Part 2
We left at noon Tuesday, and my destination was Spokane, Washington. We crossed the Missouri River, the valley of the same name, and saw scores of apple orchards. Near East Portal we crossed Bitter Root Summit and Bitter Root Valley, also made famous by its fine apples and vegetables. We passed again under the mountains two miles. Here we were eighteen hundred miles from Chicago in an elevation more than 4,000 feet. At Superior we were delayed several hours in the night on account of a freight wreck. We arrived in Spokane about noon Thursday. We crossed the Cascade Mountains in eight feet of snow. This was after leaving Spokane. We visited the Spokane Valley, another valley made famous by its apples. I talked with a banker about the products of the community. They are trying to get emigrants from the East to come into the community. It is a farming and lumber community. I visited the exhibits of farm products kept by the chamber of commerce of the city. They are wide awake. I saw all sorts of vegetables grown on irrigated land and by dry farming methods that would make our farmers take notice. I never saw finer vegetables anywhere. They are grown under great pressure.
From Spokane 1,900 miles west of Chicago, in an elevation of 1,882 feet, we dropped down here (Seattle) in a few hours to 2,200 miles west of Chicago and to sea level. From eight feet of snow crossing into a temperature of 36 degrees above zero. No snow and no ice.
February 2nd we arrived at Seattle. Twelve days and about twenty-two hundred miles from Chicago. This is considered the chief city of all this part of the country. It has a population of about 350,000 people. Its scenic environment, with its background of mountains and its valley intersected by sounds, bays and rivers, make it the most beautiful city in the world. It is called the “Floral Paradise.” I saw many flowers blooming in the open. It is said to be the cleanest and best lighted city in the world.
I wanted to see Puget Sound, so the next morning bright and early I found my way over the network of railroads on a high elevation above the streets to the fine pier several hundred feet above the water. Here I had a fine view of the Sound and the great expanse of water and mountains yonder a few miles, and literally thousands of boats of every kind and from everywhere in the world. The place from which I made the observation was a fine room with large glass windows, leather seats, heat, restaurant, etc., to make the weary traveler rested and welcome. This was Puget Sound. This is where literacy has the highest rating of any American city. If any city is cleaner or better lighted I have yet to see it.
In these parts there are billions of feet of lumber untouched by the despoiler. I saw fir trees measuring four and six feet in diameter. I was told they were three and four hundred feet tall. I saw two men sawing with a cross-cut saw, one on one side and one on the other side, and the diameter was so great that only one man could be seen below his head.
The Sound itself is said to be large enough to contain all the navies of the world and still have more room. The diversity of scenery, its climate, air, beautiful sunshine, mountains, sounds, and inland waterways, woods, flowers, parks, fine hotel, theaters, public markets, and city railway system, postoffice, and the State University, give that place a setting hard to describe in this limited space. The three or four public markets are works of art. One on Second Street was terraced, and is the cleanest market I ever saw, and I have seen a great many. The markets will generally indicate what the farmers are doing. They show the best products raised in the community. The arrangement of these country products will give you an idea of their artistic values. The Japanese were in evidence everywhere. They were universally polite and clean. They may be ubiquitous, but they are certainly utilitarian. They know how to get the best results from the soil as farmers. They had the best things I ever saw from the farms. They are credited with having a lot of sense and of being very industrious. These are very important assets in the development of any community, whether in California or in North Carolina. Having sense means having efficiency, knowing how to do. Industry means power and wealth.
As much as I would have loved to linger here longer, I had to divide my time with other points of interest. I left there early Sunday morning, the fifth of February, for Tacoma, about forty miles away. Through miles and miles of orchards of raspberries, loganberries and blackberries, apples and pears and walnuts, passing great canning and packing houses, irrigation projects, mining sections, etc., and at 10 o’clock the Olympian rolled into Tacoma. Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helena, Mount Hood, and Mount Adams, off in the distance had already come into view. You are overwhelmed by their vastness and grandeur. Their snow-capped peaks, timbered inclines and fertile valleys cannot be equaled anywhere else in the world.
We are still on the Puget Sound. The city has a population of more than a hundred thousand souls. They represent every nationality under the sun. It has the finest harbor and the most equitable climate in the world. The rainfall is around thirty-five inches a year, which insures better farming conditions. The Chamber of Commerce of Seattle and Tacoma are vieing with each other as to which will show the best exhibits of the state. Their great varieties of wheat, corn, flax, rye, oats, grasses, barley, buckwheat, apples, pears, small fruits and nuts, and their by-products: honey, preserved fruits, tomatoes, and manufactured products, views and paintings of cattle and sheep raising, lumbering, etc., simply baffle the imagination. You want to sit and look for hours and write impressions in your notebook, and then go out and come back again and do the same thing as long as you have a minute to spare.
