THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
218 
a pioneer in the development of the nursery business in the 
west, and in the year 1903 he located on the reservation for the 
pur]Dosc of giving a practical test to his belief that the condi¬ 
tions were suitable to the production of first-class nursery 
stock. Out of his experiments and from a very modest 
beginning there has grown up in the city of Toppenish, the 
Washington Nursery Company, the largest institution of its 
kind in the state of Washington and the second largest on the 
coast. Mr. McDonald is still the president and manager of 
the growing department of the company; Mr. F. A. Wiggins, 
the vice-]Drcsident, handles the sales end of the business, and 
Mr. C. J. Atwood, the secretary-treasurer, heads the big office 
force which looks after the manifold details of the big business 
which the company, annually transacts. 
Toppenish where the head offices are located is a growing 
little city, typically western, and having a population of 
approximately 2,500. In addition to excellent transportation 
facilities, Toppenish has the other modem utilities usually 
found in enterprising and prosperous communities, including 
electric lighting service, municipal water plant, paved busi¬ 
ness streets, excellent grade and high schools, numerous 
churches, with a business district built entirely of brick and 
concrete. 
It is the trade metropolis and chief distributing center for 
the reservation and its people look forward to the completion 
of the big government irrigation project as the starting point 
of a new era of growth that will double and probably quad¬ 
ruple the present population within a very brief period. 
S.S. BAILEY GATZERT IN CASCADE RAPIDS, COLUMBIA RIVER 
THE ROUTE OF THE “NURSERYMEN’S SPECIAL” 
THROUGH WASHINGTON AND OREGON 
By F. A. WIGGINS, Toppenish, Wash. 
The great State of Washington with its diversity of alti¬ 
tude and climate, its two mountain ranges, the Cascades and 
the Coast range, its immense inland seas, Puget Sound and 
other waters of the West, and its lakes and rivers, which 
latter include the mighty Columbia and its tributaries, con¬ 
tains within its borders such apparently unlimited wealth of 
agriculture and mine and forest and fisheries that to describe 
each in detail would burden the reader. 
Its mountains are yet covered with virgin forests, although 
for over fifty years man has hewn at them. Its mountain 
peaks are covered with perpetual snow which feed the rivers ‘ 
throughout the long waim summers, and which latter float 
the logs to the lumber camps or irrigate the lands of the vast 
Inland Empire east of the Cascades and the rapids of which 
furnish power for the multiplied industries of the rapidly 
expanding population. 
Nature has indeed been kind to this great state and its 
people. In fertile soil, in diversified climate, never severe, in 
wonderful scenery of mountain, river, sea and plain; in fact, 
in all that goes to make for happy contented homes and 
abundant prosperity, Washington seems to lack noth¬ 
ing. 
The “American Nurserymen’s Special’’ enters the state 
from the east and makes its first stop at Spokane, the great 
radial center of the vast Inland Empire made up of Northern 
Idaho and Eastern Washington. Here lumber, and mine, 
and cement and fruit and dairy and grain rival each other in 
importance as wealth producers, all supplemented and made 
more or less possible by the enormous power development of 
the Spokane and other streams which have covered much of 
this territory with a network of power wires and interurban 
lines. 
