A Quarter-Century of Farming Ends in a Seattle Trade
Columbus B. McAlpin, a pioneer of the Richland valley, trades his 200-acre ranch for a Queen Anne apartment building.
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.
Columbus B. McAlpin is one of the oldest residents of this section, having lived in this valley for 24 years. Mr. McAlpin owned a ranch of 200 acres about four miles north of town on the Yakima riverside of the valley, which he mainly devoted to the raising of stock, having a forty-acre stand of alfalfa and from 40 to 50 acres of corn each year, with the balance being wild meadow land for grazing. Mr. McAlpin has come to the conclusion recently that a quarter of a century given to agricultural pursuits is quite enough for him, and having an opportunity to trade his ranch for city property, he took advantage of it. The holdings for which he traded are in Seattle, consisting of an apartment building on south Queen Anne containing 16 apartments. The man with whom he traded is Patrick Costello, who has other property hereabouts, including the town lots on which the recently burned store buildings stood. Mr. McAlpin will leave this section in about ten days for Seattle, where it is his intention to live in one of his own apartments.
“Mr. McAlpin has come to the conclusion recently that a quarter of a century given to agricultural pursuits is quite enough for him.”
The transition from agricultural land to urban real estate investment captures the exact moment of early 20th-century economic shifts in the Tri-Cities. Today, that same tension remains as the region grapples with the conversion of rural acreage into suburban housing tracts.
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