A Valley in Touch With Its Roots

As early as c1800, Euro-American trappers were the first white people to see these lands, but the Indian bands roamed freely throughout what is now central Washington State until the mid-1800s. In 1847, the St. Joseph Catholic Mission was established at Ahtanum Creek, 15 miles southwest of the present-day City of Yakima. Inevitably, other Euro-Americans began to traverse the region and settle the Pacific Northwest. Much like in the rest of the American West, the Indians could not stem this immigration and reluctantly signed the Treaty of 1855, in which title to ancestral lands in Central Washington was forfeited in exchange for life on a reservation. Disputes over the treaty provisions led to the Yakima War of 1855-56 but the United States Government prevailed. The Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, fourteen previously independent Indian groups, were placed together on the new Yakama Reservation.

Even though more land was now available for farming by settlers arriving from the East, the first of these people saw only an arid landscape that did not appear to be very suitable for the crops they had grown in the Midwest. Thus, it was cattle ranchers who exploited the potential of the Yakima Valley. The banks of the rivers and streams provided sufficient moisture for grasses to feed their herds during the winter. Mortimer Thorp, arriving in 1861, made the following assessment: “. . . the bottom lands were covered with a dense growth of rye grass twelve feet high in many places, while a luxuriant carpet of nutritious bunch grass made the sagebrush hills a veritable paradise to cattle and horses. Within five minutes after turning loose the animals, they would be completely lost sight of in the tall grass and could be found only by trailing . . .” Since the market for this beef was in the British Columbia gold fields directly north in the 1860s and 1870s, the ranchers could then just drive the cows north without having to cross a dangerous and cold mountain pass.

The Good Life: Making the Desert Bloom – A History of Irrigation In Our Valley, Read It!
The Good Life: Central WA Agricultural Museum – Preserving Our Farming Heritage, Read It!

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These ranchers soon realized that the central Washington valleys may have looked unsuitable for farming, but they actually had a rich soil and a climate that was good for the growing of fruit, vegetables, hay, alfalfa, and other marketable crops. All that was needed was water, which could, at first, be easily diverted into small ditches off the streams. By 1870, new settlers had established a small village with just two stores at the same place the Indians had earlier built a winter camp—the point where the Yakima River meets the Ahtanum Ridge. This village was called Yakima City and it became the commercial center for the ranchers and farmers. It soon had a courthouse, a thriving business district, and, by around 1880, a population of close to 2,000.

However, future prosperity was linked to the arrival of the railroad and the more extensive use of irrigation. The Northern Pacific Railroad was moving through the American West on its way to a terminus in the Puget Sound area. Yakima Valley settlers successfully lobbied for the rail line to come through the Valley and connect the small settlements to the rest of the country. The tracks began to be laid in the Valley in the early 1880s. Generally, the arrival of the new stations was a cause for celebration, but when the line reached Ahtanum Ridge and the gap formed by the Yakima River, the railroad entrepreneurs saw a problem. Railroads were willing to make the investment in new routes partly because of a public-private partnership in which the Federal Government gave the rail companies public lands adjacent to the track in return for the companies paying for the construction. Also, railroads expected to have a continuous source of revenue from freight and passenger services. The site of Yakima City was too swampy and too constrained by the nearby ridges for easy development. Thus, over the protests of the Yakima City residents, the Northern Pacific established its station several miles north where there was more developable land.

The first train arrived in what became known as North Yakima on December 24, 1884, and regular service commenced soon thereafter. In an effort to placate the Yakima City residents (and secure their future business), the railroad offered free lots in North Yakima to anyone willing to move. This resulted in the “moving of Yakima,” in which entire buildings were lifted off their foundations in Yakima City and pulled by teams to North Yakima—sometimes with businesses continuing uninterrupted throughout the process. Early historian W. D. Lyman wrote that “A farmer wishing to buy something at a store would hitch his team to the latter end of a moving building, transact his business, come out with his purchases, load his wagon, while the team followed slowly along with the building.”

