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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1897 | 4 |
| 1898 | 26 |
| 1899 | 3 |
33 stories matching point
- The Great Wheat Bottleneck
Eastern Washington farmers face a crisis as railroads prioritize long-haul freight over local grain shipments, leaving warehouses overflowing.
- 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.
- Three Bad Years of Hops, and a Trainload of Sheep Pointing the Way Out
Yakima County's hop growers have lost money three seasons running. The remedy, this farm editor argues, is to stop shipping raw hay out of the valley and start feeding it to cattle, hogs and sheep here — as forty carloads bound for Montana just proved.
- A Cannery Comes Courting Puyallup Valley
Chicago investors scout the valley’s fruit crop, eye the old Pacific Meat Company building, and dangle $1,000 for a bridge at Sumner.
- Poisoned Horses on the Horse Heaven Range: How One Sheepman Went to War With Coyotes
A Yakima County sheep raiser buys up 26 cayuses, shoots them, laces the carcasses with strychnine and arsenic, and reports that dozens of coyotes have already taken the bait.
- When Every Eastern Market Was Swamped: The 1897 Fruit Glut That Broke Northwest Growers
A Northwest agricultural writer tallies the wreckage of a boom season — glutted markets, freight and icing bills nobody could pay, and a blunt prescription for growers: dry your prunes and hold for a price.
- 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 Butter Police Come for the Lumber Camp's Oleo
A Seattle dairy commissioner catches a McMurray lumber company serving colored margarine in its boarding house — and the company pleads guilty rather than fight.
- The Codlin Moth War: Hogs, Padded Poles, and a Walla Walla Grower's Doubts About Spraying
W. S. Offner reported a quarter-million-dollar fruit trade from the Walla Walla valley—and explained why the standard spray calendar failed against the orchard pest.
- Two Creamery Men Split Yakima County's Milk — Then Went to War Over It
Between them, E. E. James and Jacob Frazer control nearly every creamery in the county. Instead of agreeing on a price for milk, they are raiding each other's routes, poaching suppliers, and appealing to the state dairy commissioner over who can even run a Babcock test correctly.
- A Filthy Milk Trial, a Lenient Judge, and a Convention's Disgust
The state dairy commissioner lost his Tacoma case against two milkmen whose cows were caked in manure — and the delegates wanted to know what kind of milk the judge kept on his own table.
- Apples and Prunes, Not Peaches: The Hard Truth About Shipping Fruit East
A horticultural commissioner's verdict — apples and evaporated prunes are the only sure commercial crops — forces Northwest growers to reckon with soft fruit that spoils on the long haul east.
- 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.
- Yakima Farmers Answer the Call to Organize
At Mason's Opera House, A. B. Leckenby tells North Yakima growers that cooperation—not outside capital—is the valley's best hope, and a countywide farmers' club takes shape for Feb. 12.
- 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 Orchardist's Revolt: Wawawai Grower Accuses Yakima Commission Firm of Withholding $1,100
J.W. Offield says Thompson Kain refused to pay for his peach and pear crop; the firm counters that he misrepresented varieties and freight rates.
- 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.
- The Orchards of Lyle: A Fruit Boom Waiting to Happen
A correspondent tours the young orchards above the Columbia at Lyle, where ex-ironworkers and a Portland streetcar conductor are betting their futures on prunes and apples.
- Washington Apples Fight Back Against a New York Snub
A Seattle commission man rebuts a trade journal's claim that Northwest fruit can't match California's, citing 10,000 boxes of fancy apples already shipped east.
- The Bug Inspector Who Called Himself a Crank — and Warned That Japanese Oranges Could Wreck Washington's Orchards
A King County insect inspector accuses the state horticultural commissioner of botching a fumigation order, then warns that the scale insects riding in on imported Japanese oranges could become "a curse to one of Washington's greatest industries."
- 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.
- Dairymen Declare War on the 'Bogus Butter' Combine
Washington's dairymen vote to petition Congress after their own dairy commissioner admits he cannot stop cheap oleomargarine shipped straight through to Alaska — and one delegate proposes dyeing it black.
- 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.
- 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 Glasshouse Farm That Fed Seattle's Hotels
In 1898, an editor toured a Lake Washington model farm where seven greenhouses and a prize Jersey herd supplied the city's finest tables.