The King of the Hop Fields
In 1891, Washington's hop industry was a global juggernaut, fueling a million-dollar boom and transforming the Puget Sound landscape—until the lice arrived.
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.
Hop growing is rapidly becoming one of the great industries of Washington, and the Puget Sound country is destined to become the great hop country of the world. It has the advantage of a mild and even climate, soil of such profound richness that vines continue to bear abundant crops after having been planted a quarter of a century, and has hitherto enjoyed immunity from the diseases to which hops are subject in other districts. The industry has been raised with remarkable success in the White River, Puyallup, Snoqualmie, and Chehalis valleys. In spite of a decreased production due to the 'hop louse' appearing last summer, the year 1890 was a profitable one for growers. Prices, which were as low as 7 cents a pound in 1889, rose as high as 40 cents in 1890. E. Meeker & Co., of Puyallup, the largest shippers, have sent six special trains to New York for transshipment to London. To accommodate laborers, growers are now erecting barracks, including a building 200 feet long on the Meeker farm at Kent, to house white migrant families who travel to the fields for the harvest.
“The growers are preparing to accommodate white pickers by erecting barracks split into tenements, one for each family.”
The 1891 hop boom mirrors today's seasonal agricultural labor struggles in the Yakima Valley. Just as E. Meeker & Co. sought to transition from reliance on Indigenous labor to housing migrant white families in company barracks, the tension between land development, commodity pricing, and the housing needs of workers remains a persistent feature of Washington's agricultural economy.
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