Restoring Historic Lehman Orchard at Great Basin National Park

By Meg Horner, Biologist, Great Basin National Park. First published in The Midden*, Vol. 22, No. 2, Winter 2022.*

A historic Moorpark apricot in Lehman Orchard. NPS photo.

A summer of renewal

With funding from the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act (SNPLMA) Conservation Initiative, park staff replaced the irrigation system, planted new fruit trees, built new fencing, and added signs and a viewing platform — work that will help preserve the orchard for years to come.

A long, patchy history

• 1890s: Absalom S. Lehman, who settled near Lehman Caves and promoted them to tourists, probably planted the orchard, with an aqueduct bringing water from Lehman Creek and nearby springs. It held apricots, apples, pears and peaches, and fed the local community and the Lehman family's income. A few of today's apricots may be the same trees, planted over a century ago.
• 1922: Lehman Caves National Monument was created, with no mention of the orchard or aqueduct.
• 1930s: many trees had declined; the Civilian Conservation Corps removed some in 1934. By 1940, 18 trees remained.
• 1940s–60s: more were cut for construction, which also ended irrigation by aqueduct.
• 1975: the Lehman Orchard and Aqueduct were listed in the National Register of Historic Places, as a food source and an example of late 19th- and early 20th-century farming and ranching in eastern Nevada. Over the next two decades the Park Service replanted, irrigated and fenced, and planted more trees near the visitor center and the Forest Service station in Baker.

Part of Lehman Orchard, about 1930. NPS photo.

The latest restoration

Starting in 2017, as part of an SNPLMA project to protect the Lehman Caves Historic Area, staff:

• researched the orchard's history and local fruit varieties;
• built a greenhouse for seedlings;
• collected seeds and cuttings from the historic apricots;
• grafted "volunteer" apples — found growing at two historic camps along Baker and Lehman creeks — onto Marianna rootstock;
• bought Elberta heirloom peaches (local pear cuttings didn't survive).

In 2022 — the monument's 100th anniversary — twenty-two new apricot, peach and apple trees went in, after a water-wise irrigation system that also serves the 15 established trees (historic apricots and peaches, and trees planted in the 1980s and '90s). Leaf samples went for genetic testing, and new signs explain pruning and care from a platform where visitors can relax and enjoy the view.

Lehman Orchard in November 2022. NPS photo / Meg Horner.

What the genes say

• One historic apricot matched Moorpark, a highly regarded variety dating to the 1600s, when trees were brought from China to England. Several others are probably Moorpark seedlings.
• The volunteer apples matched no known variety.
• More testing is planned to protect the orchard's historic and genetic character.

The park is committed to the orchard, its century-old apricots — which still fruit every few years — and sharing its story for another 100 years.

Sources

Based on "Preserving Historic Lehman Orchard," by Meg Horner, The Midden — Great Basin National Park, Vol. 22, No. 2, Winter 2022, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain.