Cherry Hill Farms

The stand on Bateman Lane

The fruit stand at 500 Bateman Lane sits on the west side of the orchard. Behind it the trees run in neat rows toward the Timpanogos mountains, which Utah Stories described as snow-capped in 2021. In July the line for the counter can be, in one visitor’s 2026 words, “long and in the sun.” It moves toward peaches by the box, sweet cherries, apricots, watermelon, sunflowers and cut flowers, and the corn, tomatoes, and peppers the stand buys from other farms in Utah County.

Most of the line is waiting for dessert. The peach sundae is the one people photograph before they eat it, and it is made only while fresh peaches are on hand. The counter also sells a cherry sundae, an apple sundae, peach shakes, apple cider slush, and apple cider donuts. One poster put the desserts at about $4 to $7 in 2026. A local guide suggested bringing a blanket for the grass out front. A Google reviewer quoted on the orchard’s own site mentions live music, and the orchard has posted that “Friday nights at Burgess Orchards are the best.” Peaches from these trees also go to kitchens down the valley. In the 2026 season they went into a cream cheese ice cream called Peach Groove at Stella’s Ice Cream in Pleasant Grove, a grilled peach ricotta toast at Urban Acre, and a peach cream cheese at Oh No Bagels.

The Rowley family’s Cherry Hill Farms runs the place. The family also farms in Santaquin, Hurricane, and Caldwell, Idaho, and dates its farming to a few acres in Orem in the early 1900s. Derek Rowley is called the current owner in a 2024 BYU Daily Universe story and the orchard manager in Alpine city minutes. He told the student paper, “It’s hard to be a small farm in the agriculture industry. The industry is trending towards really, really large ten-thousand-acre farms, so you have to find different ways of supporting yourself.”

Eight peaches and a pumpkin weekend

The 2026 season began in doubt. In April the orchard posted, “Right now, we’re in that waiting season, hoping the weather holds, hoping the crop comes in.” By June 21 word went out that the stand would open Monday, June 22, and that the peach crop was much smaller than usual, so peaches would be sold only until they ran out.

The orchard’s printed harvest schedule lists eight peaches in order. 8 Ball comes first, around July 6, followed by Red Haven, Lucky 13, Diamond Princess, Zee Lady, Lemon Elberta, and Angelus, with O’Henry last, around September 10. The orchard cautions that each date can slip two or three weeks with the weather. On August 21 the post read, “The peaches are zee ladies at the stand!!”

The apples are Gala, Macintosh, Jonagold, Honeycrisp, Fuji, Golden Delicious, Red Delicious, and Granny Smith. Cherry Hill Farms calls apples the first crop grown on the orchard. The first apple u-pick of 2026 came on Wednesday, September 2. That day, for $20 a group of up to five and $3 a pound, visitors picked Honeycrisp from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Few u-pick days followed. On September 16 the orchard apologized and announced a free weekend instead: on September 18 and 19 it scattered pumpkins among the trees for families to find, carry out, and pose beside. On September 22 it posted, “We aren’t actually out of mop heads but we are out of peaches.” Three days later it confirmed that the peaches were done for the season and that apple desserts remained.

Four generations of Burgesses

The orchard’s founding year depends on the source. Its website says 1926, and the BYU paper repeats that date from the site. Its Facebook page says 1912. A 2020 University of Utah student story captions it “a family-owned business since 1914,” and Utah Stories wrote in 2021 that it had operated for 109 years. The website says it began as “a small peach farm in Alpine.” The BYU story, again citing the site, says it began as a tiny fruit stand on the corner of Bateman Lane.

According to Derek Rowley, the Burgess family was one of the original families to settle Alpine. Utah Stories writes that Mormon pioneers homesteaded, irrigated, and planted orchards along these Wasatch foothills, where cold evenings and hot summers stress the fruit in useful ways. Late spring freezes can also kill a whole crop. Clark Burgess’s father, Van, lost his crop to freezes in each of his first three years on the land. Because of that, according to Utah Stories, the Burgesses never farmed full time. They kept the orchard alongside other work.

The 2020 student story traces the line from George to Edward to Van to Clark, the fourth generation. Clark was born in 1958, the only boy among five children. He went to American Fork High School and skipped college. “Nothing occurred to me as something else I would do with my life,” he said. For a steady paycheck he worked at the Utah Department of Agriculture. “My job at the Utah Department of Agriculture provided both steady income and crop insurance,” he told Utah Stories. He and his wife, Dolores, raised four children in the house he had grown up in.

The orchard took up peaches at Dolores’s urging, according to the student story. “I love peaches and have always loved peaches,” she said. “I was sure they would make a delightful addition to our crop.” Rowley dates the change to about forty years before 2024, when the orchard grew mostly apples. The sources differ on acreage too: 16 acres in the 2020 story, 10 in Utah Stories a year later.

Lines around the street

The sundaes came late. The website says that because of Utah’s hot summers the orchard began selling peach ice cream sundaes “in a little shack.” Rowley puts the start in 2018. “We started selling the peaches and apples ice cream in 2018 and it did well, but it wasn’t until COVID that it got really popular,” he said. “People were looking for things to do that weren’t super far away.”

Clark Burgess remembered the crowds. “They were lining up around the street,” he told Utah Stories in 2021. “We sold out of our peaches in one day. We started handing out numbers, and we would be sold out in an hour. Then we started selling peach ice cream and they all went crazy over that.”

By then he had retired from the state and hoped to farm part time with hired help. Then his longtime farm hand fell off a ladder. “I didn’t have anyone else, and I had 10 acres of peaches to thin,” he said. The college students he hired “were kind of helpful. Sort of.”

A lease, a buyer, and a parking lot

Burgess asked everyone he knew for help, and the call reached Curtis Rowley of Cherry Hill Farms. The Rowleys then farmed about 1,000 acres in Utah and another 1,000 in Idaho with a seasonal crew on H-2B visas. “They could do in one day what would take me at least one week,” Burgess said. In 2021 Rowley leased the farm and fruit stand and took over all farm work and sales.

That same June, Burgess said, “I’m already starting to take offers on the property.” Lehi lay ten miles west, at the center of the technology corridor called Silicon Slopes. Houses priced from $1 million to $3 million stood around the corner, and the land was fetching around $1 million an acre. Utah Stories called Burgess Farm the last remaining orchard in the area.

Alpine city council minutes from 2025 record what came next. In 2021 a buyer wanted the land for higher-density housing, and neighbors opposed the plan. Paul Gu then bought the whole orchard to keep it running. The orchard’s website says Cherry Hill Farms partnered with the Gu family to preserve the farm and keep its traditions. In January 2023 city staff reported that Gu had asked to split one acre into a two-lot subdivision. Kate Hamilton, who worked four summers at the stand, told the BYU paper that the farm was once knocked down and then rebuilt.

The crowds needed somewhere to park. The orchard bought an additional lot on the Tyler property. Neighbor Thomas Olsen worried about cars so close to his home. City administrator Shane Sorensen and Derek Rowley discussed a fence to screen the lot. The Planning Commission recommended denial, citing safety, privacy and screening, and parking capacity, and asked first for an on-site parking plan. Council members Jessica Smuin and Kelli Law spoke for the orchard as part of Alpine’s heritage. On May 13, 2025, Jason Thelin moved to approve the off-street parking exception, and it passed four votes to one. Clark Burgess was in the room that night.