More than a century ago, a half-dozen brave, new settlements were sited along the lower Fremont River between its exit from the deep gorges of Miners Mountain and its confluence with the Muddy River. The little community called Fruita--never more than ten families--found itself deep inside Capitol Reef National Monument after a Presidential proclamation in 1937. Although its new relationship with the National Park Service would become a tolling bell for Fruita as a living relic of the frontier, it insured, paradoxically, that it would be remembered. Edited and reprinted 2002
