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The Colorado Orange apple is back.
The fruits of more than 20 years of sleuthing, DNA testing and slogging through a long-forgotten archive of apple drawings and wax casts have appeared in a Western Slope orchard and a northern Colorado tree nursery. And possibly on trees planted here and there in backyards and orchards across the state.
You won’t find them on store shelves or in bushels at farmers markets just yet, but the next stages of testing this almost-lost heirloom apple are underway.
Unfortunately, the first reported bites of the apple did not spark joy.
“It was sweet, but not very exciting,” said Steve Ela of Ela Family Farms in Hotchkiss.
At the Fort Collins Wholesale Nursery, the staff didn’t even get to taste the Colorado Orange when horticulturist Scott Skogerboe brought a couple of new heritage apples in from the field for a taste test.
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“One was good,” said Amy Zabloudil, manager of the container inventory. “The other was a Colorado Orange and he took a bite and said it wasn’t very good and threw the rest away. We didn’t taste it. He said maybe he left it on the tree too long.”
Or perhaps not long enough, as historically the apple was known to hang on the tree long after the leaves had fallen and was picked into December.
“We decided to let them kinda hang on the tree longer and see if that changes anything,” Ela said. “Also, we know that teenage trees, as we’ll call them, the way their apples taste is not always true to form. They can be kind of funky sometimes. They were not bad, they just weren’t very exciting. That can change.”
Ela said he expected to test the apples throughout the fall to determine when they reach peak flavor, and that likely will go on for a few seasons as the 20 or so trees he’s planted mature and produce more apples.
And why did Ela plant the trees before he knew how they would taste?
“Whimsy. Curiousness,” he said. “We’ve got 30 acres of apples, 30 other varieties. It’s always nice to have something unique and Colorado-centric.”
Steve Ela of Ela Family Farms harvests heirloom Colorado Orange apples. (William Woody, Special to The Colorado Sun)
Steve Ela of Ela Family Farms harvests heirloom Colorado Orange apples. (William Woody, Special to The Colorado Sun)
History of an apple
Jesse Frazer brought young fruit trees by ox-drawn wagon to Fremont County, Colorado, from Missouri around 1859 and planted them in what is today the town of Florence, according to an undated Florence Citizen article. Most of them were killed by grasshoppers or freezes, but he was sure the Arkansas River Valley was a good place for fruit orchards, so he returned to Missouri a few years later and brought back more trees.
Although details such as specific years and the spellings of Frazer’s name vary in the historical articles preserved at the Florence Historical Archive and the Royal Gorge Regional Museum and History Center, the storyline is the same: He noticed new growth sprouting from the base of a dead tree and left it to grow. It became the Colorado Orange apple.
(The history keepers at the Florence Historical Archive explain that there were two families in Florence — one Frazer and the other Frazier, hence the confusion.)
While the Colorado Orange arose on Frazer’s 600-acre farm in Florence, the apple gained notice after it was planted by growers in Cañon City, in particular the large Rockafellow and DeWeese orchards.
Apples were popular among miners in the region, especially varieties such as the Colorado Orange that kept well and stayed firm, said Millie Wintz, of the Florence Historical Archive.
It got noticed by horticulture groups in Kansas and Iowa. The Moncrief Orchard Book’s Feb. 28, 1916, edition said the Colorado Orange “deserves wider planting. Rich gold yellow, blooms late, fine keeper. In demand at high prices.”
The apple hung around for years, but dwindled as Fremont County orchards became subdivisions and newer varieties captured the apple market. Still, a 1996 invitation to an Heirloom Apple Tasting Party at the Cañon City Library featured the Colorado Orange on its cover.
But by the time Jude and Addie Schuenemeyer of the Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project, or MORP, began searching for it more than two decades ago, it seemed possible that the Colorado Orange had disappeared.
Still, if it was to be found, it would likely be in Fremont County.
Around 2012, Jude Schuenemeyer visited a Cañon City orchard run by Paul Telck, who thought he might have a Colorado Orange on the grounds. But the DNA tests identified it as a York.
