The Bold Vision for Snohomish’s 'River Fruit'
How local developers aimed to transform thousands of acres of Snohomish river bottomland into a thriving orchard paradise.
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.
Mr. C. W. Lowary of the Snohomish nursery is spending $5,000 in getting his place of some 60 acres in condition, including levelling and fencing. He now has perhaps 10,000 trees of different kinds of fruit that are doing well there. Principally, he is devoting his efforts to the cultivation of the cherry, of which he has over a dozen varieties. The grounds will soon be a beautiful site well worth a visit by any one near Snohomish. In connection with this, Mr. Lowary is planning to collect for the total of the Snohomish lands. Acres of orchard, 400; acres of berries, 400; acres of nuts, 100; acres of grapes, 200; acres of woodland, 300; a total of 1,400. Within the reaches of the Snohomish area, these could be kept within the limits of our valley, and would support a fruit factory. To this end, Capt. Soule, of the Snohomish steamer, said that he had a load of early fruit from the Snohomish produce to some market, a full load of lumber to build a wharf to keep water.
“The grounds will soon be a beautiful site well worth a visit by any one near Snohomish.”
Long before Snohomish became known for its historic district and antique shops, local boosters viewed the fertile river bottomlands as the engine of a regional agricultural empire. Today, those same floodplains are a central focus of modern environmental restoration and ongoing debates over how to balance development with the persistent risk of the Snohomish River's seasonal flooding.
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