Commercial Orchards in Whitman County

by David Benscoter & Linda Hackbarth

In the late 1800s and early 1900s the two major farming crops in Whitman County were wheat and fruit. With the arrival of the railroads in the 1880s, it became profitable to raise and ship fruit. Large and small commercial orchards were planted throughout Whitman County. Fruits of all varieties, including apples were sent across the states and to many foreign countries from places like Colfax, Elberton, Farmington, Garfield, Hooper, Oakesdale, Palouse, Pine City, Pullman, Rosalia, and Uniontown.

Another whole contingency of orchards thrived along the Snake River at Wawawai and Almota. They banded together in 1890 to form the Snake River Fruit Growers Association. In the early years fruit was boxed and sent down the Snake River by steamer to Riparia where it could be loaded onto rail cars heading to Spokane Falls. Arrangements made by one of the commission merchants would transfer the boxes to main line trains heading to the major terminals. Much of the fruit grown along the river were peaches and pears but many apples were also among the mix. One of the largest growers at Almota, L. M. Ringer, had an extensive nut orchard.

An article was written on the fruit prospects for Whitman County in 1894.[1] George Ruedy reported there were one hundred people with small commercial fruit orchards in the Colfax postal district alone. “These will produce over 2,000 tons for market, besides family supplies,” he added.

The article spoke to fruit production in general. D. M. Holt, Wawawai, claimed about two thousand tons of fruit would be raised for market by thirteen growers near him in a district largely devoted to peaches, of which there are over 20,000 bearing trees, and about 10,000 each of prune, plum and apple trees. Henry Spalding (son of Rev. Henry Spaulding) estimated that thirteen growers from the Almota vicinity would produce two hundred tons. Others like W. M. Martzell, Endicott, estimated a production of five hundred tons by twelve growers and John Cummings, Farmington, estimated over three tons for his district.

Even though wheat developed as the major crop in the county, the price of wheat planting and harvesting equipment raised to such levels that small homesteads (160 acres) were faced with a grim reality:

1) buy more land to lower the equipment cost per acre

2) sell their land to one of the expanding wheat farms, or

3) plant an alternative crop

For many, growing fruit was the logical, non-wheat crop. Apple production became a choice many farmers made. An article published in The Coast magazine by Superior Court Judge S. J. Chadwick bragged, “The apples raised on the higher lands of Whitman County are the best in the world…The best exhibits of fruit ever made at the Spokane Interstate Fair are those made by Whitman County… An apple raised without irrigation is superior to the irrigated product.” [2]

In the same magazine issue the editor of the Colfax Gazette, provided additional support for the apple industry of the day pointed out that carloads of apples are being shipped out as fast as rail cars can be obtained. “From four to seven hundred dollars have been taken from one acre this year,” he wrote, and “(people) can buy raw land from $25 to $60 per acre.” [3] Profits have been so great that an orchard near Garfield purchased in 1906 produced a net profit equal to the price the owner paid for the land. By 1908, it was reported that Whitman County had 4,794 acres in fruit trees and that half of this number were apples.

Apples were packed for shipment in wooden boxes before being loaded onto rail cars. Each box was labeled with the variety of apple inside as well as the quality of fruit. According to the Washington Apple Commission, the Western Apple Box was standardized in 1897 to be 10.5 inches deep, 11.5 inches wide and 18 inches long. Most Eastern growers were still packing apples in bushels, pecks, and barrels. By 1910, a measure was brought before Congress to adopt a national standard for apple box size. Box making was an essential trade in the early 1900’s when a skilled box maker could make up to 1,350 boxes per day at a piece rate of 75¢ per 10.[4]

George Johnson Orchards

One of the first recorded commercial orchards in Whitman County was owned by George S. Johnson. In 1883 he had over three hundred fruit trees near the town of Ewartsville, approximately nine miles southwest of Pullman. The town no longer exists but there are still fruit trees on Johnson’s homestead. On right is a small article that appeared in a newspaper called The Weekly Vidette in April 1883.

