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    Grandview
    Grandview
    Grandview
    Ebook183 pages58 minutes

    Grandview

    By Ruth A. Dirk

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    About this ebook

    Located midway between Yakima to the northwest and the Tri-Cities of Pasco, Kennewick, and Richland to the east, Grandview is central to the Northwest s large urban centers of Seattle, Portland, and Spokane. The townsite was chosen in 1905 as the final stop on the Sunnyside branch of the local rail line. Early farmers were met with blowing sand and jackrabbits, but with the addition of irrigation, lush fruit orchards and champion corn soon replaced native sagebrush. In 1910, one year after incorporation, 320 people called Grandview home. In the 1920s, dairies, poultry farms, and a winery marked a further transformation to the landscape. By 1940, the acreage given over to grape vineyards had greatly increased, asparagus was becoming a major crop, and more than 400 acres of hops were harvested. To this day, Grandview remains a small town where farming and related industries are major employers.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateAug 4, 2014
    ISBN9781439646533
    Grandview
    Author

    Ruth A. Dirk

    Ruth A. Dirk, a Grandview resident of more than 35 years, has been employed by the City of Grandview as assistant librarian since 1987. In 2009, just in time for Grandview�s centennial celebration, she was invited to contribute to the Washington Rural Heritage online collection.

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      Book preview

      Grandview - Ruth A. Dirk

      Library.

      INTRODUCTION

      On a summer morning in 1905, two men on horseback pulled their mounts to a halt halfway between Sunnyside and Prosser. Snipes Mountain arose in the foreground, while the snow-capped peaks of Mount Adams and Mount Rainier defined the horizon to the west.

      It’s a grand view! one of the riders exclaimed (so legend tells us), and, unfolding a map of the Sunnyside Railway and the Granger Land Company property, his partner placed an X in Section 23 and labeled it Grand View. Having chosen a new town site for the last stop of the Sunnyside branch of the Northern Pacific Railway, the two men, Elza Dean and F.L. Pitman, rode on.

      To the southwest, the riders could see the steeple of a new church and the two-year-old Euclid schoolhouse. Two miles to the northwest, the bell tower of the new Bethany schoolhouse looked out of place in the dusty scrubland. The barren area had come a long way since 1894, when children attended classes in a deserted shack for only three months of the year.

      The riders crossed the Rocky Ford Lateral, part of a canal system built by the Washington Irrigation Company, which had reached this section of the Yakima Valley in 1893. Horse-drawn slip-scrapers dug the 50-mile canal, which began in Yakima. Men gripped the scraper handles 10 hours a day, seven days a week, for $1 a day. The settlers in the Euclid community, two miles to the south, welcomed the arrival of the much-needed water.

      On November 4, 1895, Pres. Grover Cleveland conveyed Section 23, Township 9 N., R. 23, E.W.M. (the north half of which is now the town of Grandview) to the Northern Pacific Railway Company. They in turn conveyed the section to the Northern Pacific, Yakima & Kittitas Irrigation Company, the predecessor of the Washington Irrigation Company. It was this company that sold the land in 20-, 40-, and 60-acre units. Albert W. Noyes bought the 40-acre unit destined to become a large part of the downtown business section. In 1903, Noyes sold the property to Edward McGrath, who built a home and put the land under cultivation.

      On April 25, 1906, the Granger Land Company filed the plat of the town site, and, on May 13, 1906, the sale of lots in Grandview was opened to the public. About $14,900 was spent that first day, with prices ranging from $100 to $400 per lot.

      A few days later, Ann E. Sykes directed the construction of a two-story frame building, the first in Grandview, on Division Street (lot 10, block 17). The front room served as a post office, the rear as living quarters, and the upstairs as rooms for lodgers. The postmistress carried the mail on horseback to and from Mabton. Her share of the receipts for the first quarter was $2.42.

      On September 5, 1906, Fleming & Work, the first store in Grandview, opened its doors. The general merchandise store owned by Joseph M. Fleming and J.L. Work was a one-story building on Main Street (lot 17, block 17). Fleming bought out his partner’s interest in the store not long after it opened, changing the name to the Pioneer Merchant.

      Having earlier converted the family farmhouse into a hotel, the shrewd Minnie Elser recognized further business potential; at her direction, the new two-story Grandview Hotel was built on Avenue A, joining her business empire and welcoming lodgers.

      With the settlers came the need for schools. In the fall of 1906, work began on a four-room, two-story frame building. This building served as both the grade school and high school for Consolidated District 81, which included the Grandview, Euclid, and Bethany districts. By 1909, it was necessary to double the size of the building to relieve overcrowding. In 1910, four students became the first Grandview High School graduates.

      The Northern Pacific branch lines reached Grandview in the late fall of 1906. Sage Brush Annie, the nickname given to the local train, would usually arrive in Grandview in the afternoon or evening and return to Yakima the following morning. The first depot was completed in April 1909.

      The first bank opened its doors in 1906 in a $400 frame building on Avenue A. New businesses opening in 1907 were A.G. Hollada’s hardware, Fred Hebb’s restaurant, Orrin’s racket store, A.C. Swain & Sons’ general merchandise, C.S. Mitchel’s grocery, Fred Swain’s livery, and the St. Paul & Tacoma lumberyard.

      In the spring of 1907, after clearing sagebrush and planting trees over several hundred acres, the battle against wind, sand, and jackrabbits began. Early orchardists poisoned, trapped, and otherwise destroyed thousands of jackrabbits. The young trees were protected by screening, but Jack stood on his hind legs to reach the tender new seedlings. The settlers painted the trees with mixtures of blood, axle grease, and tincture of quinine, but the rabbits seemed to thrive on this diet. Over 10 percent of the 40,000 trees planted that first year were lost to rabbits. Men from around the area joined forces to launch rabbit drives, marching cross-country in a column sometimes two miles wide, with a shotgun-carrying settler every 50 feet.

      Dust storms resulted from the loosening of soil on the many acres of new tracts. The blowing debris drifted into houses and buried fences. One stretch of the Rocky Ford Lateral in Orchard Tracts drifted full of sand six times in 1908, but eventually, the tracts were turned from brown to green, and, under the pressure of more people, the jackrabbits retreated.

      On April 30, 1908, the first newspaper, the Grandview Press, edited by Fred Harris, was issued from rooms above the post office. The headline read, Two Transcontinental Roads, North Coast Railroad to begin operations this week on main line through city. The newspaper folded a few months later.

      On March 4,

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