Kennewick's Global Apple Ambitions
Local fruit agent Chas. H. Collins looks beyond the domestic market to South America and the Panama Canal, eyeing new trade routes for the 'Early Fruit Belt' harvest.
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That a distributing business reaching nearly every state in the Union and Canada can be run out of Kennewick has been demonstrated by Chas. H. Collins. Growers from Yakima, Wenatchee, and Spokane have successfully marketed their apples through his agency. Collins now plans a trip to South America to establish direct sales, bypassing New York and London middlemen. He believes Kennewick’s early-ripening fruit, shipped via the Panama Canal, gives the region a strategic export advantage. Collins also weighed in on the local by-product debate, advising that while a cannery is a worthy future goal for Kennewick, the town must 'creep before we run' and ensure it has the necessary tonnage of waste fruit to make the investment profitable.
“We must learn to creep before we run.”
Collins' focus on the Panama Canal and direct international shipping reflects the immense optimism surrounding the completion of the canal in 1914. His call for a cannery underscores the perennial Kennewick struggle to turn raw agricultural output into local value-added jobs.
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