than the distance from your house to your local farm and back. We can't lose sight of the fact that if fruit orchards were common in the desert, this whole notion of the orchards of Fruita would not be so novel and an exciting part of the history of Capitol Reef National Park. So where do they get the fruit from? But rest assured that the purpose of pie at the Gifford House directly benefits the park.

Both monetarily and in the roundabout education that results from the stories the visitors tell about pie in the park.

Capitol Reef National Park is in south-central Utah. The park was designated to preserve the Water Pocket Fold, a unique buckle in the Earth's crust nearly 100 miles long. The geologic process that created the Water Pocket Fold pushed rocks upward in a tilted manner, creating canyons, cliffs, and other unusual rock formations found in the park. Erosion continues to shape the land, creating domes, spires, and arches. The layers of exposed rock highlight an entire color palette, from vermilion to ochre, to salmon pink and seafoam green, and form the park's features with names such as The Castle, The Egyptian Temple, The Capitol Dome, and Chimney Rock.

A variety of trails cover the many types of terrain, from rocky to sandy, from flat to steep, from open areas to narrow slot canyons. For visitors looking to explore without a formal hiking trail, there are many places to wander along pull-outs of the scenic drive and Route 24, as well as the historic Fruita District and its orchards. In addition to the beautiful spectacle of the orchards in bloom, many native plants, blooming or otherwise, live in the park. Don't overlook the spectacular flowers of the cottonwood trees in the spring. Park.

wildlife includes birds, amphibians, mammals, reptiles, and even fish. In addition to hiking trails and scenic drives, the park can be experienced on horseback, and even llama rides can be contracted from the nearby town of Torrey. Capitol Reef is a five-senses park. You see the stunning geologic formations. You hear the soft hoof-falls of the many mule deer.

You smell the fragrant fruit tree blossoms. You feel the wind in the slot canyons. And you taste the undeniable deliciousness of the pies. Capitol Reef is worth a visit on its own merit, but can be combined with other parks for a fabulous adventure on a grand scale. Capitol Reef is part of the collection of national parks in Utah nicknamed the Mighty Five.

Capitol Reef, Bryce, Canyon, Zion, Arches, and Canyonlands National Parks. The parks are connected via some of the many Utah scenic byways, making the drive between them quite spectacular, passing through and near national forests, national monuments, and state parks that abound.

This episode of America's National Parks was hosted by me, Jason Epperson, and written by Lauren Eisenberg Davis. If you enjoyed the show, please consider leaving a rating and a review. If you're new here, make sure to subscribe to the podcast to get new episodes delivered to your feet. If you're looking for photos and tips about visiting national parks, check out our America's National Parks Facebook group. And if you're interested in RV travel, come check us out on the RV Miles podcast and YouTube channel.

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