The pioneer
community of Fruita, now a part of Capital Reef National Park, was founded
by Mormon settlers. Here they planted some marvelous fruit orchards, which
still exist. The Mormon settlers are gone and now the fruit orchards are
part of the park. The Park Service maintains them and if you visit here
when the fruit is ripe you can go into the orchard and eat all you want
for free (after all, since they are now part of a national park, they belong
to all of us). If you take any fruit out of the orchard you are charged
a fair price for what you take. Seems very reasonable to me! When the Mormon
settlers abandoned the region, they left behind some of their farming implements,
which are now on display in their natural settings.
