A Former Lakebed Becomes an $8,000 Farm
Fred Kent sold 160 acres of reclaimed peat bog in Deer Valley to a Colfax buyer, who plans to drain the rest and turn it into productive meadow.
Fred Kent has sold a half section of land in Deer Valley west of Newport to W. J. Windus, of Colfax, consideration being in the neighborhood of $8,000. The half section contains about 160 acres of meadow land, formerly a lakebed, which is now a peat bog, having been partially reclaimed by Mr. Kent, who has got 60 acres of it in timothy land that is very productive. The new owner will improve the land by draining the remainder of the bog, and expects to get a very valuable piece of land.
“The half section contains about 160 acres of meadow land, formerly a lakebed, which is now a peat bog.”
Turning a peat bog into timothy meadow was the kind of patient land-making that built rural Pend Oreille County — and the $8,000 price shows how valuable reclaimed ground had already become. The same wetlands are now valued for the opposite reason: as habitat and carbon storage rather than drainage.
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