The name Fruit Heights
The bench was orchards before it was streets, and the name is what the fruit left behind
What happened to the orchards that gave Fruit Heights its name
Fruit trees grew on this bench from about 1855. In 1939 the settlement on the slope broke away from Kaysville, incorporated as its own town, and named itself Fruit Heights for the fruit industry that was its living. Then the orchards went under houses, most of them between 1960 and 1980, and a highway cut through the middle of the farms did the rest. The trees are a scattering now. The name stayed.
By Scott Buehler, Moving Utah
Updated October 2026
The short answer
The orchards that gave Fruit Heights its name are gone as an industry, sold off for house lots as the valley grew and mostly built over between 1960 and 1980. What is left is a stone cherry packing house from the 1940s on the old Mountain Road, one block of farm ground kept open only because a water park sits on it, and a name that outlived the crop.
Buying or selling in Fruit Heights?
The name
Why the town is called Fruit Heights
People settled the slope above Kaysville around 1850, along the old Mountain Road that carried traffic between Salt Lake City and Ogden before anything ran on the flat below. The fruit shows up almost at once. By about 1855 Grandison Raymond Sr. and his wife Celia Hall had built a rock house and were among the first here to plant fruit trees, peaches, apples, apricots, plums, grapes and berries. A brickyard followed in 1874. For close to ninety years the place had no name of its own. It was East Kaysville, unincorporated, on the bench.
That changed in 1939. A group of residents decided to incorporate, and a town needed a hundred people to do it. The story locals still tell is that the organizers counted ninety nine, remembered a baby was due before the paperwork was, and waited. The birth made a hundred. The first meeting of the town of Fruit Heights was held on 23 August 1939, and the name came straight off the crop, chosen for the fruit industry that was the bench's living. By then the orchards were big enough that a town would name itself after them.
At its height the fruit here was a serious business. The Jost family ran what the Deseret News in 2006 called the largest sweet cherry orchard in the state, sorting and packing cherries in the stone building on Mountain Road with as many as two hundred pickers at the peak of the season. That building still stands, and it is about the clearest thing the orchards left behind. Its story is on the Rock Loft page.
The fruit, in dates
The orchards
What happened to the orchards, and the road that did most of it
The orchards did not so much vanish as get built on, and the turning point was 1948. That year US-89 was cut through the middle of the farms. It split working orchards in two, and the businesses on the old road closed with the change: a service station and store run by Archie Green, and the restaurant and dance hall on the top floor of the stone packing house. Mountain Road had been the main route north. After 1948 it was a back street.
With the through traffic gone and the valley filling in, the orchard ground was worth more as house lots than as trees. The steep part of the story is the two decades after the road moved. Fruit Heights had 175 people in 1960 and 2,731 by 1980, and that jump is the orchards coming out and the streets going in. By 1989 it was about 4,200, and by 2000 about 4,700.
The same corridor was rebuilt again in the early 2020s, this time as a freeway, its stoplights taken out and a new interchange added at 400 North with a new bridge over Nicholls Road. It is a rare town where one highway rearranged the streets twice, once while the orchards were going and once long after they were gone.
What the fruit left is not the trees, it is a building and a boundary. The stone packing house, the Rock Loft, still stands on Mountain Road and is full of small businesses. And the largest block of old farm ground that never became houses, on the east side of Main Street, is open only because Cherry Hill, a water park and campground, sits on it.
The town, by the numbers
The shops
Why Fruit Heights has almost no shops of its own
One quiet consequence of all this is that Fruit Heights has almost no commercial street. The stores that served Mountain Road closed when the highway pulled the traffic off it in 1948. The ground that came free went to housing rather than to a strip of shops, and by the time the corridor was rebuilt there was no undeveloped commercial land left to put one on. So groceries and errands from an address here are done in Kaysville or Farmington next door. That is the result of a road, not a planning choice.
The city cannot spread, either. US-89 pins it on the west, Kaysville sits to the north, Farmington to the south, and national forest rises to the east. There is no open ground to annex and no large empty parcel waiting for a subdivision. On about 2.29 square miles it is essentially finished, which is a rare thing to be able to say about a Wasatch Front town.
