The Desert Blooms
A massive irrigation project, years in the making, promises to transform Yakima's arid landscape into a fertile garden for hundreds of families.
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.
An undertaking in which leading officials of the Northern Pacific have been deeply interested since early in 1888, when its engineers made a survey of the section to be irrigated, was consummated yesterday. Articles have been filed incorporating the Northern Pacific and Yakima Irrigating Company. The object of the company is to construct and operate irrigating ditches and to own and dispose of lands. The canal, which the company intends to build, will be seventy-five miles in length, beginning on the Naches River and extending to a point north of Prosser. This canal will water and irrigate about 130,000 acres of land. The capital of the company is $600,000, divided into 6,000 shares. The project is expected to provide homes for no less than 500 families and transform what is now an arid desert into a vast acreage fertile as any that sunshine has ever quickened.
“The building of the canal will afford homes for no less than 500 families and transform what is now an arid desert into a vast acreage, fertile as any which sunshine has ever quickened.”
This 1890 irrigation project set the foundation for the agricultural powerhouse Yakima is today. The diversion of the Naches River remains central to the valley's economy, highlighting how early corporate land development permanently altered the region's ecology and identity.
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