158 GUIDEBOOK OF THE WESTERN UNITED STATES. 
over for the quality of the apples produced. In many districts fruit 
raising has been carried to the extreme, and now there is a tendency 
to the greater cultivation of alfalfa and grains. One of the most 
interesting features of the agricultural development of Washington 
has been the transformation of the lava plateaus of the central and 
eastern parts of the State into great fields of wheat that stretch for 
miles without a break. The success of dry farming in this region 
made Washington one of the great wheat-raising States of the 
country. In 1909 its yield of wheat was worth $35,000,000, and its 
forage crops $17,000,000. 
Washington produces yearly metals valued at $1,000,000, but 
the chief mining industry has been and still is the mining of coal. 
Coal was first mined in 1860 in Whatcom County, and a little later 
near Issaquah, in King County, but shipment to San Francisco did 
not begin until 1871. Since that time many mines in several fields 
have been developed, and the industry of mining grew rapidly until 
it reached its maximum in 1910. It declined then because Wash- 
ington coal came into direct competition with the fuel oil of Cali- 
fornia. It is estimated that in 1913 fuel oil replaced 5,000,000 tons 
of coal in the markets tributary to Puget Sound. The value of the 
coal mined in Washington in 1913 was $9,243,137. 
The products of the State are valued about as follows: Manufac- 
tured products (1909), $220,000,000; agricultural products (1909), 
$103,000,000; mining products (1913), $17,000,000. 
Beyond the State line the railway continues along the north side 
of the valley, but the valley is not so wide as it is farther east. Apple 
orchards are numerous and in places extend along the track for 
miles without a break. 
Near milepost 76 the hills on the right (north), which are in plain 
view, take on a different aspect, and a close inspection shows that 
they are capped by a flat-lying mass of dark rock. This is the 
Yakima basalt, one of the principal lava sheets of the great Columbia 
River basalt which, together with that of nearly the same age in the 
Snake River valley of Idaho, constitutes one of the most extensive — 
lava plains in the world. The lava flooded all of central and south- 
ern Washington and large areas in Oregon and Idaho, and the traveler 
will see little else in the way of hard rocks from Spokane to the east 
foot of the Cascade Mountains. It flowed against the mountains on 
the east, and fiery streams extended up the valleys heading in this 
range. Although some of the lava lies east of Coeur d’Alene Lake, 
it 1s uncertain how far it went in the Spokane Valley, for it has been 
covered by the glacial gravel. The exposure just noted is the first 
to be seen by a traveler coming from the east. 
