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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1897 | 11 |
| 1898 | 14 |
| 1899 | 2 |
27 stories matching ground
- The Saloon at the State Fair: A Temperance Warning from Yakima
An impassioned editorial condemns the state fair commission for auctioning saloon rights, warning that liquor will corrupt young men and tarnish the fair's educational mission.
- 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.
- Turning Alkali Wasteland into Productive Soil
A Yakima farmer reports a successful experiment in reclaiming unusable alkali land through irrigation and flooding.
- The Mountains Closed: Stockmen Fight the Cascade Forest Reserve
Eastern Washington's cattle and sheep men warn that locking up the Cascades as a federal forest reserve would beggar every valley town — and train their anger on the Yakama Reservation boundary, which they want opened to their herds.
- The Steamboat Scheme to Sneak 10,000 Sheep into Washington
Barred from driving his Oregon flocks through Klickitat County, M. McLennan charters a special steamer to slip them into Skamania County and on to Yakima.
- The Checkerboard Conflict
A federal judge rules that sheep ranchers can cross Northern Pacific Railway land to reach public grazing grounds, challenging the railroad's control over the landscape.
- The Grocery Store Debate on Women's Financial Autonomy
A group of men at a local store argue that women are incapable of managing money, only to be challenged by a young farmer who defends his wife as an equal partner.
- The High Cost of Neglected Apiaries
A local beekeeping expert warns that failing to clear weeds from hive entrances is costing regional producers significant honey yields.
- The Hay Market Heats Up in the Yakima Valley
As alfalfa prices climb, local agricultural managers weigh the risks of livestock investment against the volatility of the regional market.
- The Great Soil Debate of 1897
A Washington agricultural expert challenges the common practice of summer-fallowing, warning that the method is depleting the state's soil nitrogen and threatening long-term fertility.
- 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.
- Every Street a Sled Trail: Seattle Breaks in Dog Teams for the Klondike
In the winter of 1898 the thoroughfares of the Sound cities turned into training grounds — sleds, go-devils and sail-carts everywhere, companies buying and selling sled dogs at $25 to $100 a team, and one man solemnly breaking in a team of billy goats.
- Pay Rent or We Drive the Flocks Elsewhere: Sheepmen Balk at the Railroad's Grazing Leases
Dan Goodman tells a reporter that if the Northern Pacific charges for pasture, whole bands of sheep will be pushed off its line — while the company says the leases exist to keep outside herds from eating out the range.
- The Tumbleweed That Threatened Washington's Wheat
In 1898, a state agricultural professor traced an invasive Russian thistle to railway yards and warned that Yakima County was already infested.
- The Fatal Dance of Washington's Ground Squirrels
Scientists at the state agricultural college tried to wipe out crop-destroying rodents with bacteria—and found a native plague that sent infected squirrels spinning until they dropped.
- Yakima Sheepmen Stand Together Against Railroad's Strings-Attached Lease
Two dozen Yakima-area sheepmen signed a pact to reject Northern Pacific's demand that all their wool and sheep ride its rails—only to hear the company might hand their range to outsiders.
- Turning Salt Flats into Wheat Fields
A Yakima sheepman discovers how to reclaim abandoned alkali-ridden soil through careful irrigation.
- A Thousand Dogs for the Klondike
A Seattle syndicate imported stray dogs by the carload from Chicago, trained them to haul gold-rush supplies, and kenneled the pack in an abandoned brickyard.
- The Diseased-Poultry Swindle
A Yakima agricultural editor traces how sick birds moved from farmyards to city markets—and demands that the governor and legislature clean up the trade.
- The 1898 Sales Pitch That Called the San Juan Islands a 'Klondike at Home'
A judge's promotional essay promised apples, prunes, sheep, fish, limestone and health in Washington's island county—and complained that the outside world had not yet noticed.
- Enumclaw Farmers Cut Out the Insurance Companies
Tired of paying premiums to distant corporations, farmers around Enumclaw formed their own mutual fire and lightning insurance company — one neighbor pledging to help another.
- 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.
- Judge Hanford Draws the Line: Sheep Can't Graze on Railroad Land Without Consent
A federal court ruling in Yakima County upholds the Northern Pacific Railway's right to protect its unenclosed lands from sheep, setting a precedent for property rights and land use in the West.
- 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.