T. D. Ferguson Orchards

T. D. Ferguson was born and educated in Tennessee, obtained his medical degree from the University of Tennessee, and began his medical practice in that state. In 1893, he and his wife moved to Colfax, Washington. Over the next twenty years he established a medical practice in Colfax and was described as “a leading practitioner” in the county in the book An Illustrated History of Whitman County, State of Washington, 1901.[5]

Ferguson also began investing in orchards. By 1910 he had over two hundred acres of land northwest of Colfax called the Palouse River Ranch. Much of the land was on both the north and south banks of the Palouse River. Ferguson also was an active participant in the Whitman County Fair exhibits each fall. Between 1900 and 1910, he submitted Whitman apples to the county fair.

He lived in a home on North Mill Street in Colfax until his death in 1908. Following his passing, Ferguson’s widow Florence, built a home next door at 504 North Mill Street. This home is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Below is part of a Whitman County Plat Map from 1910 showing property owners including T. D. Ferguson. Ferguson’s property can be found in sections 2, 3, 9 and 10, on both the north and south side of the Palouse River. Some old apple trees have been found in the area circled on the map. (Also note the location of the Zelle Beebe property.)

Ben Andrus is the current owner of the property south of the Palouse River that still contains apple trees. He is cooperating in the search for lost apples.

Dr. Ferguson died October 2, 1908, after an extended illness. A member of several local fraternal organizations, he was buried with Masonic honors.

Zell Bebbe Orchards

Zell Bebbe owned a cigar shop in Colfax and grew apples on the west side of Colfax.

Bebbe grew Gravenstein apples, a popular early fall variety, and sold at least one railroad boxcar full of Gravensteins in 1903.[6]

In 1903, Bebbe was elected to a committee to explore the possible building of a cold storage facility for fruits grown in Whitman County. R. C. Judson, an agent for the Oregon Railroad & Navigation Company, visited Colfax to encourage the local fruit growers to organize such a venture.[7]

John F. Kelley Orchards

John Kelley arrived in Whitman County in 1872, having previously lived in New York and California. His initial intention was to get into the stock business so his acquired as much land as he could through the use of his homestead rights, pre-emption claims, timber rights, and purchasing directly from the railroad. By 1901 Kelley held around two thousand acres, much of which was rented.[8]

Kelley developed a fifty-acre orchard located three miles south of Oakesdale between Oakesdale and Belmont. (T19N, R45E, sec 30 along State Route 27) The orchard contained apple varieties such as Blue Permain, Maidens Blush, Grimes Golden, Jonathon, Wagner, Winter Banana, and Rome Beauty.[9] Although the orchards are now gone the homestead and outbuildings remain and two apple trees still exist on the property. The varieties of these apple trees have not been established yet but their identity will be pursued.

William E. Doty Orchards

Doty was born in Pennsylvania on June 7, 1822. As an adult he moved around the Midwest, farming in Ohio, Indiana, Iowa and Kansas before moving to Washington Territory in 1876. After marrying Susanna Crull January 7, 1849, the couple raised thirteen children, some who followed their parents to the Northwest.

William Doty, a civil war veteran, homesteaded a quarter section of land three miles west of Pullman (along today’s Brayton Rd) which was registered in 1883. (T15N, R44E, Sec. 26) He planted three orchards that included apples, plums, cherries and pears. In 1884 and 1895 he added an additional 120 acres in the adjoining section, as did his son Abraham. All these orchards are gone now. A daughter Sarah and husband Phoenix Nichols settled just to the north in Section 24. Another daughter Mary married neighbor Henry Lingg.

Edna Haxton Gingrich, whose family purchased the Doty property in 1906, later recalled facts she learned about him, such as building three separate homes about one half mile apart for his large family and planting three orchards. She also noted a vinegar plant on North Grand Avenue in Pullman where extra apples were taken in the fall.[10]

Doty died in Pullman April 20, 1912.

