Oakesdale skyline.
Oakesdale, Whitman County, WA, November 2013.
The Palouse
Wallace Grain & Pea Company, Palouse, WA, September 2014.
Grass, March to September.
UP train 62 running from Ayer Jct WA To Moscow ID has just left the Pullman WA depot on a sunny day in 1952. Bruce Butler photo. The train is crossing Kamiaken Street.
Garbanzos coated in bright red fertilizer, Fallon, WA, April 2014.
In April on the Palouse, you might look south and see a staggering sunny day, then turn around north to dark, threatening skies. The winter wheat by this time is vivid and green, but the fields still awaiting garbanzos and lentils remain in cake-brown furrows. You can still smell winter when the clouds pass over you and the wind hits your chest, but when they float past, the sun makes you sweat and pull off your jacket.
Passenger trains once ran between Lewiston, ID and Spokane, WA. From one Bruce Butler, who lensed them as they passed through Pullman. The black & white photo caught the last run of the RPO-equipped, GP9-powered train at the long-gone Pullman depot; the color photo shows the RDC ambling towards Moscow immediately south of Pullman. The road cut in the background of the color image is still there, as is the little bridge under the RDC; WSU is in the background. This area has been extensively developed in the past fifteen years and the passenger trains, of course, are long gone.
Washtucna, Washington
Bronica ETRS & Kodak Ektar
The town’s website says that it’s a safe, quiet place to raise your family. They boast an annual, classic car show and Washtucna stands as the gateway to Palouse Falls. Plus there’s a gas station/coffee shop/gift shop and a tavern.
2012
Swinging southeast, State 3 winds around the slopes of low hills that are cultivated to their very summits. On every hand is evidence of the stability of agriculture in this region: except for an occasional splash of yellow-blooming mustard, the fields are almost free of weeds; houses, barns, and outbuildings are neat and substantial; fence posts are erect and securely set and the strands of barbed wire are taut; new automobiles and trucks are seen very frequently.
Washington: A Guide to the Evergreen State (1941)
McCoy, Washington, is a spot on Highway 271 (formerly State 3) between Oakesdale and Rosalia in Whitman County. The hills are still cultivated to their very summits, but the machine agriculture that dominates the Palouse has all but obviated the need for barns, outbuildings, fence posts, and barbed wire.
Looming over the hills on Naff Ridge, just to the south of 271, are the swirling blades and austere white towers of the Palouse Hills Wind Project. The wind is converted into electricity that’s sold elsewhere; the local grid is still mostly powered by hydro-power from the Snake and Columbia rivers.
At McCoy, the tall, boxy, aluminum-clad 1940’s-era grain elevator stands within sight of the new McCoy Grain Terminal. Grain from all over the Palouse is trucked to the Terminal, where it is then dumped into 110-car unit grain trains destined for Portland, Longview, Kalama, Tacoma, and other Northwest ports. There, the crop is transfered to the holds of ships bound for Asia. Their work thus exported, the locals stock their pantries with food grown elsewhere down at Crossett’s Food Market in Oakesdale.
Barn and tractor near Kamiak Butte, Whitman County, Washington. Early October, 2013.
Belmont, Whitman County, Washington. Late October, 2013.
Looking south from Kamiak Butte, Whitman County, WA. October 2013.
Rosalia, Whitman County, WA, August 2013.
Northbound W&I Railway freight about halfway between Palouse and Garfield, Whitman County, WA. June, 2013.
Washington & Idaho Railway locomotives tying up for the night between the elevators in Palouse, Washington. July 24, 2013.
For the freshest Gatorade at the best price, you can’t beat Crossett’s Food Market in Oakesdale, Washington.
Blair Kooistra, photographer: Old forty-foot Northern Pacific boxcars loaded to their 50 ton capacity with wheat clomp across a rural grade crossing near Creston, Washington, bound east on the CW local returning to the mainline at Cheney. High-capacity hopper cars have just about done in the movement of wheat in boxcars in the west; in a few years, such scenes will cease to exist.
The Inland Northwest, as seen by satellites at night. In the northeast of the image, Spokane and Coeur d'Alene. Move south from there through the scattered pinprick towns of the Palouse through the twin lights of Pullman and Moscow down to Lewiston-Clarkston. Go west from L-C through Pomeroy, Dayton, and Waitsburg to Walla Walla (the city shaped like a hatchet). Then west again to the crab-shaped Tri-Cities and curving along the crescent of light in the Yakima Valley. North, then, from Yakima, through Ellensburg and to the Wenatchee Valley. Then back east, skirting Moses Lake and across the dark distances to Spokane.
My main thought looking at this dark and abstracted map is that I love where I live.
Where Finch sleeps, Palouse, WA.
Wind project under construction, Naff Ridge, Whitman County, WA.