It was two more years before they heard from Riley Diana, who was running the historic Steinmeier Orchard in southeastern Cañon City. Diana sent the Schuenemeyers nine apples and the tests came back as “unique unknown.”
That was the result they wanted, but it didn’t absolutely confirm that it was a Colorado Orange. Meanwhile, they had discovered the Miriam Palmer collection of apple drawings and wax models that had been stashed in a professor’s office and got it moved to the archives of Colorado State University.
They were still getting apples from the gnarled old tree, and they matched. And it was none too soon.
“It took us 20 years from when we first heard mention of it until we found it,” Jude Schuenemeyer said of the Colorado Orange. “That old tree is gone — it died a few years after we found it.”
But to go from one gnarled old tree to hundreds in 10 years is progress, he said. “It’s got some momentum.”
The process MORP used to identify the Colorado Orange has become the prototype for identifying other old cultivars that are found in orchards across the county, he said.
Bringing an apple tree back
With the initial 12-13 grafts they had taken from the tree, they grew about 50 sticks of scion wood — vegetative growth that could be grafted onto rootstock to produce new Colorado Orange trees.
That was in 2017. The first known apples appeared this year.
Schuenemeyer estimated that there are “hundreds” but fewer than 1,000 Colorado Orange trees growing around the state. Ela Farms is one of the larger growers, and the Fort Collins Wholesale Nursery, which sells to garden centers and landscapers, probably has the largest stock of trees for sale other than MORP, which has about 50 of the trees for sales on its website.
TOP LEFT: Apple trees draped in netting to ward off pests. TOP RIGHT: Seeds of heirloom Colorado Orange apples, and fruit of trees already grown. BOTTOM: Steve Ela loads some of the farms harvested apples into a trailer. (William Woody, Special to The Colorado Sun)
Zabloudil said the Fort Collins nursery has about 80 Colorado Orange trees in 5-gallon pots to sell in the spring but noted the inventory after that is uncertain.
But there is interest in the apple from individuals, too.
Jason and Amy Hilterbran planted two trees this fall near an event center they are opening at the former Camerlo Dairy in Florence. The Oak Creek Heritage Orchard & Farm is, interestingly, on Frazier (spelled with the i) Avenue.
Amy Hilterbran said she hopes to plant more of the trees in the spring and eventually have an Orange Apple orchard near where it all started.
“I am so excited to see the excitement around the trees,” she said. “Especially with the women at the Florence Historical Archive. We are bringing it back to where it was born.”
Of the first two trees she planted, she dedicated one to “Uncle Jesse,” which is how Frazer was known in the community, and the second to her late son, Austin, who had Dravet syndrome. The family moved from Oklahoma to Colorado for his medical marijuana treatment.
In Cañon City, Charlotte and Scott Plummer planted two Colorado Orange trees and some other fruit trees in their yard a couple of years ago. Charlotte grew up in Florence and knew of the Colorado Orange tree, said her daughter Hannah Plummer, the archives librarian at the Royal Gorge museum.
“They got hit by grasshoppers and deer,” Hannah Plummer said. “We’re hoping that they’ll come back.”
Ela said the trees seem to be susceptible to fire blight, a bacterial disease, and that slowed some of them down. He’s planted trees in other areas of the orchard to try to prevent that, and he expects to continue to add Orange Apple trees.
“I’m sure there will be a learning curve,” he said. “Each one (apple) has its own idiosyncrasies — they grow differently.
“There aren’t too many that we’ve completely let go. The Braeburn — did not do well in Colorado. It is frost sensitive. It’s a great apple, but it wasn’t good for us.”
It will take a few years for the Colorado Orange to come into production so there’s plenty of time for taste-testing and letting the trees mature.
“We’re not planning on swimming in them anytime soon,” Ela said, noting that there is interest in revival of the apple and people are asking when they can try it.
Ela also works with Haykin Family Cider, a small-batch cidery in Aurora, and grafted some trees for them. Maybe they’ll make good cider.
And maybe some people will like them as they are. The people who helped bring back the Colorado Orange aren’t giving up on it.
“It’s just that I think apples are cool,” said Ela, whose personal favorite is the Jonathan. “Each one has its own flavor profile, everyone has their own favorite.”