Charles Moys Orchards

Charles Richard Moys was born October 29,1848, in England. At the age of three his family came to America, but not before his father, a mason, laid the final brick atop Big Ben. The family first lived in Chicago and then Kansas, where Charles married Emma Croyle on July 19, 1875. He came to Whitman County with his wife and two infant sons in 1878.[11]

Charles was attracted to the area after hearing glowing reports from his parents who had traveled to San Francisco by train and then by ship to Portland before coming to Washington Territory near what would later become Pullman, Washington. They described the new land as having a mild climate and abundant crops. They traveled cross country as part of a 104-wagon train. Their journey included several harrowing river crossings. The final adventure occurred when the family crossed the Snake River at Almota, arriving at his father’s home August 12, 1878, with their wagon and three horses.

Resting a mere three days Moys filed papers on his 160 acres adjacent to his parents (T14N, R43E, Sec 4). A small sod shack served as home for their first winter before he added a home, barn, outbuildings, and a ten-acre orchard. Charles Moys granddaughter, Edna Gingrich, wrote about the journey and how he planted an orchard from nursery stock she believed he purchased from Salem, Oregon. These trees included apples, peaches, pears, apricots, plums, and cherries. [12]

Moys combined fruit and cattle businesses. Charles acquired ownership of his father’s homestead in 1888. He gave his property the name Box Four Ranch after the brand he used on his livestock. The couple had three more children for a total of five. The Moys Farm became one of many farms honored in 1987 as a Centennial Farm. The current owners George and Dorotha Moys Gault and their daughters still use the original barn and one built in 1893.[13]

Moys won first place for the best seedling apples at the annual Whitman County Fruit and Agriculture Fair in 1895. He named this apple Almota. It was praised as “an apple of very good quality.”[14] He submitted the apple to the USDA in 1894. Drawings of this variety were undertaken by two artists, although it is identified as being submitted by C.R. Mays of Pullman, Whitman County, Washington, instead of C. R. Moys.

IMAGE | USDA Pomological

Watercolor Collection

Charles passed away May 25, 1924, and was buried at the Colfax Cemetery. Emma eventually moved to Pullman, Washington, where she died in 1940 at the age of eighty-two.

J. B. Holt Orchards

James B. Holt first arrived in Whitman County in 1871 when, as he later recalled, there were but sixty-two people in the entire county. He and his parents (Alfred and Harriet Holt) moved from Oregon where they had spent the previous five years. They settled three miles south of Colfax along a creek his father tagged “Rebel Flat” as they had survived the ravages of post-war times in Marietta, Georgia and retained some southern sympathies. Their intention was to raise stock. Jim helped his dad build an 18’ x 22’ cabin at Rebel Flat. The winter of 1874-75 proved hard on both cattle and sheep. Only fifteen of their hundred head of cattle survived, forcing them out of that business.

On October 28, 1875, Jim married Henrietta Tabor, the daughter of Wawawai orchardist John Tabor. The couple first began housekeeping at Union Flat and Holt continued to run sheep but decided to relocate to Wawawai in 1881 and join his father-in-law in the orchard business. He bought one thousand acres of land, put 150 acres into orchards, and formed the Snake River Fruit Growers Association. Again hard times hit during the Panic of ’93. Holt turned over his holdings to William LaFollette.[15]

The couple moved to Albion for two years before settling in Pullman in 1896. He began a new twenty-two-acre apple orchard just to the west of town along the old Pullman highway to Colfax. He grew such varieties as Rome Beauty, Jonathan, Wagener, Ben Davis and Gano. In 1910 he marketed 7,000 boxes of the first-grade apples. Holt also had a small orchard of cherries located eleven miles from Pullman that netted him $800.00 per acre and a large orchard at Wawawai with 8,000 trees.

Holt advertised his patented “J. B. Holt Fruit Picking Sack” in various 1914 editions of Better Fruit Magazine, selling for $1.75 each – f.o.b. Pullman. He had several agents selling the product which he claimed didn’t bruise the fruit and allowed pickers to reach the highest limbs without inconvenience.

