A Harvest Celebration at the Edge of the Desert
While the 1923 community fair fell short on attendance, it proved a financial triumph and a showcase for the 'soldier-settler' dream in the Priest Rapids Valley.
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.
Approximately 400 paid admissions passed through the gate at the White Bluffs Fair last Friday and Saturday. This is below the attendance figures of last year, due probably to the fact that the Fair was held earlier in the season, catching everyone in the midst of the Jonathan apple harvest. Despite this, the event was bigger and better than last year. The 'soldier-settler' booth, with its army of vegetables and grains displayed under the sign 'All Raised on New Land,' was an eye-opener to old-timers. The Fair committee donated proceeds to the Grange and the White Bluffs Band, and after paying all expenses, they have about $50 in cash and $50 in material on hand—a rarity for such affairs which usually finish in the red. On Sunday, the fruit and vegetable exhibits were trucked to Yakima to be displayed at the State Fair as the 'Priest Rapids Valley, the Home of the Soldier Settlement.'
“The soldier-settler booth with its army of vegetables, grains, etc., displayed under the sign 'All Raised on New Land' was an eye-opener, even to the old timers.”
The 'soldier-settler' program promised land to veterans, but the Priest Rapids Valley landscape was later transformed by the Manhattan Project during WWII, leaving the town of White Bluffs essentially wiped off the map. This fair was a snapshot of a short-lived agricultural ambition that existed just before the valley became a site of global atomic history.
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