Tacoma has a stadium that seats forty thousand people. Nothing else like it in the United States except the college stadia at Cambridge and New Haven. Schools and churches are the finest in the whole country. It was my pleasure to speak twice the Sunday I was there in one of the largest and finest churches in the city (white), and in the evening to one of our colored churches. The museum contains pictures of the early pioneers and Indian history curios. It was in this community where the earliest white settlements were made. The stadium and Stadium High School are located on one of the highest points in the city overlooking Puget Sound, which is precipitously, several hundred feet at the base of the hill. Trains may be seen for miles and miles coming from the East and North, and boats from Alaska, Seattle and Vancouver as they turn the western promontory. I traveled with an elderly gentleman who built almost the first house in that part of the city for the father of the present occupant, and I also had dinner in that house overlooking the stadium and the Sound. The minister living in the house is an eastern man, and his wife is the daughter of a missionary to Honolulu. She went over in the Morning Star soon after its construction forty years ago, in company with President Fairchild of Oberlin College. At that time she was a small child.
The state of Washington produced in 1921 28,000,000 bushels of apples alone that were worth more than $30,000,000. At the same time New York is said to have produced 14,000,000, California 6,000,000, and Michigan 6,000,000 bushels of apples. At the time Spokane County, in which Spokane is located, is said to have produced 80,000,000 bushels of wheat. I went through this valley, a part of Yakima and a part of Wenatchee valleys. One wonders at the great productivity of this country when he thinks of the great mountains almost everywhere—mountains where absolutely nothing can grow. The valleys are protected by these mountains. They are for the most part virgin soil. Irrigation projects have brought the melting snow to the ripening fruit and grain. The sun, penetrating into these mountain recesses have brought color and flavor equaled by no other community.
Pity it is that we cannot stay here to see more of this environment. We must go to Portland, Oregon. “We pass Rainier National Park on the left closed to winter tourists, and the towering sentinels already mentioned. We are in sight of them until we get to Portland, nearly two hundred miles away. Portland is a fine city of unusual wealth, fine houses, parks, hotels, banks, more than two hundred miles of street car lines, beautiful stores and public buildings, and flowers, flowers, everywhere flowers. The mountains back of the city are circled by beautiful drives and street car lines, and every sort of house that can be built on the face of the earth, terraced from top to bottom, trees, ferns, flowers, vines, form the most perfect menagerie of vegetation and of art that one can conceive. It looked like the composition of one mind. It was the coöperation of many minds for civic beauty. The view from Council Crest—see it once and you will never forget it if you have any imagination. The Columbia River cutting in half and stretching away for miles in the distance, the towering snow-capped mountains already named above, the beautiful Willamette River whose course for several hundred miles we shall soon follow, the Cascade Range, thousands of acres of fine farms and beautiful farm homes spreading out in every direction as far as the eye can see, a flock of sheep, a few thousand cattle, a herd of ponies and horses, the weird whistle of steamers coming up the river, and trains passing up the several valleys, all seen from Council Crest give you a feeling of scenic beauty that you cannot overcome. What a paradise for botanists. How I would like to have lingered in that environment until the foliage came into their glory! The markets are again gems of beauty. One has to buy whether he needs anything or not. The sellers are so courteous and polite. The arrangement of the products are so unique and artistic; they have so much and so great a variety; the people handling the goods were so clean in their pure white garbs; the tables and stands were immaculately clean; everything put on the market was absolutely clean and pretty. You just had to stop and taste here and there and buy. I bought here several kinds of honey for samples, which I brought six thousand miles home. I carried it all the way. Sage honey, clover honey, alfalfa honey, apple honey, orange honey, olive honey, raspberry honey, etc.
At night I saw a big roller machine actually scrubbing the streets. Beat that if you can. I saw it. The Chamber of Commerce gives out every year free literature telling about the products of the state, and they have a show of the farm and mineral products that simply cannot be equaled anywhere. The market stands I was told were owned by the city and are rented to the farmers and others on condition that only farm-grown products produced by themselves were to be on sale in them. The rent was just a nominal rent to encourage the farmer to bring his wares and sell it.
