Pullman herald. [volume] (Pullman, W.T. [Wash.]) 1888-1989, 1920-11-26
CHICAGO DAILY
TELLS OF PALOUSE
Newspaper Describes Dust Dunes OF
the Palouse Country" as Rich,
Productive Soil
Chicago Daily News)

Consider the fertility OF rich Amer
lea and some of the sources from
which that fertility springs. There
is, for example, the Palouse country,
From the gaunt flanks of the west
ern Bitter Roots a lumpy terrain of
wind-blown hills stretches across
northern Idaho and eastern Washing
ton a hundred miles or more to the
Columbia river. 1t is a rich area
spread like a crinkled rug behind a
wilderness of noun tains. and with it's
wealthy hills and significantly black
soil it is called by the residents, some
what magniloquently the Inland EN-
pire. More properly it is the Palouse
country, the creation of the Palouse
wind.
Never was Dutchman more indebt-
ed to the winds for pumping dry his
portion of the sea, grinding his corn
and supporting his general comfort
than are the people of the Palouse.
1t is a wind-borne land and it is still
in process of creation. This farm
patched country of prosperous home
steads, of fat little towns, of orchards
where prunes and western apples wax
/ to ungainly girth and of poplar
guarded roads twining among the
hills is a prosperous pocketful of
America. The golden simmer of
wheat fields spreads across the hills.
/ Towns sit negligently here and there,
each pointing proudly to handsome
| school house. as medieval towns
point to the cathedral, and filling
with grain meantime the tall cylin-
ders of concrete from which freight
trains now and then lumber away. 1t
/ is a region grown somewhat past the
! boom and BOBBY stage into settled
prosperity.
/ Westward a hundred miles or more
or the grim and arid plains of the
Columbia the Palouse region literally
| takes its rise. The lava and other
rock of these plains break down I'M
der wind and weather in finer and
finer disintegration and at last are
dust. Then comes the west wind and
the dust storm starts it's travels. The
muddy colored cloud sweeps east
ward, reaching long tentacles before
il, and breaks with much grit and
blither upon the slowly rising slopes
of the Bitter Root mountains. Here
rain falls, plants grow and the dust
is pinned to earth in slow accumula-
tons. Three inches to the century
are piled up Since the land was last
glaciated so to so feet of fertile dust
has covered the Palouse region.
1t is a land of dust dunes. Each
hill, with its slow western slope, its
CT est and it's abrupt decline on the
lee side toward the east, is a billow
of dust on which men grow their
wheat. The soil is thick; there are
few water courses: there is no leach
ing of the soil. Like huge sponges
the hills soak up the winter rains and
return them gradually during the
summer. Dry farming is the Palouse
method, but the crops are heavy.
All things in the Palouse are crea-
lures of the dust and of the yellow
rains and the gray SHOWS. The tall
pines and Douglas frs back in the
canyons and on the ridges of the
range, or cresting an isolated butte
look down on dust fed crops, or rural
homes and American content. Strong
limbed boys and girls battle through
the wind to school They do not
mind, for they, too, are children of
the dust.