Merin Smith Implement Shed

Merin Smith Implement Shed is a sandstone farm workshop on the south side of Scenic Drive in Fruita, opposite Ripple Rock Nature Center and less than a mile from the visitor center. Smith built it in 1925 as a workshop, blacksmith shop and garage. It is a compact stop for the equipment and a glimpse of the settlement's farming history, easy to add while driving the Fruita district.

The site is listed as wheelchair accessible and has an audio guide. Its entrance is gated, though the open doors let you look inside from outside. Parking is listed for cars, buses and RVs.

The display is furnished to evoke the 1930s, with old tools, signs and vehicles. Look for the Eimco transitional tractor, a Utah invention by the Bonham brothers that was made until World War II. Its operator controlled it from the equipment being pulled, using reins attached to levers. Old farm machinery sits outside as well.

For a photo, put one of the iron machines in the foreground and include the banded red and gray slope behind the shed; the roadside view ties the equipment to the landscape without a separate walk.

An audio post at the shed features Dewey Gifford, who farmed and ranched in Fruita from 1928 to 1969. He remembers using horse teams and implements until 1940, growing alfalfa for animal feed, and tending orchards of apples, apricots, peaches, pears, plums and cherries. Fruita had been settled in 1880, and Gifford's account gives a sense of the small farming community before park visitors began arriving in greater numbers after 1937.