Where Flathead Cherry Growing Actually Began
Cherry orchards along Flathead Lake feel like a fixture of the landscape today, but the crop didn’t start here. Montana’s earliest cherry plantings took root much further south, in the Bitterroot Valley, starting in the 1860s. For decades that was the state’s cherry country, not the shores of Flathead Lake.
It didn’t last. The Bitterroot’s climate proved unforgiving for a fruit as tender as sweet cherries, and by around 1920 growing there had largely wound down as the valley’s agriculture shifted toward livestock instead. If the story had ended there, Montana likely wouldn’t be associated with cherries at all today.
It didn’t end there because growers further north had, by the 1890s, started noticing something about the ground next to Flathead Lake. The first cherry trees on the lakeshore went in during that decade — credited to Mrs. John Wood and her sister, Mrs. Margaret Estey, who planted the earliest recorded trees on the Wood property in 1893 — modest plantings, not yet a commercial venture, but enough to show that trees planted close to the water behaved differently than trees planted even a short distance inland. Over the following years, that observation hardened into an explanation: Flathead Lake is one of the largest natural freshwater lakes in the western United States, and a body of water that size takes a very long time to heat up or cool down. Planted close enough to benefit from that lag, cherry trees got a buffer against the frost swings that had made the Bitterroot’s climate so unreliable for the same crop. Our guide to the orchards’ present-day growing season covers how that same thermal effect plays out today, but the pattern growers depend on now is the same one that got noticed along this shoreline more than a century ago.
From Scattered Plantings to a Real Industry
Recognizing that the shoreline worked for cherries was one thing. Turning that into an industry took longer. The shift happened in the 1920s, when plantings along the lake’s east shore scaled up well beyond the earlier dooryard trees — growers put in orchards numbering in the hundreds of trees rather than a handful, concentrated in the stretch near Yellow Bay that’s still cherry country today. The Robbin brothers of Kalispell were part of that scale-up, planting 700 trees near Yellow Bay, while brothers Adam and Eby Bowman put in their own family orchard on the east shore around the same decade — an operation that, under the Bowman family name, is still growing cherries on that same stretch of shoreline a century later.
The crop needed a way to reach markets beyond the valley, and that arrived in the early 1930s. A packing plant in Kalispell shipped the region’s first full trainload of cherries — the Lambert variety, which would go on to define the Flathead cherry for most of the 20th century — in 1932. Three years later, in 1935, growers organized a marketing cooperative to sell the crop collectively rather than each orchard trying to find its own buyers. That kind of cooperative structure made sense for an industry built on dozens of small and mid-sized family orchards rather than a few large operations, and versions of that cooperative model have persisted among Flathead growers into the present day.
Over the following decades, the industry settled into the shape it still has now: a cluster of orchards along the lake’s east shore, a short and intense harvest window each summer, and a crop sold through a mix of cooperative marketing, roadside stands, and U-pick visitors. The Lambert variety that built the industry’s reputation has gradually given way on many properties to newer varieties bred to ripen later in the season, timed to avoid competing head-on with the earlier cherry harvests coming out of Washington State. It’s a small, regional industry by national standards — it was never going to rival the major cherry-growing states in scale — but it has been a continuous one for roughly a century now.
Frost: The Industry’s Oldest and Most Persistent Challenge
The lake’s moderating effect explains why cherries can grow here at all, but it has never made the crop frost-proof, and that vulnerability runs through the entire history of the industry rather than being a recent complaint. A late spring freeze that catches trees after they’ve budded, or an unusually severe and early cold snap in fall or winter, can damage or destroy a season’s crop even along the shoreline’s protected strip.
Growers have lived with that risk for generations, with damaging freeze events recurring at irregular intervals rather than following any predictable cycle. Orchardists along the lake have pointed to severe freeze years spaced roughly decades apart — a bad one around 1989, another in 1991, and a particularly destructive Arctic freeze more recently that a longtime grower described as the worst she’d seen in about twenty-five years of growing. That kind of spacing is part of what makes each event so disruptive: orchards and the businesses built around them plan around an average season that, every so often, simply doesn’t arrive. A severe enough freeze can cost an orchard most of a year’s crop in a single stretch of bad weather, and because the cold can damage the trees themselves and not just that season’s buds, the effects of the worst events have sometimes carried into more than one following year rather than resolving after a single bad harvest.
