A small pullout on Highway 24 sits beside the Max Krueger Orchard, planted mostly in Rosa peaches and watered from the Fremont River. Its owner fought the park's custodian for years with no trespassing signs. A 2007 study of the park's orchards weighed imported honey bees against hundreds of native species.
This orchard belonged to a man who barely lived here. Max Krueger, a Union Oil geologist from Los Angeles, bought it in nineteen forty-one, called it Robber's Roost Ranch, and came up on his summer vacation. A flood had moved the Fremont River, so hikers bound for Hickman Bridge had to cross his land. He allowed it, if they closed his gates and left his fruit alone. Every couple of years he'd fall out with Charles Kelly, the park's custodian, and the no trespassing signs went up. It ended with a United States marshal at his California home, serving a summons during a Christmas party. Lines were never firm around here. In nineteen forty-one a surveyor looking for Fruita's property corners found a pole in a fence, a cord on barbed wire, and, best of all, he wrote, an x cut on a swinging gate. The quieter dispute is in the blossoms. A two thousand seven study found honey bees brought in to pollinate the park's orchards, among over seven hundred species of native bees, and proposed withdrawing them. In bloom, look down these rows and count the bees. Back at the car, carry on as you were.
Photo: NPS / Shauna Cotrell · Public domain (U.S. Government work)