Whidbey Island Land Speculation
A syndicate eyes 14,000 acres for fruit farming, signaling a shift in regional agricultural development.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Mr. and Mrs. Fred S. Tucker and family, of Benton, are stopping at the Arlington. Mr. Tucker has come out here as the representative of a Peoria, Ill., syndicate, which owns 14,000 acres of land on Whidbey Island. Julius S. Potter, of Fidalgo City, has been the local representative of the syndicate and will be associated with Mr. Tucker in managing the property. 'We shall open offices here at once,' said Mr. Tucker, 'and we shall start to improve this land and fit it for settlers. We own about 14,000 acres around Oak Harbor and about 6,000 acres a few miles south of Coupeville. We intend to clear this land, which is now heavily timbered, and put at least 1,000 acres of the tract into prunes. The soil up there is wonderfully fertile, and we want to get it in shape for agriculture, when we shall try to colonize it with farmers and fruit raisers.'
“We intend to clear this land, which is now heavily timbered, and put at least 1,000 acres of the tract into prunes.”
This item documents the intense late-19th-century push to commodify Whidbey Island’s rural landscape, a precursor to the modern development pressures that continue to reshape the island’s agricultural identity today.
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