Michael Lehmann shared with me a brochure about Ephrata. I've been studying this photo, extolling the irrigation benefits of Ephrata in 1911, before I realized it's not too close to there. The brochure was a way to boost the benefits of why everyone should make their way to this new town.
Ephrata has had springs in the past, and a seasonal stream, Dry Creek. The creek flows past Iron Springs, a few miles up Sagebrush Flats Road, where it intersects with Baird Springs Road. The Great Northern bought the rights to a spring and piped the water to their 10,000 gallon tank adjacent to the depot. Enough was available that the city tapped the spring for domestic use too.
There was still enough water for an early settler to establish an orchard behind where the courthouse is today, so I first thought the picture was this orchard. Except the hills are all wrong for it being Ephrata. A previous photographic mystery had been solved when I found the location at a place called Black Butte, and sure enough, the photo here also shows said butte in the distance. I found my spot.
Black Butte is located along the Great Northern Railway, about midpoint between the 8 miles separating the towns of Stratford and Adrian. It can be seen when traveling along State Route 28, on the south side of the road, between Adco and the turn to Pinto Ridge Road. I've yet to find the origin of the name Black Butte, a feature of the channeled scabland of Eastern Washington. Crab Creek flows beneath it, so I've been calling this section of scabland Crab Creek Coulee, because that is what is going on here. The railroad also crosses Crab Creek right below the highest point of it.
The Great Northern used a large section of this coulee to find a more or less level grade across Eastern Washington. It's not straight, having many curves that even today limit speeds. Just beyond Black Butte, at Adrian, Crab Creek turns and heads south while the railroad climbs up the gravel bar at the in the Grant Orchards area. Then it turns southwest and dips through the Soap Lake sag and onto the Ephrata fan of the expansion flood bar of the Grand Coulee.
Black Butte is 15 miles away from Ephrata. Why show it in the brochure? Water. Ephrata doesn't have that much, but 15 miles away was an irrigation company that had been watering the land for a few years, making the shrub-steppe land blossom.
The Adrian Irrigation Company was formed in 1902 to harness the waters of Crab Creek. They created a dam at Brook Lake and dug a ditch about 10 miles to what we know as the Grant Orchards area. In the sandy soiled area across from Adrian, the water was kept in check in a wooden flume. Five thousand acres of land were acquired, lots were sold, and the land was to be worked in a communistic style. No, not that kind, but as an actual commune. By 1910 Grant Orchards was a thing, with 62,000 trees already 16 months old and the promise of another 1000 acres worth the next year.
But, things were not well with the irrigation company. Lawsuits over money had been filed as early as 1908, with at least 3 suits going on at once, one which went all the way to the Washington State Supreme Court. The assets of the Adrian Irrigation Company were sold to the Stratford Irrigation Company in early 1911, clearing the company and it's officers from all the legal troubles. Stratford took up the promise to get those extra 1000 acres into water, which is where our photo takes place.
The Stratford Orchards Company bought all the land in the area between Stratford to a point about a mile east of Adrian along Crab Creek. They set out trees in a good part of those 1000 acres, all being given water from Crab Creek. Fruit was shipped by rail out at a loading dock, seen about a quarter of the way from the left of the photo, above all the young trees.
As we know today, Crab Creek doesn't necessarily flow all that long in the spring, so it might be hard to imagine it being dammed and water diverted. The folks with Stratford Orchards drilled a well to irrigate their trees as they saw fit, allowing the trees to survive the droughts of the 1930s.
The orchards lasted long enough to be around when the Federal government started the Columbia Basin Federal Reclamation Project. Brook Lake became a seep lake below Long Lake Dam, which can release water into the lake, and Crab Creek, though not very often. The main canal, dug in 1947, skirts the northern edge of Crab Creek Coulee, allowing water to flow into the area of the Stratford Orchard Co. At the canal bifurcation, the East Low heads south and actually crosses underneath Crab Creek, the Great Northern, and the old irrigation company ditch. The West Canal is tapped a few miles further west to irrigate the Grant Orchards area.
I couldn't get to the actual spot of the old photo, and the field of corn in front of Black Butte obscures part of the view. I know I'm close. You can see the hill the buildings in the old photo were likely on. The Great Northern, now BNSF, passes through the scene, closer to the cliff edge. You can see the tracks in the distance to the left of the left-most power pole. The Stratford Cemetery is easily seen in the center right. While there are still a few fruit trees in the area, most of this land is now in alfalfa, corn, and potatoes.
