Category: News

Lost for decades, the Colorado Orange apple variety has been found — officially

The Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project compared the fruit of a tree found near Cañon City to botanical illustrations and wax castings of award-winning apples to identify the lost treasure. Read the full article in The Colorado Sun…

DEC 18, 2019 5:07AM MST
Nancy Lofholm @nlofholm
Special to The Colorado Sun

An apple revival near Four Corners is restoring hundreds of historic fruits — and the local ag economy

Using DNA testing in southwest Colorado, the Montezuma Orchard Restoration project welcomes back apple varieties like Winter Banana, Blue Pearmain, Ben Davis and Esopus Spitzenburg — and businesses are sprouting around them.


MCELMO CANYON — The apple orchard on Jude and Addie Schuenemeyer’s farm in a squiggle of a canyon in far southwest Colorado is a wild place. Turkeys gobble around on the hunt for bugs in native grasses that grow nearly as high as the gnarly limbs of the apple trees. Those trees are set hither and thither instead of lining up in typical tidy orchard rows. They bear apples that few fruit fans have likely heard of: Winter Banana, Blue Pearmain, Ben Davis and Esopus Spitzenburg. Read the full article in The Colorado Sun…


Nancy Lofholm 
PUBLISHED ON NOV 28, 2019 5:05AM MST

How About Them Cortez Apples?

At the turn of the last century, the Four Corners area of Colorado was world famous for apples. Varieties like Six-Finger Jack, Colorado Orange and late Thunderbolt pleased palates and racked up gold medals at world and state fairs. Later many of those varieties were lost in a modern stampede to red-delicious uniformity. But a new Montezuma County project is searching out, identifying, mapping and propagating century-old varieties of apples and sparking an antique apple revival. Continue reading and listen to the story at CPR News…

Story and photo by Nancy Lofholm for Colorado Public Radio, Colorado Matters | May 12, 2016

New Life for Old Orchards

Did you know that Montezuma County was once renowned for its apple orchards? Local farmers once cultivated nearly 50,000 fruit trees and more than 50 varieties of apples. Today, only bare fields remain. But orchardist Jude Schuenemeyer and the Montezuma Orchard Preservation Project hope to restore the county’s fruit economy. Watch news story at Durango Local News…

By Durango Local News | April 21, 2016

He’s on a Mission to Save Heritage Apples

Farm Show Magazine: Jude Schuenemeyer and his wife, Addie, are on a mission to save heritage apple varieties unique to southwestern Colorado. Their Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project (MORP) seeks out old orchards and harvests scion wood for grafting and replanting, sometimes just in the nick of time. Read more in Farm Show Magazine…

Farm Show Magazine, 2012 – Volume #36, Issue #3, Page #22

note: The Colorado Orange apple mentioned in this story DNA tested to be a York Imperial. Any MORP mention of a Colorado Orange prior to 2018 is York Imperial.

Orchard Revival

“Colorado apples” isn’t a phrase you hear too often, at least not anymore. But in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the southwest Colorado landscape was much different, renowned for its vigorous and diverse orchards. Varieties from the state even won two gold medals in the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, according to Jude Schuenemeyer, owner of Let It Grow Nursery and Garden Market in Cortez, CO. Now, Schuenemeyer and his wife, Addie, are working to preserve and restore the region’s rich fruit-growing history.


“I could probably rattle on about this all day. I’ve been known to,” Schuenemeyer says of his Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project. The thing is, you sort of want him to, because it’s just so interesting. Read more in Growing Produce…


By Growing Produce Staff | November 15, 2011