PLEASANT VIEW, Utah — Dave Allan, owner of Allan Plant Company, a family owned wholesale greenhouse in Pleasant View, Utah hasn’t had a heating bill for over 50 years.
“On some days in January when it's really really cold outside, you know below zero and you come in here and it's still 70 degrees,” I think yea this is the place to be today,” Allan said.
And it’s all because of nature’s splendor.
“I have no heat bill, Allan said. “ Because we've got all this hot spring water coming out of the ground at 134.”
His plant store, which opened 1976 and specializes in annual flowers and garden veggies in the spring and poinsettias in the winter was built adjacent to a natural hot spring.
“I wanted to be in the greenhouse business since I was 17, Allan said. “I saw a picture in a science book in high school, a guy in a greenhouse picking tomatoes and this enormous greenhouse, enormous tomato plant. I thought that looks neat. I want to do that. That was it for me. I never looked at another career.”
History of the Utah Hot Springs
Prior to Allan acquiring the land where his greenhouses now sit, this area also provided another kind of joy to people from all over Utah and beyond for nearly a century.
In 1878 Veterinarian Rason H. Slater found the land during a train stop in the area and paid $400 dollars for the title. He then built the Utah Hot Springs Resort or what Slater called “The Great Cure of the West due to the water’s supposed healing nature.
But over its existence, the resort limped along.
It saw many turnovers, a foreclosure, and finally in the late 1960s the resort closed for good.
But soon came Dave Allan, with an idea and an entrepreneurial spirit.
“So I had to clean up all this, Allan said. “ It was kind of a mess in here. So low on money, high on and excitement about all of this. And so I worked away at it for a long time”
How do the hot springs heat up the greenhouses
“they come out of the end of the pipe along with all the mud. So we just got a little screen there and collect the marbles. I don't know how many times these marbles have been through the system.”
Allan also made a timed drip system that waters all his plants with city water. The hot springs water he says is too salty.
“ It’s unique and it's just that this situation for what we're doing. The hot springs are about eight feet higher in elevation difference than here, so it just flows. I don't even have to pump it, it just runs,” Allan said proudly.
Allan’s ingenuity has certainly reaped its benefits and has made his business a local institution.
The Allan Plant company sells a variety of produce like tomatoes, melons and peppers. They also specialize in bedding plants like petunias and marigolds.
And in the winter they sell over 15,000 poinsettias, a holiday staple, to flower shops, grocery stores and particularly to groups that sell them for fundraisers.
The future of the Allan Plant Company
After 56 years living his dream, Allan said he wants to retire, but never really gets around to walking away.
“He's never gonna retire,” said Allan’s daughter Bonnie Armstrong. “He loves it too much. It's in his blood. He's been out here for most of his life. And there's no retiring. And that's okay.”
But if and when that time comes his family plans to keep it going into the future.
“And we're always constantly learning from him,” Armstrong said. “ And because it's a family business. This is where we all are all four of us. Kids are back here working and we're all together and it's just a lot of fun.”
On the day we visited, It happened to be Dave Allan’s 72nd birthday, an occasion that had him reminiscing about the wonders and blessings that the hot springs has brought him and the thousands of people who have enjoyed his bounty.
“It’s fun, and I've always thought this was fun, Allan said. “I've been here for almost 50 years, and every time I walk in the door in the morning, I feel that hot spring heat heating the greenhouse like yeah, this is pretty neat. So I never get tired of it”