On Friday, October 8, 1921, the Pullman Herald announced that J.B. Holt decided to trade his Pullman orchard for a 240-acre farm in northeastern Montana near the town of Baylor. The farm was under a 3-year lease agreement, so Holt planned to move to Spokane until the lease ran out. Unfortunately the deal fell through when Holt learned the Montana offer was not as represented.

McGregor Company Orchards

The tiny town of Hooper, Washington, became headquarters for the McGregor Land and Livestock Company in the early 1900s. The “home ranch” was situated just south of the Palouse River. Already well-known across the Northwest for their sheep raising prowess, the McGregor brothers decided to expand into the orchard and land promotion business.

Efforts to bring irrigation to this arid land began in 1892. Tacoma businessmen and eastern investors organized the Palouse Irrigation Ditch Company with $500,000 in capital stock. The plan was to irrigate some 400,000 acres between Hooper and Pasco by building a wooden flume system drawing water from the Palouse River. After barely getting a start the company failed in the Panic of 1893. The Palouse project was reorganized in 1897 with the help of eastern investors, becoming the major irrigation plan in the state. This too failed when the Secretary of the Interior determined it was too expensive for federal reclamation funding, so engineers turned their attention to the Yakima Valley.[16]

Buoyed by the passage of the federal Newlands Act in 1902, the flume concept was resurrected in 1907 by a private Seattle-based group under the name Palouse Irrigation & Power Company. They rebuilt existing flumes and ditches. Two Dutch companies also provided financing and attempted to market the sale of small 5 to 12-acre tracts to many newcomers from as far away as Seattle, Florida, and New York. Land contracts included a covenant indicating the purchaser agreed to be the actual settler, to improve the property, and to set the land out to orchard. Soon the town of Palouse City mushroomed into existence. Even though Archie and Alex McGregor lent money to Palouse Irrigation, the company fell into receivership.

The McGregors began the process of clearing land of rocks and planting trees in 1905. They incorporated their sheep ranch – naming it the McGregor Land and Livestock Company. It was designed as a land business to supplement their income from sheep, wheat, and merchandizing. They also began developing their own orchards. The most popular varieties of apples, peaches, apricots, cherries, and plums were planted, including Winesap, Winter Banana, and Starking apples. McGregors built a packing house and dug artesian wells. Together with apples they bought from the smaller farmers, the brothers marketed Glen Ian Apples (a name suggested by John McGregor) which were packed and shipped by rail from Hooper by the Oregon-Washington Railroad and Navigation Company (OWR&N).[17]

McGregor Land and Livestock purchased the Palouse Irrigation & Power Company in 1917 for $70,000 including fifteen miles of flumes and almost 8000 acres of land. The four brothers, Archie, Peter, John, and Alex made additional improvements. The irrigation flume began east of Hooper and extended to Washtucna, bringing water to the fields and orchards. Portions are still visible.[18]

Company records include a letter dated July 23, 1919, from A.J. Judd, Dow City, Iowa to H.R. Rudd at the company headquarters in Hooper. Judd indicated that railroads in Iowa would be interested in contracting for 6000 boxes of apples to distribute along their lines. Judd, Director of the U.S. Railroad Association, believed he could handle 25 carloads of apples if shipped east. “Wire your best offer,” he wrote.[19]

The apple business lasted into the 1930s but McGregor Company, based in Colfax, Washington, continues its operations today.

Burrell Investment Company Orchards

Located nine miles west of Colfax at Diamond, Washington, a stop along the O.R. & N Railroad line, this orchard contained 220 acres of apple trees. Walter F. Burrell owned the orchard, part of a larger business operation. Burrell was one of eight men to organize the First National Bank in Colfax. The Burrell Investment Company had an office on Main Street in Colfax.

