The Uncharted Territory: 1877 Washington
A vivid snapshot of a landscape defined by vast timber, free grazing ranges, and the budding commerce of a frontier civilization.
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.
Washington Territory extends through nearly eight degrees of longitude, covering about three hundred and sixty miles of the frontier of British Columbia. It has an area of 69,000 square miles, or 44,790,000 acres, of which 1,700,000 acres are surveyed. The territory is divided into two natural divisions by the Cascade Range. The portion lying east of the Cascades, embracing 40,000 square miles, is known as Eastern Washington. The great natural feature of this section is the Columbia River. The Walla Walla Valley, in the southeastern portion, embraces one million acres of very good arable land, capable of supporting a large population. The principal industry of Eastern Washington is stock-raising, a market being found in British Columbia, Western Washington, and Oregon. Those ranges are covered with a profusion of bunch grass, which retains its nutritious qualities through the winter, thus taking all labor away from the stock-raiser, as cattle thrive upon it the year round. The first American settlement was made by Col. M. T. Simmons, at Tumwater, at the head of Puget Sound, in October 1845.
“The ranges are covered with a profusion of bunch grass, which retains its nutritious qualities through the winter, thus taking all labor away from the stock-raiser, as cattle thrive upon it the year round.”
In 1877, the promise of Washington was measured in millions of acres of 'open' land and the self-sustaining nature of bunch grass. Today, that same geography is the site of intense struggles over urban density, land-use zoning, and the disappearance of the very 'open' space that settlers once saw as an infinite resource.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.