The Southern Pacific train took us south from Portland. The road leads for many miles up the Willamette River through the most beautiful valley, then up the Umpqua River, and the Umpqua River Valley, and into the Rogue River Valley. The climatic conditions are well adapted for grains, grasses, fruits and walnuts. The growing seasons are especially long, and there is not much danger from frost. The fruit orchards yield from five hundred dollars to a thousand dollars an acre. Some of course with less care, yield much less. The higher figures show the possibilities under the best care. On my way south I saw a great many apples thrown out in the fields. I was advised that the fruit association were not getting their prices, and they were thrown away to save cheap sales. They picked last year 2,650,000 boxes of apples valued at $2,600,000. These apples were the Spitzenbur, Yellow Newton Pippins, Jonathan, Rome Beauty. These are the varieties prized for their color, keeping quality, flavor and conformity to the best types. The trees come into bearing the fourth and fifth years, and increase their yield from one bushel to seven a year, and as they get older the increase may reach twenty boxes a year. Their apple pests are the same as ours. They must spray to get the best results. The trees are not large. The average yield to the acre is from three hundred to four hundred bushels, at a total cost of about forty and sixty cents a bushel.
Large acreages of pear trees of the standard varieties are grown, and they are more prolific bearers. The yield is said to be higher per acre than that of apples. I saw scores and scores of very large pear orchards. The trees are less trouble to care for than apple trees.
I saw thousands and thousands of trees in the Willamette, Umpqua and Rogue River valleys that baffled me to know what they were. They did not look like any sort of trees I had even seen, and yet I did not want to appear too ignorant to my fellow travelers. I had only one way to find out, and that was to ask somebody who knew. They were _prune_ trees. The cost of caring for a prune orchard is said to be from five to seven dollars an acre. The average crop an acre is about five tons. The average value per acre is from $75 to $250. About thirty million tons are produced, and the demand is growing. They have not begun to fill the demand. People are learning more than ever the food and medicinal value of this fruit.
Nearly fifty million pounds of cherries are produced annually at a value of more than two hundred thousand dollars. They yield about six thousand pounds to the acre at a profit of from one hundred to eight hundred dollars an acre. In Western Oregon, the Upper Columbian Valley, and the southwestern part of the state peaches are grown on a large scale and at great profit. Grapes, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, loganberries and currants are grown in great quantities. At La Grande, Oregon, there is a sugar beet factory whose capacity is three hundred and fifty tons daily. Beets are grown largely in that section. French walnuts are grown in large quantities. Seedlings are grafted with improved varieties. The largest I ever saw were in the markets. I stopped one night at Grant’s pass and saw some of the largest and finest pumpkins that can be grown in the world.
Stock raising probably stands at the head of the productive resources of the state. Great quantities of cattle, sheep, horses, mules, hogs, and even goats are raised. The income from this industry would be many millions of dollars. Poultry is grown all the year, and millions of dollars are realized yearly from dairying. The annual output of honey is around two million pounds, averaging more than three hundred thousand dollars.
I have said nothing about the fisheries, the fertility of the rivers, lakes and bays, and the lumber conditions. There are about twenty million acres of land in Oregon unappropriated, waiting for brain and brawn. It belongs to the government. You may have it if you will qualify and meet the conditions.
On my way to San Francisco I had planned to stop at Eugene and see the State University, but I found that I could not do so without very much delay, and also because the weather conditions were bad. It is a railway center of considerable importance. Passing Cottage Grove we crossed the Umpqua River and went up the valley some distance, and up the Rogue Valley close by the river of the same name into Grant’s Pass. Here I preferred to stay all night so as not to miss any view or things of interest. We were never out of sight of picturesque scenery and mountains of great height and beauty. Orchards and fine gardens of vegetables were ever in sight. Our train has taken us into Cow Creek Canyon, beautiful and picturesque. Grant’s Pass is the fruit shipping center for this part of the state, and I saw many packing houses. On to Ashland at the foothills of the Siskiyou, where the lythia water and mineral springs attract your attention as you pull into the station, and all get out to try the water as it comes fresh up into the glass receptacles for you to drink. Ahead and around you on every side nothing but mountains towering a mile high. You wonder how you are to scale that tower in your front. Your train takes on another engine, possibly two, and off you go up the Rogue Valley till the Rogue River is lost in the mountain stream. When you can go no further your train cuts across the head of the valley on a high bridge and climbs the opposite mountain parallel to the track you have just come on the other side, going directly north, exactly reversing your course. We zig-zag up that mountain for an hour till we reach an elevation of nearly ten thousand feet. All this time we are in sight of Ashland, fourteen miles below, lying placid, warm and quiet. The snow plows are busy keeping away the snow and the men are clad in the warmest sheep skins from head to foot. A mile off to the left, a thousand feet higher, is “Pilot Rock,” lying as if it had been hurled by some powerful giant. This is the landmark that guided the early pioneers and Indians in their early explorations through that unknown country. Freeing our train from her extra engines, we sped off at a tangent through a fine growth of timber and cut over land. This is the Shasta route, and we have just scaled the Siskiyou Mountains. Now we start down the slope, entering the Cantara Loop and crossing at the very head of the Sacramento River.