The orchard was partially on property homesteaded by Quinland Dimond along Rebel Flat. When the small town of Diamond developed nearby, the spelling of Quinland’s surname changed, adding an A so it spelled like the gem. Dimond came to Whitman County in 1871, first settling in Pleasant Valley before moving to Rebel Flat in 1874. He planted several acres of apple trees on his one-hundred-acre farm and proved that apples could be produced commercially. Dimond never recovered from the depression of 1893, eventually losing his home and property before moving to Ferry County.[20]

Burrell Investment Company decided to expand their business by developing orchards. They bought forty-five acres of Dimond’s land and an additional parcel. Trees were planted in 1899 on fifty-seven acres. Another eighty-three acres of trees were added by 1907. The man part of the orchard stretched a quarter mile wide and ran uphill to the north for more than a mile. It is part of a long, L-shaped farm. Two other parcels on the opposite side of the valley were also planted with apple trees, making a total of two hundred twenty acres. R. H. Lacey was hired to be general manager with the help of Adolph Grob. J. N. Pocock , Jr., the farm superintendent, lived on the property with his family.[21]

Burrell Orchards had several buildings on the farm. The packing house was doubled in size in 1907 to 40 x 96 feet. Gas-powered lamps producing 1200 “candle power” illuminated the work area for the sixteen packers. The loft contained packing boxes furnished by Potlatch Lumber Company. All but one of the ten packers employed by the company was a young woman. Any apples with blemishes were expertly culled and tossed out to be used as feed for hogs. Each apple was wrapped in paper – exactly ninety-six to a box. During summer pruning and spraying usually four men were employed but those numbers swelled to 50-70 once picking and packing began.

One structure served the employees. Upstairs were rooms for the men. The main floor held a dining room capable of seating over fifty and a kitchen with range and baking oven. Mrs. Miller ran the kitchen in 1907. She housed some of the women packers at her nearby home. A 50 x 56 foot barn for their eleven horses and equipment completed the picture. Water piped from a spring to an 8000-gallon cistern went to all the buildings and barn.

The orchard originally contained a variety of winter apples – Bellflower, Rome Beauty, Yellow Newtown Pippin, Jonathan and Arkansas (Beauty). Only forty trees were planted per acre. A cover or winter crop of wheat or soybeans was planted between the rows in the fall and plowed under in the spring. Orchard manager Lacey also experimented with applying sulfate of iron to improve the color of the apples. A project in 1908 by Bodine, Brackney & Co. grafted about 2300 Ben Davis and York Imperial varieties onto Rome Beauty trees to expand their collection. Wagener was another variety added. The company expanded in 1909 by adding a second one-hundred-acre orchard north of Garfield.

The Colfax Gazette announced that Burrell Orchards had shipped forty-two carloads of apples by November 25, 1910, with an additional five more expected to leave shortly. When completed the total tallied about 29,140 boxes for the year. Shipments were sent to British Columbia, Montana, the Dakotas, New York, and even England. Advertisements in the Gazette indicated bulk apples could be purchased at the orchard for ¾ cents per pound.

Thomas R. Tannatt Orchards

Thomas Tannatt was born in New York September 27, 1833, graduated from West Point in 1858, and rose to the rank of Brevet-General during the Civil War. He saw action at Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Battle of the Wilderness, and other campaigns quickly rising in the ranks. He pursued a career in civil engineering following the war but old battle injuries prevented any strenuous work. Tannatt came to Walla Walla after being hired by Henry Villard to be manager of the Oregon Improvement Company. The company was purchasing vast sections of Whitman County from the Northern Pacific Railroad holdings with the plan to bring settlers to the area as the railroad expanded. He was also the general land agent for developing railroad lands of the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company and served as a regent for Washington State College from 1893-1901.[22]

Tannatt was instrumental in encouraging Volga German emigrants to settle in what became the town of Endicott. He decided to settle in nearby Farmington, Washington, in 1887 onto land he previously purchased along the train line. (T18N, R46E, S7) He platted the town of Farmington on land donated by George Truax, developed what is today known as the Railroad Addition, and set out an eighty-acre apple orchard just south of the railroad tracks and grain elevators. He moved a storage building to alongside the tracks and converted it into an apple-packing plant.[23]

He was successful raising apples, winning prizes at the Spokane Apple Show. Many of his prized Rome Beauties were shipped as far as Europe. His interest in apples led him to become the organizer and four-time president of the Washington Horticultural Society. Eventually he sold his orchard and packing plant to B. C. Camerons, who continued to operate under the name Poplar Crest Orchard.

