The Yakima herald. [volume] (North Yakima, W.T. [Wash.]) 1889-1914, 1897-06-24
PRIDE OF WASHINGTON
A Well Known Writer Thinks Yakima
the Banner Town Of the State.
GREAT CHANGES IN A SHORT TIME
The Grand Genius Displayed by , I'm
Wardner His Many Ventures,
Fortunes ana Losses Various
Tricks Prac,tced on Barkeepers.

Tricks Practiced on Barkeepers.
+. V. Smalley in the Northwest Maya
zine: In all Washington there is nov
no handsomer country town than North
Yakima; yet, no longer ago than 1885, |
drove across an absolutely desert country
startling the jackrabbts from an un-
broken expanse of sage brush where
this town, with its three or four thousand
people, now stands. Everything accom-
piished since in building homes and
planting orchards and vineyards aud
hop fields, has been made possible solely
by irrigation. The poplars and cotton
woods which shade the streets seem to
be thirty or forty years old, but not one
OF them dates further back than 1886.
Wonderfully rapid is the growth of all
kinds OF trees and shrubs in this climate
of much sunshine and little rain, when
the abundant waters from the streams
are diverted upon the soil. The town has
no appearance Of newness. The bios
soming fruit trees the lilac bushes cover
ed with bloom, the trim gardens. the
vines and shrubs in the dooryards, all
speak of an old occupancy Of the place,
and it is hard for an eastern man to be.
lieye that there vas not even the vestige
of a settlement here until 1886.
Prior to the advent of the railroad,
there was little village for miles away
hemmed in by the steep bills on one side,
by the river on another, and by alkaline
bottom-lands on third. The railroad
people determined that this was no site
for an important town. They set to work
and laid ont a townsite on broad, high
ground farther up the valley, where the
Natcheez river joins the Yakima. They
planted trees, conducted water along all
the streets, and then invited the people in
old town to move their buildings up, of
iering them lots free in the new place.
Most Of the Yakima City people accepted
the offer, and so North Yakima was
started. The old town still exists, with
few hundred people, but it is merely a
suburb Of the fiourishing new town.
The special charm of North Yakima
and its surroundings is found in success
full horticulture. The farms are nearly
all small, and the chief reliance OF the
farmers is evidently their fruit-apples,
nparhpG nInn1S anI nLar.;na
The village houses have large grounds
with lawns, gardens and fruit trees, and
just outside the well built section is belt
of little places, of one to five acres each,
planted mainly in orchards. Then come
larger farms with hop fields, alfalfa fields
and big orchards. The mountains that
rim the valley in. forming basin five
miles across and thirty miles long, are
bare of trees and covered with bunch
grass, which feeds large bands Of sheep.
You see few homes that indicate wealth,
but there are great many places that
show the possession by the occupants OF
what in country Gown is a comfortable
income; and the luxuriance of the growth
OF foliage, fruits and flowers, makes these
| places very attractive. Their owners
have taken the bare desert and in very
few years, with the help of water and
sunshine, have transformed it into a
region OF beauty and comfort.
A good friend took me out for fifteen
mile drive through the valley. | noted
great progress, during the recent years OF
hard times, in the number of new orch.
ard farms opened and the area of land
brought under ditch. Save here and
there quarter section owned by some
eastern Spectator and held for a high
price, the entire basin is now pretty well
covered with settlement. Even across
the Yakima in the Mckee country, high
above the range OF the irrigation canals
artesian wells supply a constant flow oil
water and prosperous settlement has
grown up there.
North Yakima does not need any more
merchants, on lawyers, or doctors. or
preachers, or newspapers, or real estate
agents, but there is still room for more
fruit farmers in the surrounding valley
and country, and in the town there
should be cannery to put up the fruits
and vegetables, grown close at hand, and
save the people the extra cost on the can
ned stuff they now bring from California
and from the east. Here is an excellen,
opening for practical man who under.
stands the business, and such a man can
count on liberal cooperation from the
citizens OF the place.