WASHINGTON 



6187 



WASHINGTON 



The educational fund is derived from state 

 taxation, the income from public lands and 

 from state appropriations. The state maintains 

 normal schools at Cheney, Ellensburg and Bell- 

 ingham ; a state college, which includes an agri- 

 cultural college and experiment station and a 

 school of science and mechanical arts, at Pull- 

 man; and the state university, which embraces 

 departments of liberal arts, law, pharmacy, en- 

 gineering, mines and forestry, at Seattle. 



Institutions of Charity and Correction. The 

 charitable institutions of the state are under 

 the management of a state board of control 

 consisting of three members, one being ap- 

 pointed every two years by the governor. This 

 board, together with the superintendent of the 

 penitentiary, constitutes the prison board. The 

 state institutions include hospitals for the in- 

 sane at Fort Steilacoom, Medical Lake and 

 Sedro Woolley ; a home for the feeble-minded 

 near Medical Lake ; schools for the deaf and 

 blind at Vancouver; a soldiers' home at Orting 

 and a veterans' home at Port Orchard; a re- 

 formatory at Monroe; a training school at 

 Chehalis, and the penitentiary at Walla Walla. 



The Land. The state is divided by the Cas- 

 cade Mountains into two unequal sections dif- 

 fering widely in surface, climate and industry. 

 Western Washington, the smaller section, is 

 penetrated from the north for ovqr 100 miles 

 by Puget Sound, which with its deep inlets and 

 bays forms one of the finest harbor systems in 

 the world. Its basin extends south between the 

 Cascades and the Coast Range, continuing in 

 Oregon as the Willamette Valley, and it is the 

 richest and most densely-populated section in 

 Washington. The fertile, rolling fields of this 

 valley merge into the wooded foothills of the 

 Coast Range on the west. These broad moun- 

 tain masses, covered with thick forests, in the 

 south rarely exceed 2,000 feet in altitude, but 

 in tho north they rise to the lofty, rugged peaks 

 known as the Olympic Mountains. Their pre- 

 ous slopes, deep gorges and dense pine 

 forests make the region almost inaccessible. 



The Pacific coast is regular, the only large 

 inl'ts !>, me thr landlocked bays of Gray's 

 Harbor, Willupa Bay and the mouth of the 

 Columbia, half of which belongs to Washing- 

 ton. 



( 'ascade Range, nearly 100 miles in width. 

 is a region of grassy plateaus, towering peaks 

 ami ons. In the south-central region, 



mi>tv Mount Rainier lifts its crown of snow 

 14,363 feet above the sea, and near by Mount 

 Adams rises 12,470 feet and Mount Saint I 



ens 10,000 feet. In the northern end of the 

 range, Mount Baker, with an elevation of 

 10337 feet, is the highest peak. 



The western slopes of these mountains re- 

 ceive the moist sea winds and are covered with 

 magnificent forests, but the eastern slopes are 

 more open; beyond them, occupying the south- 

 ern half of Eastern Washington, there is an un- 

 dulating, treeless, fertile plain lying 1,000 feet 

 above the sea. In the extreme southeast cor- 

 ner of, the state the Blue Mountains rise above 

 the high plain. On the north the grassy plateau 

 is separated by the deep canyons of the Co- 

 lumbia and Snake rivers from the Okanogan 

 highlands, a region of low, rounded mountains 

 extending from the Cascades to Idaho. 



Rivers and Lakes. The Columbia, the great 

 river of the Northwest, enters the northeast 

 corner of Washington from British Columbia, 

 and making a great curve known as the "Big 

 Bend" flows through the eastern half of the 

 state for over 400 miles. Near the southern 

 boundary it is joined by its largest tributary, 

 the Snake River, and after making another 

 sharp bend flows west along the southern 

 boundary of the state and empties into the 

 Pacific. It cuts a deep gorge through the Cas- 

 cades, the scenic grandeur of which is almost 

 unrivaled (see OREGON, subhead Seen- 

 With its tributaries, it drains the Okanogan 

 highlands, the east slopes of the Cascades, the 

 eastern plain, the Columbia plain and the 

 southern part of the Puget Sound basin. 



Western Washington is drained by the Skagit 

 and the Nisqually rivers and many small 

 streams flowing into Puget Sound ; by the Che- 

 halis, which cuts through the Coast Range and 

 empties into the Pacific at Gray's Harbor; and 

 by the Cowlitz, a tributary of the Columbia. 



Deeply embosomed in the Cascade Moun- 

 tains, there are many beautiful, narrow lakes, 

 the largest of which. Lake Chelan, stretches 

 fifty miles l>rt\\. . ii cliffs on the eastern .slope. 



Climate. Washed by the waters < 



.nese Current of the Pacific and tempered 

 by the balmy Chinook wind, Western Wash- 

 i nut on has a mild and equable climate, resem- 

 bling that of Northern England. The summers 

 are cool, and the winters are so mild that flow- 

 ers bloom every month in the year. 1 

 moi> ng winds from the ocean are 



chilled against the Cascade Mountains and 

 cause a heavy rainfall in the western section 

 Occasionally along the coast the annual jr - 

 npit at ion in 150 inches, which is an amount 

 exceeded in few other parts of the worfd. 



