A Crate of Sweet Potatoes to Sell the Desert
Land agents pack up the valley's finest produce — mammoth sugar beets, honeydew casabas, and one 250-pound potato crop — and ship it to Chicago to convince Eastern buyers that this sagebrush country is a garden.
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Manager F. J. O'Brien, of the Horn Rapids Irrigation Co., assisted by the growers of the district, has been busily engaged during the past week in assembling an exhibit of Richland products which will be shipped to Rock Island and Chicago, to be used in connection with the land sales campaign. The stuff secured will surely prove an eye-opener to the Easterners, as there is no doubt the shipment consists of some of the finest specimens of the different products that could be assembled in any section of the United States.
One crate of sweet potatoes, grown by S. M. Ross, will surely cause surprise. A great many of our own local people did not know that sweet potatoes could be raised to such advantage in the district. There were fine specimens, of even size and shape.
Mrs. J. H. Martin, who last spring planted four seed potatoes of the American Wonder variety, harvested a crop of 250 pounds from these four seed potatoes. They were even and of a uniform size and were shipped to Rock Island. The Martin ranch also contributed a large shipment of corn, a number of the ears measuring over 12 inches in length.
Andrew Paulsen came to the front as usual with a number of mammoth sugar beets. People who saw them say they have anything grown in the Yakima district or in the eastern districts beat a mile.
A crate of honey dew casabas, a new production for this section, will prove attractive. They were grown by the Home Nursery Co.
Boxes of Delicious apples from the Zurcher ranch and Winesaps, Arkansas Blacks and Rome Beauties made up the balance of the exhibit, together with several varieties of potatoes and some huge stock and table carrots.
On account of the lateness of the season it was hard to get up an exhibit which would in any way do justice to this valley, but what was secured was wonderful and will undoubtedly prove a great advertisement for this section. Part of the produce will be used for a banquet to be held in Chicago on the 15th of this month, which will be attended by real estate men from all over the East.
“There is no doubt the shipment consists of some of the finest specimens of the different products that could be assembled in any section of the United States.”
Richland in 1917 was a handful of irrigated tracts being marketed hard to strangers back east; today it is a city of tens of thousands built on exactly that pitch. The carnival of produce shipped to a Chicago banquet is the ancestor of every chamber-of-commerce trade mission and glossy relocation brochure since — a whole landscape sold on the strength of one perfect sweet potato.
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