Wenatchee: Apple Capital of the World

The Wenatchee Valley sits in a rain shadow east of the Cascades, where the Columbia and Wenatchee rivers meet. Average rainfall is less than nine inches a year, dry enough that the first settlers who arrived in the eighteen seventies grew almost nothing. What changed everything was two things arriving within a decade of each other: the Great Northern Railway in eighteen ninety-two, and irrigation.

The Great Northern reached the valley in eighteen ninety-two and almost overnight gave farmers a way to ship fruit to Seattle, Portland, and beyond. Irrigation canals began drawing from the Columbia on a large scale in nineteen oh four, watering the narrow river benches where apples thrived in the cool mountain air. By the early twentieth century, Wenatchee-area orchards had grown into one of the nation's leading apple regions. The city incorporated in eighteen ninety-three, and it has claimed the title Apple Capital of the World ever since.

That claim holds up. North Central Washington, anchored by Wenatchee, consistently produces more than sixty percent of Washington State's annual apple harvest, and Washington State produces more apples than any other state in the nation by a wide margin. The valley grows Galas, Fujis, Honeycrisps, and the old-fashioned Red Delicious alongside dozens of other varieties.

Route Two drops west out of the Cascades through the Stevens Pass corridor and descends into Wenatchee along the Wenatchee River canyon, one of the more dramatic gateway approaches of any city along Route Two. After the mountain passes, this valley of orchards and river benches feels like arriving somewhere deliberately placed.