The Northwest's Silver Lining in the California Drought
As farmers in California face a 'famine year' due to extreme dry weather, Puget Sound agriculture stands to gain from a surge in demand and profit.
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.
From the many accounts that have reached us from California, it would seem that the farmers of that state are almost panic-stricken in view of the absence of rain and prospect of another famine year, as disastrous as that of 1864 and 1865. A dry winter in this Territory means a mild and genial season, with perennial bloom and vegetation continuing through the year. But in California, it means drought and scattering, with bankruptcy among the agriculturists. The more sanguine of their journals do hope for copious showers yet to fall in time to secure a crop. Nevertheless, the chances are overwhelmingly against a sufficient rainfall after this date to secure a full crop. The farmers of this Territory will reap a bonanza in larger profits and a sure market for their grain, in consequence of which improvements will be pushed on farms that have stood still for years, and new farms will be opened in the fallow waste, thus evincing the benign purpose that is, 'out of seeming evil, still evolving good.'
“The farmers of this Territory will reap a bonanza in larger profits and a sure market for their grain.”
This 1877 editorial highlights an early era of regional economic interdependence, where Pacific Northwest growers relied on California's climate instability to boost their own grain prices. Today, the climate anxiety has shifted; whereas 19th-century Washington saw drought as an opportunity for expansion, modern Washington faces its own mounting challenges with extreme heat, drought, and agricultural shifts that no longer offer easy 'bonanzas.'
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