That risk hasn’t gone away with modern growing practices, and it’s unlikely to. The same geography that makes this shoreline unusually good for cherries most years is also geography that offers no protection at all against an extreme enough cold event — the lake buys the trees a buffer of a few degrees and a few weeks, not immunity. In an ordinary year, the orchards along the lake collectively produce a crop in the low millions of pounds; in a severe freeze year, that figure can drop dramatically, which is part of why growers and the businesses that depend on the harvest treat frost risk as an ever-present planning factor rather than a rare disaster.
The Cooperative Today, By the Numbers
The grower cooperative that formed in the 1930s has a direct present-day descendant: the Flathead Lake Cherry Growers cooperative, which today counts roughly 70 active member orchards among the 86 total operations along the lake. In a good season, the cooperative’s members bring in about 3 million pounds of cherries, with roughly 80 percent of that crop distributed nationally and internationally rather than sold purely at the roadside. That scale — real, but still small next to Washington State’s cherry industry — is consistent with how the industry has described itself since the 1930s: a genuine commercial operation, built on cooperation among many small growers rather than a handful of large ones.
The frost risk described above isn’t a historical footnote, either — it’s still actively shaping the industry. A January 2024 Arctic cold snap wiped out close to the entire season’s crop, an event one longtime grower called the worst in roughly twenty-five years of growing, worse even than the widely remembered freezes of 1989 and 1991. Growers describe a familiar cycle: a severe freeze year followed by several seasons of rebuilding as damaged trees recover, before another cold snap tests the same trees again. It’s part of why current reporting on the Flathead cherry harvest, in any given year, tends to open with the same question growers themselves are asking each spring — did the trees make it through winter, and will this be a good year or a rebuilding one.
One other shift worth noting: the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service stopped publishing annual sweet cherry production figures for Montana after 2015, when the state’s reported production stood at 740 tons. That means there’s no current official year-by-year production number to point to the way there once was — a reflection of how small and regional the industry remains in national statistical terms, even as it stays a real and closely watched part of the local economy.
The Orchards Today, in Brief
The industry that grew out of those 1920s and 1930s plantings is still there along the east shore, still organized in part through grower cooperation, and still built around the same narrow, high-summer harvest window. What that looks like on the ground for a visitor today — when the season actually runs, what a U-pick stop or roadside stand visit is like, and where along the shore to find the orchards — is covered in detail in our cherry orchards and U-pick season guide. This piece is meant as the backstory to that visit: the century-plus of trial, relocation, cooperation, and periodic setback that turned a few dooryard trees planted next to a very large lake into a crop worth building a summer stop around.
Frequently asked questions
When did people start growing cherries at Flathead Lake?
The first cherry trees along the lakeshore went in during the 1890s, after earlier attempts to grow cherries elsewhere in Montana had struggled. The industry didn't become a real commercial crop until the 1920s, when larger plantings went in near the lake's east shore.
Why did cherry growing move to Flathead Lake instead of staying where it started?
Montana's earliest cherry orchards were planted well south of Flathead Lake, in the Bitterroot Valley, starting in the 1860s. That area's climate proved too harsh for reliable cherry production over the long run, and growing there had largely faded out by around 1920. Flathead Lake's shoreline offered something the Bitterroot didn't: a large body of water that moderates temperature swings enough for a tender fruit crop to survive the region's winters and springs.
How big of an industry did Flathead cherries become?
By the 1930s, growers had organized a marketing cooperative to handle the crop, and rail shipments were moving Flathead cherries out of the valley to wider markets. The industry has stayed a genuine commercial operation ever since, though it's always been small and regional compared to major cherry-growing states.
Has frost always been a problem for Flathead growers?
Yes, and it's been a recurring theme through the industry's history rather than a recent development. Growers have dealt with periodic hard freezes that damaged or wiped out a season's crop for close to a century, even with the lake's moderating effect working in their favor most years.
What variety of cherry is Flathead Lake known for?
The Lambert variety became the signature cherry of the region for much of the 20th century. Older Lambert trees have died off over the decades, and many growers have replanted with newer varieties bred to ripen later in the season.
Is the historic cherry cooperative still around?
A grower cooperative tracing back to the 1930s has continued in some form through to the present, reflecting how long growers here have relied on organizing together to market a crop that a single small orchard couldn't move on its own.
How big is the Flathead Lake Cherry Growers cooperative today?
It counts roughly 70 active member orchards among 86 total operations along the lake, and in a good season brings in about 3 million pounds of cherries, with roughly 80 percent shipped nationally and internationally. A severe freeze — most recently in January 2024, which wiped out close to the entire crop — can cut that figure dramatically in a bad year.
Where can I read about visiting the orchards today?
Our companion guide covers the present-day U-pick and roadside-stand experience, current season timing, and where along the lake the orchards are concentrated — this article is focused on how the industry got here.
