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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1897 | 6 |
| 1898 | 17 |
| 1899 | 2 |
25 stories matching four
- The Fourth Annual Whitman County Fruit Fair
A look back at the 1890s agricultural exhibition in Colfax, where local growers competed for prestige and prizes.
- A Dry-Hills Gamble: Sixty Settlers and a Well
When boosters claimed Yakima’s brown hills could farm, thirteen families put up $25 each to drill for water and prove it.
- They Called the Prairie Worthless. He Planted Wheat Anyway.
A government immigration inspector bought gravelly land south of Tacoma and proved the skeptics wrong — sixteen bushels an acre of No. 1 hard wheat.
- The Palouse Wheat Boom Was a Gold Mine—Until the Debt Came Due
An agricultural professor traces the Palouse’s speculative wheat economy: inflated land purchases, the rain-ruined crop of 1893, the panic that followed, and the sudden recovery by 1897.
- The Selah Rattlesnake Hunters Who Shipped Their Catch to China
A Yakima Valley farm employed Chinese laborers to catch rattlesnakes alive, jar them in whisky, and export them for a profit—an odd, dangerous trade recorded through the racist language of the era.
- Four Hundred Sheep Went Over a Cliff. Then the Herder Vanished.
A band of sheep near Roslyn plunged 35 feet to their deaths. The hired man in charge was nowhere to be found, and the owner was left to survey the wreckage.
- The 'Deviled Butter' Scandal That Cost Washington Dairies $19,000
A Pennsylvania ruling against rebranded 'renovated' butter prompts Washington dairy men to demand honest labeling for a cheap industrial substitute flooding Seattle markets.
- The Parasitic Weed Threatening San Juan Clover
A local farmer warns neighbors of a strangling weed that threatens to wipe out clover fields across the island.
- Two Hundred Feet of Solid Rock: The Well That Might End Yakima's Water War
For years, the old settlers of the lower Ahtanum and the newcomers up on the bench lands have fought it out in the Yakima courts over who owns the creek. Now four farmers are betting on an artesian well instead — and paying for it out of their own pockets.
- A State Veterinarian's 1899 Warning: Fund Animal Disease Control or Pay for It Later
Washington's biennial animal-health report counted diseased horses and cattle, traced a horse meningitis outbreak to mouldy straw in Waterville, and warned lawmakers that tuberculosis could jump between cattle and people.
- The Myth of Civilization
A satirical look at the displacement and forced assimilation of Indigenous people in the Yakima Valley.
- Spokane’s Fifteen-Cent Fair Was a Dollar Show for the Inland Empire
In October 1897, Spokane turned a downtown block into a clean, no-gambling agricultural exposition—and invited the whole Inland Empire to admire its fruit, grain, and future.
- The Fruit Boom on Orcas Island
A local resident reports on the rapid agricultural expansion of the San Juan Islands, predicting a tenfold increase in fruit production.
- The Milk That Killed Children: A Call for State Inspection
E. A. McDonald tells the dairymen that impure city milk is a leading killer of children and that Seattle alone employs a milk inspector — and Prof. Pearson adds a wry tale of a cow that supposedly supplied one customer for seventeen years.
- A Fruit Grower's Pitch: Stop Sending Cash East — Feed Alaska Instead
Before the Northwest Fruitgrower's Association, S. L. Moore argued that Washington farmers should diversify beyond wheat and prunes, supply Alaska and Western markets, and let the Northern Pacific's traveling fruit exhibit lure settlers west.
- The Desert That Could Bloom: Pasco’s Irrigation Revival
Philadelphia capital revives an abandoned Palouse canal project, promising water for 5,000 acres this summer and eventually 15,000 acres near Pasco.
- The $80,000 Cranberry Bog Behind the Ilwaco Beach
A state commissioner tours Pacific County's cranberry marsh — 1,600 acres, 7,280 bushels shipped to San Francisco, 200 pickers at fifty cents a bushel, and a company openly hoping to replace its Chinese crew with white labor.
- The Wheat Boom That Carried a Bust in Its Backwash
As six-bit wheat enriched the Palouse, a farm editor warned that debt and one-crop farming were setting up another 1893-style crash.
- The Night the Chickens Sang Backup: Spokane’s Poultry Show
Spokane’s annual poultry exhibition drew hundreds of birds, a towering silver trophy, and an orchestra the chickens refused to let finish alone.
- The Book-Keeper and the Plumber Who Milked Twenty-Six Cows Before Breakfast
Two Spokane office men built a dairy on the Spokane River without quitting their day jobs — and sent Hoard's Dairyman the receipts, down to the price of bran.
- The War on Narrow Wagon Wheels
Seattle's Chamber of Commerce wants the legislature to force wider wagon tires — to save the city's wooden sidewalks and brick streets from being chewed to pieces.
- The Dairy Commissioner’s War on Adulterated Food
A Washington dairy official warns that fake honey, poisoned candy, oleomargarine and brewers’ grain are cheating farmers — and demands stronger pure-food laws.
- The Creamery Valleys: A State Dairy Tour Finds Prosperity in Northeast Washington
Washington’s dairy commissioner rides the rails and a river steamer through the Kalispell and Colville valleys, where a new co-operative creamery, purebred Jerseys, and farmers’ butter are remaking the countryside.
- The Dairy That Started With 20 Rented Cows and Ended Up With 2,560 Acres
Two Spokane entrepreneurs built Hazelwood Dairy on a promise that milk would be exactly as advertised—at a time when watered milk was the norm.
- Wenatchee Growers Told a Railroad: Give Us Water and We'll Fill Your Freight Cars
A delegation of Wenatchee Valley orchardists met Great Northern officials at Seattle's Hotel Butler to argue that irrigation—not mines or timber—would turn eastern Washington into a freight-producing countryside.