Fruit and Grape Industry

The self-reliance industries that President Brigham Young encouraged not only were a sign of exactly that— the Church’s intent to be self-reliant—but also a sign of permanence. The Saints intended to stay put in the West. Two such industries were the highly successful fruit industry and the less-successful viticulture, or wine-making industry.

Fruit Industry

As new settlements were founded throughout the territory, immigrants planted seeds and fruit-tree stock. The best locations for growing fruit were determined through a long process of trial and error and by the late nineteenth century the counties along the Wasatch Front had been recognized as the areas most suited to large-scale fruit production.

Writer and historian Wallace Stegner described the "characteristic marks of Mormon settlement" as "the orchards of cherry and apple and peach and apricot (and it is not local pride which says that there is no better fruit grown anywhere).”[1]

Beyond the Wasatch Front, orchards were planted in 1881 by Latter-day Saint homesteaders who set out from Salt Lake City to settle southern Utah. They eventually established more than 3,100 fruit trees across 181 acres of irrigated orchards in the high desert valley, which they eventually named Fruita.[2]

Initially, fruit trees provided for the needs of families and settlements, but gradually a vision for commercial development grew. By 1899 a rail spur connected the Carry Hurst Fruit Farm at the mouth of Provo Canyon to markets outside Utah.

A larger rail spur was built in 1910, after fruit growers changed the name of the area to Orem in a successful effort to entice railroad executive Walter C. Orem to extend his rail line into town. By the 1920s the area's fruit (especially apples and pears) rode the rails to markets in California as well as the Midwest. Later, LDS church-owned orchards sent produce as far as Canada. Growers who did not ship to distant markets had other options. Some trucked their fruit directly to the wholesale grocers in Salt Lake City; others carried it on a circuit that wound through the Uinta Basin and into western Colorado and southern Wyoming. Those who preferred to avoid such long-distance arrangements could sell to itinerant fruit peddlers, to local groceries (though chains like Albertson's refused to buy local produce), and packing companies, or, through roadside stands, directly to the public.

Another early attempt to grow fruit for commercial purposes was in Washington County. Success in grape growing, soon after settlement of the area in the 1860s, led to the production of wine.

Grape Industry

In the October 1861 conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 309 families were called to found St. George and reinforce the settlements. Church president Brigham Young created a wine mission in the St. George area, known as the Dixie Wine Mission, as part of his self-sufficiency plan for the territory.

In October 1862, President Brigham Young “stated that the southern colonies should supply the territory with wine ‘for the Holy Sacrament, for medicine, and for sale to outsiders.’”[3] “Wine eventually became an important cash commodity for residents of Southern Utah and a key commodity used in trading with residents in Salt Lake City for flour and potatoes.” [4][5]

The first wine grapes were planted in Utah in 1857 when Walter E. Dodge and John Harris brought wagon loads of grape vines to Washington County from California.[6]

The mission was strengthened by a group of expert horticulturists called by Brigham Young, including 30 Swiss families who were Church converts, many of whom were winemakers. Dodge, known as "the father of the grape in southern Utah," planted his seeds and cuttings at Dodge Springs, which became a principal source for starts and information.”

However, “cultivating wine grapes probably caused more problems than the early church leaders expected" and the effort was abandoned by the Church around the turn of the century.[7][8]