Now we have crossed the line into California. Mount Shasta, the most majestic peak of the western continent, fourteen thousand feet and more, towers above us, and off at some distance. We enter Sacramento River Canyon and stop at Shasta Springs, which is a source of this river. There we got off the train and drank the finest water that ever came from the earth. This is probably the greatest summer resort on the Pacific Coast. I saw one rabbit sitting in his burrow on the side of the hill. The snow was falling terrifically.
Miles and miles down this canyon we go, passing ferns and moss hanging from a thousand crags. We pass Castle Crags away to the west like sentinels guarding our entrance. More than four hundred miles we go, following this tortuous river valley until it spreads out into San Francisco Bay. We pass Chico, a community of fruit interest and great vineyards. If one will look at the map of the state of California he will see that almost all the state is included in two great valleys, especially in the northern part of the state called Northern California. These valleys lie north of the Sierra Madre Mountains, which form the natural divide between Northern and Southern California. These are the valleys of Sacramento adjacent to the Sacramento River, which runs the entire length of the valley and into the Straits of Carquinez and into the San Francisco Bay. The other valley is San Joaquin. In the first of these is located Sacramento, the capital of the state, and in the second valley is Fresno, near the southern part of the valley, and also Bakersfield.
We are told that about half of the cultivated land in California, or that which may be cultivated, is in the valleys. They form more than fourteen million acres. They are about four hundred and fifty miles long and more than forty miles wide. The Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers are the drainage for this great basin. These two great rivers come together near Walnut Grove, one from the south and one from the north. I traveled the entire valleys of both these rivers. There are almost three millions of acres in the Sacramento Valley alone, and from my observation not more than half of it seems to be in cultivation. Thousands of acres of it are in citrous fruits and other fruits and walnuts. At the same time of my visit large areas of the two valleys were under water. The lands are rich and yield readily to various kinds of cultivation.
When the overflow from the rivers during the rainy season is controlled, there is no reason why these lands should not be more valuable to the state. Large areas are still in the formation, and look as if they might make great rice plantations. I heard while out there that something was being done to get Japanese farmers to work these low areas into rice farms.
I stopped one night at Redding. This is only a few miles inside of the state line. It was here that the “Gold Rush” was made in 1849. Some of the old settlers are still here and remember the “rush.” I was told that two per cent of our gold still comes from this community. It was here that I really saw the first sign of California. The next morning after my arrival, while waiting for my train, I saw oranges in the parks and about the homes near the central part of the town. Magnolia trees and palm trees showed that we were in a new and strange country. Tropical plants of one sort or another can be grown from one end of the state to the other. One man said that he could pick oranges at the same time watch the melting snow on the nearby mountains.
The rainfall varies from fifteen to thirty inches, whether in the lower or upper part of the state. Irrigation projects are on foot, and furnish all the water needed for the crops. As the acreage increases these projects will grow. Sacramento River and Feather River are the main sources of water for this upper country. I traveled through both of these valleys and to the very mouth of the rivers.
We arrived at Benecia late in the afternoon, and the entire train is put aboard the largest ferry boat in the world, and carried across four miles to Port Costa, across the Strait of Carquinez. We pass Richmond, Berkley, Oakland. At Oakland we pull into the Oakland ferry and disembark again to a large ferry boat, and in twenty minutes we are in the city of San Francisco. We are here for only a few days, then we leave for the southern part of the state. We reserve our impressions of the city till our return.
The other valley further south is supposed to be eleven thousand square miles, and has about seven million acres of arable land. It is a boundless area and productive of the greatest quantity of oranges, olives, grapes, etc. We spent a part of two days at Fresno, and addressed the colored Baptist Church at night. There are some colored farmers in that section who are doing well on their farms. We regretted very much that we could not count them by the thousand. They are altogether too few.
Bakersfield, which is in the southern part of this valley, is a great oil section of the state. There are four such centers in this state. Their combined output a few years ago was ninety-two million barrels. Oil has taken the place of coal in almost all the industries of the state. The refineries are seen almost everywhere. Stock raising, grapes, orange orchards, peach orchards, olive orchards, fig orchards border every road. I saw at least one flock of sheep numbering more than three thousand.
We crossed the Sierra Madre over the Tehachapi loop at an elevation of more than seven thousand feet. Going down the mountain we passed into the great Mojave Desert. Death Valley, 290 feet below sea level, forms a part of this desert. There must be several thousand square miles of country in this area, and I would not give fifty cents for the whole of it. The discovery of oil may give value or the irrigation projects may save it for farm developments. Yucca, sage and sand seemed to be its chief products at present. Mojave, Lancaster and San Fernando are our next stop. A few hours later we are in Los Angeles.
The object of my trip West was to study farming conditions with reference to the colored people and to acquaint myself with living conditions in that part of the country.