Harvest Homecoming 2019 is set for September 21 at Capitol Reef National Park/NPS

Celebrate the end of summer and the beginning of autumn at the annual Harvest Homecoming at Capitol Reef National Park in Utah's red-rock country.

“This is a great day to learn more about pioneer history,” says Lee Grundy, director of Capitol Reef Natural History Association.

Though the park draws its name from domes of white Navajo sandstone and the angular reefs of rock that reach for the sky, reds, tawny buffs, blacks and browns also paint Capitol Reef. And green, in the form of sweet-scented fruit and nut orchards planted by Mormon settlers late in the 19th century that continue to bear apples, pears, apricots, cherries, plums, mulberries, almonds and walnuts.

September also happens to be prime harvest time for the park's apples.  

"Smallish Fruita may not have been well suited for the grain economy of the high valleys, but it was ideal for one product in great demand on the frontier - fresh fruit," wrote George Davidson, who arrived at Capitol Reef in 1980 and went on to become its chief of interpretation, wrote in Red Rock Eden, Story of Fruita, one of Mormon Country's Most Isolated Settlements. "Pioneers planted varieties of apples that have almost disappeared or are completely gone from today's Fruita apple orchards -- apples like Jonathan, Rome Beauty, Ben Davis, Red Astrachan, Twenty-ounce Pippin, and Yellow Transparent."

More than two dozen varieties grow today in this red-rock landscape that's watered by the Fremont River and its tributaries. Some, such as the Jonathans, McIntoshes, Winesaps, Red Delicious, and Granny Smiths, still can be found in a well-stocked grocery.

This year’s harvest event is scheduled for Saturday, September 21, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. All events will be held at the Gifford House, located 1 mile south of the visitor center on the Scenic Drive. There will be live music, craft demonstrations, and a 30-minute history program at 1 p.m.

The human history of Capitol Reef can be traced back thousands of years. With perennial water sources, fertile soils, and cliffs for protection from weather, the Fruita valley has allowed people to survive and thrive through the centuries. You can learn more about the Mormon pioneers who settled in the valley in the 1880s at the Harvest Homecoming event.