Fruitland: The Big Apple of Idaho

Fruitland sits just across the Snake River from Oregon and earned its name honestly. the name comes from the apple orchards that once blanketed the area. By the early nineteen hundreds the Fruitland area was thick with orchards of apples and prunes, fed by irrigation water drawn from the Payette River.

The town still calls itself the Big Apple of Idaho. Today fruit farming shares the valley with corn and other crops, but the name is a direct record of what this stretch of the Snake River bottomland once smelled like in bloom.