This photo was taken last month, out the window of the commuter plane, as I flew into Wenatchee.
As more out-of-town people are finding me through the internet, I realize how difficult the word "Wenatchee" must be to pronounce for someone who has only seen it printed and not pronounced. So, for those of you out there who have never actually heard the word Wenatchee pronounced, this article (with a brief history of the area) is for you.
Local Native American (Indian) lore claims that the name Wenatchee (pronounced: Wa-Nat-Chee) derives from a poetic description of the area meaning, "robe of the rainbow." The valley's lush panorama is poetic majesty indeed. Situated in the geographic center of Washington State, Wenatchee is down in a valley at 600 feet above sea level, being bordered on the West and Northwest by the Cascades Mountain Range. These beautiful and dramatic peaks rise to elevations of just under 10,000 feet.
Plentiful irrigation water, run-off from the majestic Cascade mountains and drawn from the Wenatchee and Columbia rivers, allows farmer's crops to flourish along river banks and throughout the surrounding areas. Considered a desert climate, rich in volcanic soils, the Wenatchee Valley was too dry for significant commercial crop production until the early 1900's when irrigation systems were built. Wenatchee residents enjoy roughly 300 days of sunshine throughout the year. Even in the winter, when it's cold and snowy, we often get some sunshine during the days.
Long known as the Apple Capital of the World, Wenatchee's agriculture industry came to prominence at the turn of the twentieth century, with the construction of the Highline Canal and the inauguration of the Columbia River Irrigation Project. Once irrigated, the countryside was planted with fruit trees, and Wenatchee quickly became one of the world's largest producers and shippers of apples. Although early apple plantings consisted mostly of Red Delicious, Golden Delicious and Winesap apples, today's crops are much more diverse... including Granny Smith, Fuji, Gala, Cameo and many more varieties. Today there are more than 170,000 acres of orchards (primarily apples, pears and cherries) located at the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. Once harvested, these crops are shipped to destinations around the world via truck, train, sea going vessel or airplane.
Early in the history of the region, Native Americans hunted and gathered as they migrated across these plains, establishing scattered camps along the Columbia River. Plateau Indians utilized the Wenatchee Valley as their hunting and fishing grounds for thousands of years before the first white settlers arrived. Just after the turn of the nineteenth century, when Lewis and Clark traveled through the Columbia River valley in 1803-1805, they mentioned the word "Wenatchee" in their journal, hearing of the river and the tribe living along its banks. Not long after the Lewis and Clark Expedition, fur traders and Catholic missionaries trickled into the area. Theirs remained the only population for more than fifty years, until prospectors arrived in the early 1870s, hoping to capitalize on the gold rush sweeping the west.
Between 1880 and 1893, the first major industry in what would soon become Chelan County was being forged: the railroads, which would link the continental northwestern territories with eastern and Midwestern United States.
The first substantive farming pursuit in Wenatchee was undertaken some ten- to fifteen years before even the most modest irrigation ditches were built by the pioneering homesteaders who began to populate the area between 1880 and 1900. Apple growing was not initiated by those who migrated westward during the gold rush, but by a single enterprising and adventurous immigrant who had come to the eastern shores of this country from Europe.
Born in Germany in 1835, Philip Miller was still in his teens when he emigrated, with his parents, to the United States in 1854. The family settled in Pennsylvania, but young Miller soon developed an unquenchable wanderlust and headed westward. For a brief time he took up residence in Minnesota, where he plied his trade as a carpenter. Those skills served well enough to enable Miller to secure employment wherever he went; thus, the years preceeding the Civil War found the young German immigrant roaming again, this time toward the South.
Miller had taken up temporary residence in Missouri when, on the night of 12 April, 1861, the Confederates began the bombardment of Fort Sumter. By the time the acrid smoke had cleared over the port city of Charleston, South Carolina, Miller had enlisted to serve the Union in Company C, Third Regiment of the Home Guards from his newly adopted state. During the next four years as an active janissary, he is recorded to have distinguished himself at two of the principal engagements, which would buttress the tenacious troops under General Ulysses Grant: Fort Donelson and Shiloh. Successfully mustered out in 1864, Miller set forth with renewed wanderlust into the unchartered northwestern territories. Arriving in Montana in 1865, he practiced his carpentry vocation and began to prospect for minerals. During that first year, Miller had remarkable mining success at a place called Confederate Gulch. He panned out five thousand dollars in that single year alone--a veritable fortune for those times. This proved enough incentive for him to remain in Montana for nearly seven years, before the desire for adventure evinced itself once more.
Miller continued west almost as far as he could travel, this time relocating to Ellensburg, Washington. For a couple of years he tried his hand at raising livestock before purchasing the claim of an earlier settler to a very large section of land in the Wenatchee Valley. There may have been more than two hundred acres in that intial claim. He also obtained the water right to nearby Squilchuck Creek, and completed an irrigation ditch, which still bears his name. Employing the tactic of "squatter's rights," Miller eventually succeeded in more than doubling his land holdings over the course of the next fifteen years.
After having secured his claim in Wenatchee, Miller set about building a large enough homestead where he could continue to breed livestock. He planted crops of alfalfa and hay on the initial acreage, along with one other, experimental, yield: the rooted seedlings of apple trees, which he had brought up from Ellensburg. The saplings acclimated well to the semi-arid habitat and to the lava-rich soil on the valley floor. Miller's apple trees matured so steadily as to demonstrate the potential for a new and lucrative business.
And... the rest, as they say, IS history!
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