Utah Grows More Tart Cherries Than Almost Anyone on Earth
🍒 UTAH FUN FACT
About this video: McMullin Orchards is a family owned & operated cherry farm in Utah. They are a fourth generation family owned and operated fruit farm and processing plant. They have been growing, packing, and shipping fruit from Central Utah since 1927. They currently operate over 900 acres across three locations in Utah County. (Video produced by BW Productions)
Next time you're driving I-15 between Willard and Perry in the north, or cruising past Payson and Santaquin in Utah County, take a second look at those orchards hugging the highway. You're passing through one of the most productive fruit corridors in the country.
Utah is the #2 tart cherry-producing state in the United States, harvesting upwards of 40 to 50 million pounds annually. Only Michigan produces more. But here's what makes Utah's cherry story even more remarkable — the state doesn't just lead in tart cherries. Utah also ranks fifth nationally in sweet cherry production. No other state in the country ranks in the top five for both.
That stretch of I-15 along the Wasatch Front even has a name locals have used for generations: the Famous Fruit Way.
So why here? Why the Wasatch bench?
The answer is roughly 14,000 years old.
When ancient Lake Bonneville — the prehistoric predecessor to today's Great Salt Lake — slowly retreated, it left something behind in the valleys below the mountains: deep, well-aerated, exceptionally fertile soil, ideal for the root systems of fruit trees. The same geological event that shaped the Great Salt Lake basin also built the agricultural foundation of Utah's entire fruit industry.
Those roadside orchards aren't an accident of preference. They're growing in one of the most orchard-ready soils on the continent, created by a lake that vanished millennia before the first pioneer ever planted a tree.
Utah: the geology does the work.
🌿 Utah Fun Fact is a recurring feature of Mountain & Main Magazine, celebrating the surprising, the historic, and the just-plain-cool facts about life along the Wasatch Front.
(Research compiled with AI assistance. All sources independently verified by Mountain & Main editorial staff.)
Sources:
Utah State University Extension — Fruit Production and Opportunities for Growers in Utah (2024)
Utah Tree Fruit Growers Association — 10 Utah Fruit Fun Facts
Utah's Online Library / Utah State Symbol — Cherry
Utah Agriculture in the Classroom — Counties and Commodities