Palisade: The Peach Capital

In the eighteen eighties, after the Ute were forcibly removed from western Colorado, settlers moved into the Grand Valley along the Colorado River and found something unexpected: soil and climate suited for fruit. J.P. Harlow planted the first peach orchard here around eighteen eighty-two. By eighteen ninety-six he had over two thousand trees producing what may have been Colorado's first successful commercial peach crop.

The secret is a warm air current that funnels out of DeBeque Canyon, protecting the delicate fruit buds from late frosts. A one-hundred-and-eighty-two-day growing season, Colorado sunshine, and reliable irrigation from the Colorado River do the rest. By the early nineteen hundreds, Palisade was shipping tens of thousands of pounds of peaches annually across the country.

Since the nineteen seventies, vineyards have joined the orchards. Today Palisade hosts twenty-five of Colorado's roughly one hundred and forty wineries, and every August the Palisade Peach Festival draws visitors from across the region to celebrate the fruit that built the town.