In the early 1970s in Seattle, where I attended Roosevelt High School, I entered and won an essay contest sponsored by the Washington State Department of Agriculture. I wrote about the Washington apple industry. I was awarded a six-week stay with a family in Peshastin who owned an apple orchard on the Wenatchee River.
The intent was to introduce urban teenagers to life on a working farm. Although we were guests of the family, another contest winner from Seattle and I lived in a picker’s shack and worked in the orchard. You might think this doesn’t seem like a prize, but I loved farm life — picking fruit, thinning apples, attending dances at the grange, learning to drive a stick-shift jeep, and helping with irrigation. As far as I was concerned, the project was a success: Not only did I develop a hearty appreciation for Washington’s premier fruit-growing country and its growers, but it inspired me to live rurally in the future.
The Hudson Bay Company at Fort Vancouver planted the first apple trees in what was to become Washington state. By 1847, commercial orchards from grafted saplings were established in Oregon Territory. Many apple varieties did well in Western Washington because of plentiful rain and few killing frosts. But east of the Cascades, the soil, long summer days, and cool nights produced big, crisp, and juicy apples with fewer pest and disease problems. But water and reliable transportation to distant markets were lacking.
When water from the Yakima, Wenatchee, and Okanogan Rivers was harnessed to produce irrigation, and the Northern Pacific Railway arrived in Eastern Washington, the apple industry took off. The first railroad car of apples was shipped from the Yakima Valley in 1894 and from Wenatchee in 1901.
The success of Washington apples — 60% of all apples produced in the U.S. — is due in large part to aggressive marketing and attractive presentation. Washington growers originally packed their apples, swaddled in paper, in wooden boxes with catchy labels. Labels featuring snow-capped mountains, cowboys on bucking bronchos, and women in Native American garb added to their cachet. In 1937, the Washington Apple Commission was created to help promote Washington apples, first domestically, and now to dozens of countries internationally, including China.
Washington State University started its apple breeding program in 1994 to develop new varieties suited to the unique climate of Central Washington. In 2017, the first commercial orchards were planted with WSU’s Cosmic Crisp, an eye-catching, large, dark red apple with a firm, crisp, and juicy texture that stores well.
The Methow Valley never came close to competing with the Okanogan, Wenatchee, and Yakima River valleys in apple production. From books by Sally Portman and Diana Hottell and the talk of oldtimers, the Methow Valley has always been a hardscrabble place to farm, even after the introduction of irrigation. Walter Nickell said, “The early ditches around Winthrop did little more than turn what would have been starvation ranches into at least a living.”
Disastrous floods in 1894 and 1948, the drought that began in 1915, and a severe freeze in 1968 when temperatures dropped to 50 below, wiped out most of the apple orchards in the upper Methow Valley. More recently, when temperatures dropped to 30 below three winters ago, many local orchardists, such as Richard Murray and Richard and Lynne Wasson, lost numerous trees.
North Central Washington is still one of the greatest apple-producing regions in the world. For over 100 years, Wenatchee has hosted the Apple Blossom Festival, “a time-honored tradition celebrating our community, our heritage, and the agricultural industry that makes the Wenatchee Valley such a special place.” This year it will be held at Memorial Park, April 24-May 4.
Many years after I wrote my essay about Washington apples, I traveled in the Himalayan foothills in Bhutan. On a break from trekking, I pulled out my sack lunch and rummaged through it. I latched on to a small, bright red apple with five distinctive points on its base, characteristic of the Red Delicious apple. It bore the label of the Washington State Apple Commission, a Red Delicious Apple with a banner “Washington” bisecting its center. How amazing, but not surprising, to find a Washington apple halfway around the world from my home state.
