Pull off Highway 97 anywhere between Wenatchee and Beebe Bridge this week and you'll find the same scene repeating itself: folding tables loaded with peaches, a hand-painted sign advertising fresh cider, maybe a kid running the register while a parent works the scale in back. It looks like it has looked for decades. Small, family-run, unchanged.
The details behind that familiar scene, however, vary from stand to stand.
If you've lived in Orondo for more than a few years, you've watched fruit stands open and close along this stretch. Their ownership and operations have changed in different ways over time. This history offers context for the range of businesses and orchard operations along Highway 97.
The Auvil Family's Role in Orondo Agriculture
Start with the Auvil family's role in the area's agricultural history. Grady Auvil, working out of Orondo, is credited with introducing the Granny Smith apple cultivar to Washington and establishing the M26 rootstock that helped growers across the state produce the high-quality Fuji apples that eventually became a signature crop here, according to the Wikipedia entry documenting Orondo's agricultural history. That is not a small footnote. A green apple most people associate with Australian orchards, and a Fuji apple most people associate with grocery store bins, both have roots that run back through this one small unincorporated community on the Columbia.
The Auvil name shows up again a few miles from the highway, at Daroga State Park. The 127-acre park, with 1.5 miles of Columbia River shoreline, started as an orchard and ranch site in 1928. Its name is not a place name borrowed from somewhere else. It comes from the first letters of three Auvil brothers, Dave, Robert, and Grandy, who ran the property before it became a peach-breeding site that produced its own named variety, the Daroga Peach. The state bought the land from Grady Auvil in 1981, and today it sits on property owned by Chelan County PUD but operated by Washington State Parks, a split that explains why you'll see both agencies referenced if you ever look up camping reservations there.
So when you're floating the river below the park on a warm evening this time of year, you're floating past land that was, for more than fifty years, part of one family's working orchard.
Fruit Harvest and the Businesses Behind Orondo's Stands
The early apple varieties, Gala and Honeycrisp, are just beginning to come in across the Wenatchee Valley this month. Fuji and Granny Smith, the varieties most tied to Orondo's history through the M26 rootstock work, won't be ready for weeks yet. Regional apple-picking season guides that track ripening by elevation and variety describe the valley's harvest running from August through October, with the specific variety on the table shifting week to week rather than staying fixed all season.
Here's how the ownership behind the familiar stands actually breaks down right now:
| Stand or Business | Ownership and Operations | What This Tells You |
|---|---|---|
| Orondo Cider Works | Founded in 2003 by longtime Orondo growers Chuck and Sharon Podlich, who had farmed here since 1979. In 2019, Auvil Fruit Company acquired the orchard operation behind the store as part of a roughly 2,000-acre combined operation, though the sale agreement kept the retail counter running with Podlich guidance and only modest product changes. | The arrangement illustrates how a retail presence can continue alongside an orchard acquisition. |
| Auvil Fruit Company | The original operation, still based in Orondo, now combined with the former Cider Works Farms into one of the larger orchard operations on this stretch of the river, employing up to 1,600 people during harvest according to reporting in the Wenatchee World. | A regional agricultural operation that also has a retail presence along the corridor. |
| Zanol Orchards | Run independently by the Zanol family for more than 100 years, still operating its own packing and sales directly along the river. | A long-running independent family operation with its own packing and direct sales along the river. |
| Lone Pine Fruit Stand | Independently operated, pairing its fruit and cider sales with an on-site nursery and homemade pies. | A different model entirely, built around variety of goods rather than orchard scale. |
These examples show the range of ownership and operating arrangements along the corridor. Orchard closures are another part of that history.
Red Apple Orchards' 2024 Closure
Not every orchard along this stretch found a partner or stayed independent successfully. Red Apple Orchards, an 80-acre organic apple and 60-acre organic cherry operation near Orondo, shut down in 2024. Owner April Clayton told a Washington Senate committee that rising labor costs, tied in part to a 2021 state law phasing in overtime pay requirements for agricultural workers, made the numbers stop working, according to the Wenatchee World's coverage of the closure. The family kept the 140 acres of land rather than sell it and has been looking for another operator to lease the orchard instead.
The Red Apple Orchards closure and the Auvil-Cider Works agreement mark different developments in the corridor's orchard businesses. Red Apple Orchards closed in 2024, while the Cider Works retail counter continued after Auvil Fruit Company acquired the orchard operation.
If you've noticed a gap where a stand used to be, or wondered about the Podlich name's continued association with Orondo Cider Works, the changes in ownership and operations offer some context.
Reading the Corridor Differently
None of this changes what you'll do this weekend. You'll still pull over for peaches, still swing by Daroga for an evening on the water, still watch for the first Honeycrisps to show up before the Fujis and Granny Smiths follow in a few more weeks. But the next time you're standing at a counter deciding between a box of peaches and a jug of fresh cider, it's worth knowing that the area's stands represent different ownership histories, including independent operations such as Zanol.
Orondo's orchards and stands reflect a range of ownership histories. The orchards keep producing, and the families behind them continue to make different choices, from merging to operating independently. Understanding these differences comes from paying attention to a place over time.
If you're weighing what a piece of this river corridor, from Orondo's orchards to the wider Chelan and Cle Elum region, might mean for your own plans, Brian Hopper has spent two decades tracking exactly this kind of local detail across Washington's resort and waterfront markets. Reach out when you're ready for a conversation grounded in what's actually happening on the ground here, not just what the listing photos show.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
