Fruitland Utah is an unincorporated settlement on the far southwest side of Duchesne County, Utah, United States of America.

While it is within the greater Uintah Ouray Indian Reservation territory, it is not Indian territory.

The settlers of the area originally called it Rabbit Gulch but the old timers nicknamed it Dead Ox as it was very inhospitable and only the toughest of people scratched out a living there. It was mainly sagebrush and mountain prairie with a huge population of rabbits and their predators.

In 1907 unscrupulous real estate developers renamed it Fruitland in hopes of attracting more naive buyers from the city to sell them land that at the time without irrigation was unsuitable for growing any kind of fruit or usable vegetation.

It is usually very windy in Fruitland. Any day without the wind blowing is a day for the record books. The story told by Fruitlanders is that the pioneers came to the valley and decided to stay, just until the wind stopped… the families of the pioneers are still here!

While the summers can be in the high 80’s and a few days in the low 90’s, the winters can get extremely cold with deep snow, high winds and below zero temperatures for weeks. With a growing season of  90 days in a good year, Fruit trees don’t usually survive this area.

The main crops grown in Fruitland with the aid of modern irrigation is alfalfa, oat hay and rotation crop grains like wheat and barley.

Rabbit Gulch is now a state wild life area about 12 miles east of Fruitland and known for its numerous population of rabbits.