Living with it
What the history means for a home here now
The practical shape of a Fruit Heights address follows straight from the history. It is a residential town of houses, two parks, a water park and a canyon, quiet and bounded, close to a freeway interchange, and leaning on the two neighboring cities for stores, schools and most services. Whether that reads as an advantage or a drawback is a household question, and not one I will settle for anyone.
What is genuinely stable is the thing the history bought, which is settled edges. A highway, two cities and a national forest fixed this town's borders before anyone needed to argue about growth, so what is here is close to what there will be. Very few Wasatch Front cities can say that.
If you want to read the orchards off the ground, drive Mountain Road end to end, because it is the old route and still carries the oldest buildings, the Rock Loft among them. Then cross the freeway at 400 North and come back over the Nicholls Road bridge. Twenty minutes of that tells you more about why the streets sit the way they do than any map, because the answer is that this was orchard country and a highway came through the middle of it.
What a house on old orchard ground is worth, what is for sale, and what the taxes run belong on the practical side of things, on the Fruit Heights city guide. That history is the reason the streets are shaped the way they are.
Quick answers
The orchards, answered
For the fruit. When the settlement on the bench above Kaysville incorporated as its own town on 23 August 1939, the residents named it Fruit Heights for the fruit industry that was its living at the time. Orchards had grown here since about 1855, and by the 1930s they were the thing the place was known for.
Yes, and they were the whole point of the town. Fruit trees grew on this bench from about 1855, and by the early twentieth century the orchards were a working industry, big enough that the town named itself after them in 1939. One family, the Josts, ran what the Deseret News in 2006 called the largest sweet cherry orchard in the state.
The early record lists peaches, apples, apricots, plums, grapes and berries, planted by the first families on the bench around 1855. Cherries became the signature crop, packed and sold out of the stone building that still stands on Mountain Road.
Only a scattering of trees, not an industry. The commercial orchards are gone, mostly built over with houses between 1960 and 1980. There is no fruit stand to point you to, because the ones people remember have closed, and the fruit that named the town is now history rather than a harvest.
They were turned into neighborhoods. A highway cut through the middle of the farms in 1948 and pulled the traffic off the old road, and over the next two decades the orchard ground was sold for house lots as the valley grew. The population went from 175 in 1960 to 2,731 by 1980, which is the orchards coming out and the streets going in.
The town incorporated on 23 August 1939, splitting off from Kaysville, though the bench had been settled and planted with fruit since about 1855. It reached city status in 1970.
Because the highway took its main street. The stores on Mountain Road closed when US-89 was cut through in 1948 and the traffic moved to the new road. The ground that opened up went to housing instead of a shopping strip, so groceries and errands from a Fruit Heights address are handled in Kaysville or Farmington next door.
Yes. The Jost family ran what the Deseret News in 2006 described as the largest sweet cherry orchard in the state, packing cherries in the stone building on Mountain Road with as many as two hundred pickers at the peak of the season. The building, known as the Rock Loft, still stands.
Between 1960 and 1980. The town had 175 people in 1960 and 2,731 by 1980 as the orchards were replaced by subdivisions, then about 4,700 by 2000. It is close to full now, at just over 6,000 people on roughly 2.29 square miles, hemmed in by US-89, two neighboring cities and national forest.
A name that outlived its crop, and a town the orchards still explain
The history here is not decoration, it is the reason the town looks the way it does. No commercial street, because the one it had lost its traffic in 1948. No room to grow, because a highway, two cities and a national forest settled the edges long ago. Quiet, residential, and close to a freeway that was rebuilt through the middle of it. If you are weighing a home on this bench, I will connect you with a Davis County partner agent who knows these streets, and stay on the financing side myself.
Or call Scott: (435) 357-4345or send Scott a message
Keep going
Continue your Fruit Heights research
Eight more doors into Fruit Heights, chosen for what this page covers.
Questions about Fruit Heights?
Call Scott, send a message, or find out what your Fruit Heights home is worth. No pressure, no obligation.
Referral Disclosure: For moves outside Southern Utah, I can connect you with trusted local agents. If you choose to work with one, their brokerage pays my brokerage (Real Broker, LLC) a referral fee from their commission. This costs you nothing extra, and you are never obligated to use my referral.