Living Las Vegas

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Apples and Peaches and Pumpkins, Oh, My!

It’s been years since I first heard about how you can pick your own fruit at the Gilcrease Orchard, but somehow I never made my way up to the northwest corner of Las Vegas to experience it firsthand until yesterday. When I caught sight of a small ad in the Review-Journal announcing that the orchard was open Tuesday through Saturday from 7 a.m. until noon, I decided it was high time I found out what makes Las Vegas natives get misty-eyed when the name Gilcrease comes up in conversation.

Although it was only a few years ago that the Gilcrease Orchard was an oasis in endless desert, it’s now surrounded on three sides by houses, one side by a high school under construction, and all four sides by caterpillar tractors and dump trucks laboring to construct new roads. A humble homemade sign identifies the entrance. The sign is such a far cry from its super-sized neon counterparts on the Strip, it’s hard to believe they’re both called by the same noun. But then, everything about the Gilcrease Orchard is unlike the rest of Las Vegas. It’s as though a hundred acres from somewhere in Arkansas was airlifted in and plunked down at the corner of Tenaya and Whispering Sands.

Inside the gate, I stopped to ask a few questions of Robert Kurk, the Gilcrease Orchard’s sales manager. In a matter of moments, I had learned that the orchard boasts over a thousand peach trees, in addition to hundreds of figs, apricots, plums, cherries, apples, and pears. Then there are the melons, tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, okra, eggplant, several kinds of squash, and pumpkins. Also on the premises is a state-of-the-art cider mill that produces the only apple cider made in Las Vegas.

Robert also filled me in on a little of the history of the orchard. At first, Bill and Ted Gilcrease planted alfalfa and oats, and about thirty-five years ago, they started trees. The orchard is irrigated by water pumped from the aquifer under the Vegas Valley, a system that does the job but takes a lot of electricity. The power bill some months exceeds $5,000, and the operation has never really turned a profit. The Gilcrease bothers weren’t motivated by money, though, which is the main reason the orchard still exists. Turning down lucrative offers from eager developers, they instead set up a non-profit foundation to ensure the orchard will be preserved. Bill Gilcrease is currently the president of the board of directors. Ted Gilcrease died last year.

After getting a cardboard box, a plastic bag, and a few picking tips from Robert Kurk, I drove on down the dirt road into the orchard. My first stop was to harvest some cherry tomatoes, and I snagged a zucchini or two a few rows over. A couple yellow squash later, I moved on to some rows of peppers. Then, following Robert’s instructions, I drove over to another section of the orchard on the other side of Tenaya. There, I picked a few apples and pears before going a little wild in the pumpkin patch. I had five big ones before I could tear myself away.

My entire haul cost a fraction of what it would have at my local grocery store, and it had been a heck of a lot more fun to gather.

“I don’t consider this work,” Robert Kurk told me on my way out. “I consider it my daily field trip.”

I understand his feelings exactly. A trip to the Gilcrease Orchard is a trip that pays off not only in fresh fruits and vegetables, but also in state of mind. Even surrounded by bulldozers, the orchard is serene and uncomplicated, an oasis of simplicity in the metropolis that hasn’t been able to swallow it.

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