The Desert Blooms: Bringing Irrigation to the Selah Valley
A ambitious engineering effort to bring water to 50,000 acres of arid volcanic ash soil promises to transform the North Yakima region into a premier agricultural hub.
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. William J. Meade, vice-president of the Mason Mortgage Loan Company, has returned from North Yakima, where he has been inspecting the Selah Valley ditch. The Selah Valley Ditch Company, of which John A. Stone is president, began the construction of an irrigation ditch in the spring of 1890 to water the arid lands of the Notches and Selah valleys. The ditch, now completed, is supplied with water taken from the Natches River, appropriating 800 cubic inches per second, sufficient to irrigate 50,000 acres. The soil is volcanic ash from 28 to 100 feet in depth, easily cultivated and free from stone. In its natural state, the ground is covered with sagebrush and is not worth government prices; once watered, it is worth $30 to $100 per acre. Mr. Stone intends to subdivide these lands into 40-acre tracts. Farmers like Mr. Hugh Sinclair have already seen remarkable yields, including potatoes at 1,000 bushels per acre and heavy orchard yields.
“The land is not worth even the government price, without irrigation, but when watered, is worth from $30 to $100 per acre.”
The transition from sagebrush to orchards and hop yards was the engine of Central Washington's economic identity. Today, as climate change and water rights disputes complicate the Yakima Valley's future, the 1890s optimism of 'perpetual rights' to water remains a foundational point of tension in the regional land-use debate.
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