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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1897 | 10 |
| 1898 | 14 |
| 1899 | 3 |
27 stories matching ranch
- 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.
- 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 Butter Wasn't From Washington—and the Dairymen Knew It
Creamerymen and farmers across Washington protest dealers who relabeled eastern butter as local creamery product, calling it a fraud on consumers and a threat to a young industry's hard-won reputation.
- The Invasive Threat in Kittitas Valley
A local rancher reports the arrival of the Russian thistle, a destructive weed, on farms near Ellensburg.
- The Yakima Chicken Fancier Who Saw Forty Cents in Every Lost Chick
Leonard Schott turned a North Yakima business sideline into an incubator-fed poultry ranch, sending broilers to Spokane and diagnosing his chicks with everything from rheumatism to appendicitis.
- A Farmers’ Paper Warns: Don’t Ship to This Commission Firm
Ranch and Range says the Washington Fruit and Produce Union left Tacoma accounts unsettled and is now trying to do business in Seattle.
- 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.
- Six Mowers in the Alfalfa: Inside the Northwest's Largest Irrigated Ranch
The superintendent of the Moxee Company's farm walks a reporter through 680 acres of alfalfa, 180 of barley and a hop yard rented out for a quarter of the bale — and explains why California-style hay stacking won't do for Yakima Valley stockmen.
- 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.
- The Commissioner Who Wouldn’t Hand Over the Books
A state auditor comes to Yakima to shut down the arid-land office. Col. Howlett says the law is on his side—and politely keeps the records.
- 1,200 Cattle Bound for the Yukon Gold Camps
A Seattle-led expedition planned to drive a thousand head over the Dalton Trail and float them down the Yukon, with the herd fattening in the Wenas Valley before the journey.
- 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.
- Hog Cholera Outbreak in Snohomish County Sparks Call for State Action
A Pullman farmer warns that hog cholera has appeared in Snohomish County and urges the legislature to fund measures to contain the disease before it devastates Washington's livestock industry.
- A Valley Selling Itself: Vineland’s Orchard Boom
Strawberries at $400 an acre and cottages starting at $300: an Asotin County correspondent reports a settlement growing faster than its houses can be built.
- 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.
- Turning Salt Flats into Wheat Fields
A Yakima sheepman discovers how to reclaim abandoned alkali-ridden soil through careful irrigation.
- Stanwood Farmers Turned $300 and a Second-Hand Plant Into a Creamery of Their Own
A cooperative creamery at Stanwood reports a strong October, rising milk deliveries, and a plant now valued at $4,000—only two years after farmers pooled about $300 to buy used equipment.
- 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.
- While Seattle Chased Klondike Gold, Portland Quietly Bought the Farm
An 1897 editorial warns Puget Sound that its Klondike outfitting boom is blinding it to a $150 million agricultural trade that Portland is stealing from the inland Northwest.
- Yakima's Experiment Station Bets on a Twelve-Foot Wonder Crop
The Northern Pacific test plots at Yakima prove Japanese hemp flourishes in the valley, and a Pacific-coast expert predicts a lucrative new staple for Washington and Oregon.
- The San Jose Scale Was Already on Stage in Yakima
A state fruit inspector warned that infected nursery trees displayed for a pruning demonstration could have seeded orchards across the valley.
- The Water Belongs to the People—Not the Syndicates
A.M. Stevens of Ellensburg warns that handing arid lands to the states is the first step toward private control—and argues the federal government must build the reservoirs.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.