A Peoria Syndicate Tried to Turn Whidbey Island Into One Big Orchard
With $100,000 in capital and 10,000 acres, outside investors promised a prune empire, new roads, wharves and Eastern colonies — but insisted they were not selling a townsite.
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.
The Tucker-Potter Trust Company, which was incorporated a few days ago by Julius S. Potter and Fred S. Tucker, both of this city, and W. W. Hammond, of Peoria, with a capital stock of $100,000, is designed to carry out one of the most extensive schemes for the growing of fruit on the Sound yet devised. The company has the controlling interest in a syndicate of Peoria capitalists, which owns 10,000 acres of land on the north end of Whidbey Island, that being one-fifth of the area of the island, and will represent the syndicate in the execution of its plans.
The first step taken in the direction of making a great orchard of the vast property owned by the syndicate is the organization of the Whidbey Island Fruit Company, with a capital stock of $128,000, which will put an entire section of land into fruit, principally prunes. Subscriptions to the stock of this company will be solicited among the residents of the island, as well as in the East, and it will plant and manage the square mile of orchard in the center of the tract. A road will be made along the four sides of this section and from it to Skagit Bay on the east side and Deception Pass on the north, opposite Fidalgo City. Wharves will be built at the termini of these roads and a ferry will be established to Fidalgo City.
The remainder of the tract will be platted into five and ten-acre tracts, which will be sold either improved or not, at the option of the purchaser. If a man wishes to buy a tract improved the company will plant it and turn it over to him at the end of five years a bearing orchard, during which period he will pay for it in monthly installments. The company is now figuring with Eastern people on bringing out colonies to settle on the tract, and further efforts to induce settlement will be made by the circulation all over the country of pamphlets, which are now in preparation, describing the plan, the advantages offered by the island in the way of soil, climate and markets. A specialty will be made of Italian prunes, as they are the best in the market and the climate is favorable for them. The demand for them is also very great, the production of them in the United States being only about one-fifteenth of its consumption.
The plan involves the ultimate establishment of a fruit-drying house from which the product can be shipped and of a cannery for such perishable fruit as cannot be shipped.
Though the carrying out of this scheme will necessarily bring a large population to the island, the company has no intention of putting a townsite on the market, the intention being solely to sell land for fruit-growing purposes. A county road is now being cut from the section to be first platted to Deception Pass and another will be made to the beach on the west side of the island.
“The company has no intention of putting a townsite on the market, the intention being solely to sell land for fruit-growing purposes.”
Whidbey Island is now known for rural character, naval air stations, small towns and expensive view property; in 1893 it was being marketed to Eastern capitalists as a giant prune orchard. The scheme shows how long outside investors have packaged Washington land as an improvement project, complete with roads, ferries and pamphlets aimed at distant buyers. The promise of five-year bearing orchards on installments sounds surprisingly like modern rural-development marketing.
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