Snake River Orchards

The Snake River, marking the southern border of the county, attracted ferry crossings and steamboat traffic. Although the sheltered canyon adorned with rich alluvial soil was home to several Palouse Indian encampments, it didn’t appeal to white settlement until the latter 1800s. By then its potential for farming and orchard land became evident.

Isaiah Cooper Matheny is acknowledged as the first outsider to take up residence along the Snake at Wawawai. Shortly after arriving in 1875 he planted an apple orchard. The town site was platted in 1878 but it was vacated in 1884 when residents realized the land set aside for a town was more valuable for agricultural use. The community retained all the earmarks of a town, establishing a post office and school, but it was really an informal community of orchards.

One of the larger operations was actually three ranches owned by brothers Al, Charles, and Ed Bishop. By 1884 they owned over five hundred acres of river land that became known as Bishop’s Bar. It was popular enough to cause river steamers to make stops to pick up fruit at their front door. Another major fruit operation was that of William LaFollette who purchased a 375-arcre orchard in 1899 started by his father-in-law John Tabor. LaFollette expanded to 960 acres by 1909, raising a wide variety of fruit and other produce.[24]

Judith Crithfield captured many stories of life along the Snake. She wrote, “Because of the extensive operations of the LaFollette Ranch, Wawawai became the largest fruit shipping point along the river.” She explained how the larger farms usually hired several hundred people to help in the orchards, especially at harvest time. In the early years part of the labor force was provided by Indians who “camped along the rivers or the creeks until about 1920.” Chinese workers were also hired. They were segregated into “China Houses” which communities built to house Chinese laborers. Both Wawawai and Almota had one. Later high school and college students replaced some of the Indians and Chinese employees.[25]

In 1903 the Alpowa Orchard Company, a conglomerate of several smaller orchards, was started by E.A. White, W.W. White and George Crum. The company bought the Bishop Bar orchards in 1907 and two years later acquired the LaFollette Ranch. Then in 1910 they merged into White Brothers and Crum which continued to expand through acquisitions until they owned six ranches on a thirty-mile stretch of the river. During the 1920s they operated under the name Riverside Orchard Company.[26]

Once the fruit was packed and ready for shipment at theses river orchards, it was hauled by wagon to a ferry landing where it was loaded onto steamboats. Two of the steamers in use on the Snake by the late 1890s, the Lewiston and Spokane, could stow 250 tons of freight. The cargo was carried to a landing downstream at Riparia. The fruit was transferred to rail cars heading to Spokane or Portland. By 1908 fruit could be loaded directly onto rail cars from Wawawai after the Snake River Valley Railroad extended a rail line east from Riparia to Lewiston.

Gradually the large orchards were parceled out into smaller holdings. Mechanization reduced the need for so much human labor and production costs increased, making fruit production less appealing. Some ranchers converted orchards to pastureland and raised livestock. Others turned to U-Pick operations, inviting the public to pick their own fruit.

The Wawawai Ferry, started in 1885, made it final run in 1959. The store and post office remained into the 1960s, but massive changes were brewing. All of the efforts of the Snake River growers came to a halt when the Army Corp of Engineers bought land in anticipation of the construction of Lower Granite Dam and Little Goose Dam further downstream. On February 15, 1975, Lower Granite Dam was completed. Over four hundred acres of Wawawai orchards had been removed and the land submerged under the backwaters of the dam.

Growers in the uplands of the county faced their own problems. A decade of intense planting occurred from 1904-1914. There were nearly 240,000 apple trees growing in Whitman County by 1914. The state of Washington became the top apple producing state in the union by 1917. But by that time the market was flooded. Apple prices plunged and many independent growers went out of business. Consumers wanted just a limited number of varieties like Delicious, Jonathan, Rome, and Winesap.