By the end of 1885, the population of North Yakima had swelled to 1,200 people. A newspaper reporter wrote that the town was full of the “din made by hundreds of carpenters, the banging of pianos and the tooting of wind and stringed instruments in the numerous saloons, the rolling of the rondo and roulette balls and the cries of the bettors.” And the surrounding Yakima Valley began to grow as well. In 1886, North Yakima was incorporated and the county seat was officially moved from Yakima City to North Yakima.  The Yakima Herald printed its first edition in 1889, and its editor listed his view of the Valley’s advantages— excellent agricultural climate and soil, abundant water power, fine fruit orchard lands, superior conditions for the growing of hops, abundant stock-grazing areas, and a key location on the transcontinental rail line to Puget Sound.

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Only one other major obstacle remained before the Yakima Valley would become a famous agricultural region known for apples, sugar beets, hops, potatoes and produce of all kinds. The gravity-fed ditches built by a single farmer were not sufficient to support commercial size crop production, and expanding and maintaining an irrigation system required more capital than most individual farmers could spare. At first, adjacent farmers pooled their resources, then developers established irrigation companies and charged adjacent land owners for the delivery of water, and finally, the Federal Government responded to intense lobbying for the large scale water storage and delivery systems that only the government could afford. The passage of the Federal Reclamation Act of 1902 is a crucial factor in the history of the Yakima Valley.

Once water and transportation to markets were assured, the entire Yakima Valley benefited and matured. Hospitals, schools, churches, and all the services of modern communities were established. One of the biggest developments of the 1890s came when the state legislature established North Yakima as the site of the Washington State Fair, the first of which opened on September 24, 1894. Although perhaps no longer the major economic engines they once were, such fairs in the late 1800s and early 1900s were important places for farmers, especially, to come and learn about ways to increase their profitability. By 1910, Yakima County had more fruit trees than any county in the nation. Even the Great Depression of the 1930s spared the residents from the worst of the poverty found in some other agricultural parts of the country. In the late 1920s and 1930s, the Yakima Valley attracted large-scale emigration of people from the Dust Bowl areas of Oklahoma and Arkansas. Yakima County was fifth out of all of the counties in the U.S. for total agricultural production in the mid-1930s.

In 1941, with World War II impending, the U.S. Army established the Yakima Anti-Aircraft Artillery Range in the brown sagebrush hills northeast of the City of Yakima. Hundreds of soldiers came for artillery training in this vast uninhabited stretch of near-desert. It later became known as the Yakima Firing Center and today is called the Yakima Training Center.

The Valley continued to thrive during the post-war years, boosted by ever-expanding irrigation projects in the Yakima Valley and the Columbia Basin. A new highway over White Pass in the Cascades opened easier access to the western part of the state and the population showed a steady increase decade after decade.

These population increases included Mexican-American farm workers from Texas in the 1930s as well as the above-mentioned Dust Bowl migrants. When farm labor was scarce during World War II, the United States Government established the Bracero program which allowed Mexican citizens to come to the Yakima Valley to work. Most of these people did not settle as their families were elsewhere, but they learned that there was work to be had in the Valley. Thus, when Latino farm workers later traveled throughout the agricultural regions of the American West, the Yakima Valley became a temporary stop at one of several area migrant camps.  Changes in agricultural practices and immigration law in the 1980s encouraged many former migrant workers to settle permanently in the Yakima Valley. Over the past quarter century, therefore, the Yakima Valley has become more culturally diverse with the Latino population now approaching 50% of all residents in Yakima County.  The county’s economy is still anchored by agriculture and agricultural support businesses. The tree fruit, hops, mint, and other agricultural industries have expanded and adopted new techniques for both growing and marketing. Furthermore, because Yakima is on roughly the same latitude as the wine-growing areas of France and because wine has grown in popularity, farmers have expanded their investments in wine grapes, resulting in nearly 80 wineries in the Valley by 2009.

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