Sketch of Fruit-Growing in Pacific Northwest. 181 



a land of small holdings and intensive culture, where an increasing amount of 

 attention will be given to catering to local markets and to the culture of special 

 crops. The Inland Region, on the other hand, is a land of large holdings and 

 extensive culture: IGO to 1.000 acre farms predominate. Staple crops and 

 general purpose varieties replace the special crops and more local varieties of the 

 Coast Region. Land is cheap and the soil is very rich and easy to clear for crop- 

 ping. The commercial idea rules. 



The Inland Valleys are now and probably always will be the chief commer- 

 cial peach district of the Northwest, and one of its most important apple and 

 pear districts. They have an elevation of 300 to 1,000 feet, and a rainfall of from 

 4 to lo inches. The summer days are often quite hot, but the nights are always 

 fool. The winters are sometimes bleak, but never very cold. Most of the country is 

 naturally a sage brush desert, but the soil is very rich and needs only the addition 

 of water by irrigation to become transformed into a garden. Yields of over 

 ■eight tons of alfalfa per acre are common, and oats often run 80 bushels 

 per acre. Most of the irrigated land in the Northwest is in the valleys of the 

 Columbia and its tributaries. The area under ditcli is increasing very rapidly, 

 and will increase still more rapidly when the government's plan for constructing 

 irrigation reservoirs is put into operation. There are 3,000,000 acres of arid land 

 in Washington alone, 2,000,000 of which can be irrigated successfully. The soil 

 of the irrigated districts is mostly a loose, deep, volcanic ash, which is very easily 

 worked. Most of the irrigation at present is from canals, which are taken out of 

 a river at some distance above the land to be irrigated. Some of these canals 

 are extensive enterprises. The Sunnyside canal in Wasliington is 114 miles long 

 and irrigates 285,000 acres of land. 



The special factors which give the Iniand valleys pre-eminence in commercial 

 orcharding are the low cost of producing fruit, and the excellence of the fruit. 

 Equally good fruit can be raised here on land costing from $20 to .$30 an acre as 

 west of the mountains on land costing $100 per acre. The low humidity of these 

 valleys gives a very large per cent of clear days, the average being about 200 

 perfectly clear days in a year. The summers are ractically cloudless. This 

 gives fruit of very high color, which is the chief item in the commercial value of 

 fruit. Fungous diseases do not thrive in this dry climate. l)ut insect pests, espe- 

 cially the peach twig borer and the codling moth, are often very serious. North 

 Yakima, which shipped 1.000, car loads of fruit in 1902. Wenatchee which shipped 

 225 car loads in the same year, and Walla Walla, which shipped 500 car loads, are 

 illustrations of the extent to which fruit-growing has become the leading industry 

 in certain sections. Yakima County alone shipped ii!750,000 worth of fruit in 

 1001. This county was a sage brush desert twenty-five years ago. 



Peaches are now picked in the Inland Valleys when fully mature, put in Bohn 

 refrigerator cars and shipped to New York City. The temperature of these cars 

 is about 36 degrees at the floor and 42 degrees at the top, and does not vary over 

 one degree during transit. After a two-weeks' trip these peaches come out in 

 fine condition, and are sold in New York City at good prices. 



The probable lines of development in the Pomology of the Inland Valleys will 

 be in the growing of peaches, apples, prunes, apricots and pears. Tlie Inland 

 Valley fruit growers are a keen class of men. They are fruit specialists and know 

 their business. There are few regions where commercial orcharding has had a 

 higher development and wliere the growers are so uniformly business-like in 

 their methods. 



III. THE FItL'IT-GEOWIXG OF THE IXLAXD DrL.\NDS. 



This is the great wheat-growing and grazing section of the Northwest. It has 

 an altitude of from 1,000 to 3,000 feet, and an annual rainfall of from 12 to 25 

 inches. The summers are short and never excessively hot. The nights are always 

 ■cool. In winter this region is rather bleak, but extremely cold weather and heavy 

 snowfalls are rare. A large part of this region is a succession of low, rolling hills, 

 and very ricli. Local Indian tribes explain how this came to be. According to 



