Today, the cool canyon breezes blowing across the mountain bench that made for firm, succulent peaches are drawing in tract after tract of new homes.

And as harvest festivals begin across the state this summer, it's likely that towns and cities celebrating their agricultural heritage have vastly reduced yields or no longer even grow the crop. It was over a century ago that the Brigham City Commercial Club decided the community's best economic development tool was its fruit. Born in 1904, the city's annual Peach Days celebration has become the state's oldest continuing harvest festival.

Just three years after that first celebration, a Salt Lake Tribune article declared that for Box Elder County, the September Peach Days was akin to the July 24 pioneer celebration to Utah and the Fourth of July to the nation.

As recently as 30 years ago, when Newell Francis bought additional acreage for his home, he did what his father and uncle had done - he cleared the sagebrush and planted an orchard. But like many of their contemporaries, the Francises never made enough money from their orchard to make a living. So Newell worked in law enforcement and Louise as a school counselor, and now they're selling their land for development.

"I'd say 75 percent of the people around here owned orchards when I started out," said Newell Francis. "Today, there's maybe a half dozen families left."

Brigham City's housing boom pushed growers to neighboring Perry, but there, too, people are supplanting peach trees.

It's the same story all along the Wasatch Front, from Box Elder to Juab County. And it's driven by Utah's population growth, which is among the hottest in the nation.

Consequently, Utah's longtime pioneer heritage of food self-sufficiency is shrinking. In Salt Lake County, the state's most populous county, croplands declined from 118,660 acres to 82,270 acres in the 1997-2002 period alone, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service.

Utah's declining farmland mirrors a nationwide trend. This year, the nation's agriculture exports are rivaled by food imports, the USDA reports.

"There are more risks with becoming food dependent than energy dependent because eating is much more critical than having energy," said Cary Peterson, Utah agricultural commissioner from 1982 to 2004. "Food dependency becomes even more problematic in times of conflict and world wars."

Despite the lower yields, 21 Utah cities and towns are celebrating their agricultural heritage this summer - Ferron and Hurricane with their peach heritage, others commemorating berries, pumpkins, trout, grains and livestock. Twenty-nine more communities are celebrating the 1847 arrival of Mormon pioneers, known for their cottage industries and farming enterprises geared to make the territory self-sufficient.

These days, though, Hooper - which once shipped tomatoes throughout the Intermountain area - has been eclipsed by farms in Mexico. The beet fields of Salt Lake County are no more, and the Beet Diggers of Jordan High School are the only trace left. Pleasant Grove celebrates Strawberry Days but the growers who stayed in business planted apple orchards to make more money, said Lisa Young, Strawberry Days committee member. Apples are commemorated in River Heights and Mt. Pleasant, but the best apple harvest statewide was nearly 20 years ago.

LaVerkin, once called the garden spot of Dixie in southern Utah, celebrates Sorghum Days but no longer grows the cereal crop. A few enthusiasts grew the drought-resistant sorghum for the city's festival days, but that too has come to an end.

Nationally, Utah still is ranked second and third in the nation in its tart cherry and apricot harvests, but the best year for tart cherries was 1992 and the best apricot harvest dates back to 1957.

Without space for orchards or other agriculture enterprises, farmers and ranchers are moving to less populated and less fertile lands, raising livestock and growing animal forage crops. Banner years for those operations are more recent: The best year for all-hay production was 2000; egg production topped in 2002, and the state's best year for numbers of hogs and pigs was 2004.

In addition, fertilizers, pesticides and technology are boosting production levels, said state agricultural spokesman Larry Lewis.

For instance, milk production per cow increased from 1997 to 2004 by nearly 1,400 pounds. Conversely, population pressures and low commodity prices have resulted in fewer dairies, from 900 operations as recently as six years ago to 300 today.

Seventy years ago when Elmer Facer graduated in economics from Utah State University, he looked around at his prospects for farming in Utah and moved to Colorado, where he made a career of agricultural banking.

"In Utah, farms have always been small economic units, forcing people to have other employment, as well," said Facer, who has retired to Salt Lake City. "I had to move away, where the economics of scale were much greater for agriculture."

Facer, 91, makes it a point to visit the Peach Days festival, which reminds him of his boyhood in Brigham City. Now that canning is a hobby, fewer visitors take home bushels of peaches to bottle, but they can watch the parade and attend the concerts and ballgames that festivalgoers enjoyed more than a century ago. It's expected that during the September celebration, the town's population of 18,000 will be quadrupled.

Meantime, growers are changing their operations to meet new market demands. Customers can still buy peaches and other produce along Fruit Way, but they're more likely to pick up bedding and potted flowering plants to beautify their gardens and patios.

Statewide, the 2004 income in floriculture sales totaled $43 million, while the combined sales of peaches, cherries, apricots, pears and peaches was $18 million.

At the Nielsen's Perry fruit stand, shoppers can now buy a variety of produce and a new line of jams as well as flowers, plants and convenience-store groceries, says Dallas Tyler, great grandson of founder George Nielsen.

For his part, the 27-year-old Tyler has worked at the stand because of family pride and loyalty, at least for now.

"I like working here but I don't know if I'll make this a career," he said. "There's factors such as the weather that I can't control, and obviously there's the financial concern of making enough money to stay in the agricultural business."