Washington grows more than 60% of the nation’s apples, and the town that started it all still lets you pick your own
More than 60 percent of every apple grown in the United States comes out of one stretch of Washington, and the town sitting right in the middle of it has been calling itself the Apple Capital of the World since 1902. That’s not a marketing line dreamed up last year, either — it landed on the local newspaper’s masthead in 1925 and never came off.
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Wenatchee’s claim goes back further than the slogan itself. Philip Miller planted the valley’s first apple trees in 1872, and the Peterson orchard, the first commercial planting in the area, went in a dozen years later. By the time the Great Northern Railway crossed Stevens Pass in 1893, growers could ship apples straight to Seattle, and the whole valley bet its future on the fruit.
That bet paid off. Washington now grows well over 60 percent of the nation’s apple supply, and the orchards packed into the hills around Wenatchee sit at the center of an apple-growing region that runs from the Canadian border down to the Tri-Cities. Washington State’s Apple Blossom Festival has run here every spring since 1920, cementing the town’s identity before some of its own orchards were even a decade old.
You don’t have to just look at the orchards, either. The Stutzman Ranch, a 100-year-old family farm on Easy Street just outside town, opens its rows to u-pick visitors — Gala apples start coming in around August, with Fuji apples and seedless table grapes following in September. Picking runs 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. daily whenever fruit’s available, with the last person let into the rows at 3:30.
Bring a bag, wear shoes you don’t mind getting dusty, and budget more time than you’d think — the rows go back farther than they look from the parking area. Wenatchee has plenty of other ways to fill the rest of the day once your basket’s full.
Would you rather grab your apples from a grocery bin, or pull them straight off the branch yourself?
Trip tips: grab a rental car to get out here, lock in your hotel before the good rooms are gone, or skip both and book a camper van instead.
