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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1897 | 8 |
| 1898 | 22 |
| 1899 | 1 |
31 stories matching general
- Columbia County Ate Its Last Local Steak
After three years of trainloads shipped out, Dayton's butcher shops ran dry and the town had to import beef from the East.
- The Railroad Barons and the Range Wars
Northern Pacific executives visit Yakima to defend their controversial new land-leasing system against local sheepmen.
- The Orchardist Who Turned Down $1,000 Cash and Bet on His Apples
A Yakima Valley rancher's careful spraying and pruning turned a pest-ridden orchard into a crop he expects to net $1,500 — so when a buyer waved a thousand dollars at him, he said no.
- Walla Walla's Industrial Resilience
After a devastating fire, the Gilbert Hunt Company rebuilds its threshing machine factory with modern fireproof materials.
- Seattle Sets Its Sights on Honolulu's Grocery List
A Seattle schooner sails for the islands with flour, hay and shingles aboard, and Hawaiian importers begin to wonder whether they still need San Francisco at all.
- The Palouse Wheat Harvest Disappointment
Farmers in the Palouse country face a double blow: lower-than-expected yields and a market price that refuses to budge.
- Wenatchee Bets the Valley on Alfalfa — And Dreams of Dairy Herds
A touring correspondent finds the apple country sowing alfalfa by the acre, convinced the real money is in feed, stock and cream rather than in boxed fruit shipped east.
- Counterfeit Yakima Potatoes on the Sound
A Tacoma paint dealer tells the valley's paper that Puget Sound merchants were passing off second-grade Western Washington spuds as Yakima's prized crop — and that in a full year he got the genuine article only three times.
- Railroads Raise the Freight on a Crop Already at Rock Bottom
A half-cent-a-pound shipping increase hits Washington hop growers just as overproduction and lice drive prices to their lowest ebb.
- The Wheat Was Ready. The Threshers Weren't.
After several lean years, farmers in the big wheat district around Spokane finally got the crop they had been praying for — and then two weeks of rain and snow arrived before the machines could get to it.
- 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.
- The Farmers' Grange Declares War on the Mortgage System
Washington's State Grange master lays out a platform against credit, monopolies and 'exorbitant per cent profits' — while insisting the order is not political.
- A 50-Year Teamster Tells the Legislature to Keep Its Hands Off His Wagon Wheels
A Moran Prairie farmer pushes back against a Seattle-backed bill to mandate wide wagon tires, arguing that city men who never drove a loaded team shouldn't legislate for the men who do.
- 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.
- Yakima's Orchards Weren't Dead After All
After a November cold snap that hit 20 below zero, Yakima Valley growers feared their fruit trees were ruined. By spring, the blossoms told a different story.
- Wenatchee, 1898: A Valley Sold on Irrigation and Fruit
A booster's tour of the Wenatchee Valley recounts the first settlers, the whisky traders who fled the law, and the orchards and ditches that promised to turn sagebrush into wealth.
- The Sugar War: Why Yakima Farmers Wanted Hawaii's Sweet Deal Axed
Northern Pacific distributed beet seed in North Yakima to test sugar production, but farmers argued they couldn't compete with Hawaiian sugar grown with cheap labor.
- The Weed That Beat Wheat Hay
A Cheney-area farmer's experiment with prickly lettuce convinced him the despised weed was better cattle feed than his best wheat and oat hay.
- 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 Valley That Organized Itself: Nooksack Farmers Build a Co-op and Demand Pure Food
At a December meeting in Deming, farmers from the Upper Nooksack and Sumas Valley formed a permanent association, secured a power separator for 200 cows, and called for a pure food law to stop the adulteration of fruit jams.
- 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 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.
- 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.
- 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 Debts a Country Owes Its Farmers — and Its Farmers' Wives
An 1898 farm-column editorial tallies what rural Washington neglects: untrained road supervisors, school directors so illiterate the legislature had to bar them, and farm women who never see a newspaper or a neighbor.