The Garden Valley of the Territory
A correspondent ventures up the White River to survey the booming hops trade, the friction between farmers and the local cheese factory, and the desperate need for a railroad.
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.
White River Valley commences at the mouth of the Duwamish River and extends for a distance of twenty-one miles up White River. The average width of the valley is about five miles, most of which is rich bottom land susceptible to the highest degree of cultivation. There are few, if any, large bodies of land owned by one person, like in California; the expression of 'land-grabber' is not applicable to the farmers of White River. The increase of acreage in hops for the last two years will average about 20 percent, and the total will reach about 1,000 acres. The cheese factory at Langston's will commence active operations on the 1st of May. When the factory was started, the farmers bound themselves to furnish the milk of a certain number of cows for three years at 85 cents per hundred pounds, and some will not be sorry when the contract expires, as they think they can do better. One of the greatest necessities at the present time is a railroad. The uncertainty and slowness of steamer travel is sorely felt, and all agree that if a railroad was built, it would enable them to supply the city with many articles of produce that are now allowed to go to waste for the want of proper facilities.
“The uncertainty and slowness of steamer travel is sorely felt, and all agree that if a railroad was built... it would enable them to supply the city with many articles of produce that are now allowed to go to waste.”
The struggle for efficient transport and the tension between independent farmers and centralized industrial agricultural buyers defined the development of the Duwamish and White River valleys in the 1880s. Today, those same floodplains are the center of a different kind of logistics battle, as regional planners grapple with balancing warehouse development, housing, and the preservation of the remaining agricultural land.
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