Dry-land farming of wheat on the Palouse continued to be successful, while it became evident that apples did best on irrigated land. Costs to spray and fertilize trees continued to rise and more regulations came into play. Gradually apple production became dominated by the Central Region of the state where the main growing operations remain today in the irrigated orchards of the Okanogan, Chelan, and Yakima valleys.

While some of the larger Whitman County orchardists continued operations for several years, most gave up. Trees were uprooted, their wood turned into fireplace tinder. Orchardists became wheat farmers or planted other more productive crops. Some just sold out. A few of the apples trees planted on farms to sustain the early rural families remained, but the vast commercial orchards vanished.

By a quirk of fate two farms with hundreds of apple trees survived the carnage. They were found at the base of Steptoe Butte.

[1] The Ranch 1, no. 1 (January 20, 1894): 6. [2] S. J. Chadwick, “Whitman County, Washington,” The Coast 14, no. 6 (December 1907): 365-371. [3] C. S. Clarke, “Tekoa and Garfield, Washington,” The Coast 14, no. 6 (December 1907): 408-413. [4] Washington Apple Commission http://bestapples.com/general-contact-info/75th-anniversary-information/ ” End of the Wooden Apple box.” (accessed 6/12/17) [5] W. H Lever, An Illustrated History of Whitman County, State of Washington, (W.H. Lever Publisher, 1901), 336 [6] “Local Brevities,” Colfax Gazette, September 18, 1903. [7] “Fruit Cold Storage,” Colfax Gazette, July 24, 1903. [8] Lever, An Illustrated History, 408. [9] John F. Kelly, “John F. Kelly Orchards,” Bunchgrass Historian 3, no. 2 Whitman County Historical Society (Summer 1975), 16. [10] Edna H. Gingrich, “William Doty Orchards,” Bunchgrass Historian 3, no. 2 Whitman County Historical Society, (Summer 1975): 7. [11] Hines, An Illustrated History, 308. [12] Edna H. Gingrich , “Charles R. Moys Orchards”, Bunchgrass Historian 3, no. 2 (Summer 1975): 8. [13] “The Moys Farm,” Washington’s Centennial Farms, Yesterday and Today, (Olympia, WA: Washington State Department of Agriculture, 1989), 160. [14] Report of Pomologist for 1894, 17. [15] Pullman Herald, July 25, 1930. [16] G. Thomas Edwards, and Carlos A. Schwantz, ed., Experiences in a Promised Land: Essays in Pacific Northwest History, (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1986), 84-98. [17] Interview with Alex McGregor, August 14, 2017. [18] Alexander Campbell McGregor, Counting Sheep, From Open Range to Agribusiness on the Columbia Plateau, (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982), 204-226. [19] McGregor Land and Livestock Company Papers, Cage 16, Washington State University Library, MASC, Box 185, Box 6 Folder 44, Box 9, Folder 59. [20] “Where Apples Grow in Car Lots,” Colfax Gazette, August 18, 1911. [21] “Home of the Red Apple,” Colfax Gazette (October 18, 1907) and “Where Apples Grow in Car Lots,” Colfax Gazette, August 18, 1911. [22] Nelson Wayne Durham, History of the City of Spokane and Spokane County, Washington, Volume 2, (Spokane: S.J. Clark Publisher, 1912). 180-184. [23] Richard Scheuerman, Palouse Country, A Land and its People, (College Place, WA: Color Press, 1994), 100-104. [24] Phil Dougherty, Wawawai — Vanished Orchard Community of the Snake River, HistoryLink Essay 7968, http://www.historylink.org/File/7968 (accessed January 22, 2018) [25] June Crithfield, Of Yesterday and The River, (June Crithfield publisher, 1964), 35, Whitman County Historical Society Archive collection, Pullman, Washington. [26] Dougherty, Wawawai.