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railway service, and with a handsome public-school building, half a dozen churches, and several benevolent societies. A railroad to Portland is talked of, towards which one hundred thousand dollars bonus is pledged.
The principal interests of North Yakima are agricultural. Irrigation schemes are the topic of conversation. Two canals were completed in 1889; one from the Nachess River extending twelve miles towards town, with branches which open up thirty thousand acres of land, at a cost of sixty thousand dollars, and the other between the lower Yakima and the Columbia, which waters twenty-five thousand acres, and cost thirty thousand dollars. The Northern Pacific and Yakima Irrigation Company is surveying for another canal, to cost six hundred thousand dollars, and to have a length of one hundred and ten miles. A still greater scheme is on foot to expend about two million dollars in extended irrigation and in constructing dams in the mountains for the storage of water, which will be wanted when the eight hundred thousand acres, now reserved for the pleasure of the Indians, shall be thrown open to settlement.
The Moxee Farm, near North Yakima, is a tract owned by a company, that is experimenting with the soil and other conditions of the land. It derives large profits from alfalfa, hops, corn, tobacco, and fruits. Peaches bear profusely the second year after transplanting, and grapes do well. A. fair average crop of tobacco is one thousand pounds per acre, and nets six hundred dollars. Hops net one hundred dollars. Fruit and vegetables find a ready market at good prices. The company is also experimenting with cotton and tea. It owns fourteen miles of ditch, and can flood its fields if so disposed. Dairying and raising blooded stock is a part of the business of the Moxee Farm.
If one chooses to take a 'conveyance south about fifty miles from North Yakima, he will strike Goldendale, the county-seat of Klickitat County, lying south of the Indian Reservation. He will find the ride interesting, even if there is no pioneer present to relate to him incidents of the Yakima Indian War, when Fort Simcoe was erected by Major Garnett, who was afterwards a Confederate general in the civil wa
