Today I left Western Washington. Far behind me now is Seattle, the Emerald City. It’s not the most dazzling city in the world, but it shines brightly in comparison to Tacoma, celebrated and chided for its gritty authenticity. But less dazzling by far than either of these wet western cities is Baker City, in the high and dry reaches of north-central Oregon. That’s where I am right now. Baker City. Writing today’s Blog posting from the comfort of the Bridge Street Inn, a modest motel filled to capacity with a bunch of bikers from Minnesota.
Insofar as the biker-to-blogger ratio here is about 30-to-1, I quickly befriended the head Biker Guy, Bruce Johnson. He rides an enormous bike, a Honda Goldwing. He has no front teeth. But he does have his BBB (Biker Babe on the Back.) And he swears that he and his fellow bikers will cover 5,000 miles on a 7-state ride that will last just 12 days.
So what about this place, Baker City? Falsely rumored to be named after a debonair real estate magnate from Milan, Missouri, Baker City was actually named in honor of U.S. Senator Edward Dickinson Baker, the only sitting senator to be killed in a military engagement. (He died in Virginia in 1861 when leading a charge of Union Army soldiers.) In the late 19th Century, gold and quartz mining brought prosperity to Baker City, making it “probably the most colorful town in the Pacific Northwest. It housed elegant restaurants in fine hotels, and the Baker Theatre was often filled to capacity. All night saloons, gambling houses and hurdy-gurdy dance halls were crowded with miners, ranchers, cowboys and sheepherders.” By 1900 it was the largest city between Salt Lake City and Portland, a pretty impressive boast… until you realize that even today there’s not much urban life between Salt Lake and Portland.
Twenty-first Century Baker City has retained much of its historic charm, if none of its commercial dynamism. The brightest lights in town may now be illuminating the Baker Truck Corral. Yet I know for a fact that the dining room in the beautifully restored Geiser Grand Hotel still serves a pretty good evening meal… as long as you order beef.
My arrival in Baker City came at day’s end, after nearly 6 hours driving through a panorama of economic and natural wonder. Early in the day I found myself intrigued to discover that Washington’s mountain highways were filled with so many 18-wheelers bearing marine containers -- Maersk, K-Line, P&0 – attesting to the reach of global trade from the shores of Puget Sound eastward into the American heartland. I also found myself marveling at the stark transition in the Washington landscape, from the oh-so-wet western side of the Cascades, to the desert-dry eastern side. The Western side conifers that seemed as tightly packed as the bristles on a toothbrush became spaced further and further apart over the course of the long descent down the Eastern side. Then, almost suddenly, there were no conifers at all. And no clouds. Just abundant sunshine. And warmth. And orchards. Lots of orchards.
Where else could you spot a pickup truck transporting no fewer than 32 orchard ladders?”
In smug mockery of the Western rains, the orchards’ sprinklers confidently spit water above the treetops. The Yakima Valley, Eastern Washington’s most famous apple-growing region, produces half the apples grown in America each year -- about 12 billion pieces of fruit. But it’s not just apples. There are peaches, pears and plums. And more cherries than anyplace on earth.
Big, craft-clumsy hand-lettered signs “Apples! Cherries! Pears!” seem to have kinetic super-powers, effortlessly pulling 2-ton cars – and small Euro sports sedans -- off the highway and bringing them to a stop in front of seasonal roadside fruit stands consisting of nothing more than fruit crates and a cash drawer under a tented canopy.
At the heart of the Yakima Valley is the city of Yakima, “the Palm Springs of Washington,” if one is to believe the ‘60s-era billboard still visible on the outskirts of town. I don’t.
Neither does my desert tennis buddy and summer-time Yakima resident Steve Miller. No relation to the rock ‘n rolling Space Cowboy of the same name. Steve isn’t even a Yakima cowboy. He’s a retired businessman, a pillar of the Yakima community. And he’s taking me and his wife Betty out to lunch. We talk a lot about the winter life we share in the desert. But mostly we talk about the rich and rewarding family life that he and Betty have enjoyed in Yakima for more than 40 years. We talk about raising a family at Miller Farm, a sprawling rural compound with a great red barn that doubled as an indoor basketball arena in the winter. We talk about a brief stint of raising sheep. And we talk about the planting and cultivation of 3200 Golden Delicious apple trees on the property. “The orchard didn’t exactly pay for my children’s college education, but it did teach them all to be pretty good at handling a tractor.”
With the children now grown, Miller Farm has been sold. But Steve and Betty can still pose proudly in front of the large quilt depicting Miller Farm that was lovingly hand-stitched by Betty.
Leaving Yakima on Highway 84, I follow the Yakima River downstream toward the Columbia River, driving through Washington’s premier wine region, a country and a culture far removed from that of the apple growers. In less than 40 years, the Pacific Northwest has become the greatest premium wine producing area in North America outside of California.
As I cross the steel highway bridge spanning the Columbia gorge I leave Washington and enter Oregon for the final hour’s drive into Baker City. And as I cross the river I recollect the Washington State History Museum’s description of the forces that created this huge and remarkable landscape. “Many of the canyons, channels and other features of the Columbia Basin were sculpted by a series of catastrophic floods. Their magnitude and impact are unequalled in the Earth’s geologic record. The recurring deluges took place during successive glaciations, most recently 16,000-12,000 years ago. During the floods, the Columbia gorge contained a river so swollen that for brief periods its volume equaled that of all the rivers that flow on Earth today… times ten.”
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