The Irrigation Boom of 1890
North Yakima gears up for a massive expansion of agricultural infrastructure and railroad investment.
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.
North Yakima for 1890 will be whatever her people choose to make it. Never were the prospects of our city so bright, and never was there so much promise of improvement throughout the county. The bonus necessary to secure the building of the railroad from Portland to North Yakima and the expenditure of $100,000 in the county during the coming season is assured. The Selah ditch, which will bring 16,000 additional acres under cultivation, is nearly completed. The contract for the Oneida ditch, which will reclaim 80,000 acres, has been let and the work is in progress. The Yakima Canal & Land Company, with a capital stock of $1,000,000, will commence active operations in the spring on a ditch of sufficient size to irrigate 300,000 acres of land lying between the Naches and Columbia rivers. This ditch will be ninety-eight miles in length and will be the most extensive work of the kind in the northwest. Added to these, arrangements are being made for the building of many handsome residences and business blocks.
“Yakima is bound to prosper... fulfilling her destiny of becoming one of the richest and most thriving districts of this great state.”
The massive irrigation projects described here transformed the high desert into a fruit-growing powerhouse. Today, these same water rights and canal systems remain the lifeblood of Yakima's economy, while the tension between agricultural land use and residential expansion continues to define regional planning debates.
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