A survey line turned into a parcel
Genola, in Utah County, sits on a 40-acre parcel the county surveyed out of farmland in 1981, measured off the old Salt Lake Meridian as the southeast quarter of the southeast quarter of Section 33. A small building went up there in 1983, and ownership passed from McMullin Orchards to the Town of Genola and later to McMullin Farm Properties Lc.
Surveyors carved forty acres from orchard country
You are standing on a parcel the county carved out of open ground in 1981. The surveyor's description is blunt and exact. This is the southeast quarter of the southeast quarter of Section 33, Township 9 South, Range 1 East. It was measured off the old Salt Lake Meridian. That is the grid line that surveyors ran out from Salt Lake City. They used it to divide up Utah Territory lot by lot. A little under three acres had already been carved off for a state road. That left forty acres behind.
Two years later, in 1983, a small building went up on the land. It was just 432 square feet. It was not a house built for show. Out here among the orchards and farmland south of Genola, a building that size was work space. It was a shed, a pump house, or something to shelter equipment. It was meant to tend the crop, not house a family.
The land's ownership tells its own plain story. McMullin Orchards Inc held the ground. That name was tied to the fruit growing that shaped this stretch of Utah County. In 2000, the company quitclaimed it over to the Town of Genola itself. Twelve years later, in 2012, McMullin Orchards deeded land to McMullin Farm Properties Lc. That is the business the county still lists as holding the parcel today. An orchard company, a small town, and a family farm operation have all had their names on this ground within living memory. The forty acres moved quietly from one hand to the next. The orchards and fields around it kept bearing fruit.
A sheriff's chase ended near this farmland
The quiet did not last forever. In 2024 a Utah County Sheriff's deputy chased a wanted man through a Genola neighborhood near this farmland. The chase ended hard. A patrol vehicle struck a pole as officers closed in and caught the suspect. The road that runs past these forty acres saw a burst of noise and flashing lights that night, then went quiet again.
A teenager died in an off-road vehicle rollover
Open ground like this can turn dangerous fast. In early 2026 a 14-year-old was killed near Genola when the off-road vehicle she was riding in rolled over. The crash happened on the same kind of unmarked farm track that crosses land like this.
A microburst tore through Genola's farms
Weather did its own damage that same year. A powerful microburst tore through Genola on July 10, 2026, a short, violent blast of wind that can flatten crops and buildings in minutes. It damaged vehicles and knocked down outdoor structures. It scattered debris across properties near this stretch of farmland. The storm passed in minutes, but it left its mark on the sheds and fences that dot ground like this.
The forty acres sit here still, surveyed, built on, and passed hand to hand, waiting out whatever comes next across the open Genola fields.
Every person, building and event in this story opens into its own dig in the app — and Strata will dig the ground under your feet instead, wherever that is, in about a minute, with every source shown.