A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909

by Ithamar M. Howell

HIGHER INSTITUTIONS.

The University of Washington occupies a campus of 350 acres, located entirely within the limits of the city of Seattle.

The buildings of the university consist of the administration building, science hall, chemistry building, engineering building, power house, dormitories for men and women, and other smaller buildings. In addition to the foregoing, the university will come into the possession of a number of commodious structures at the conclusion of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. For the current year, the enrollment of students at the university is 1,838. The faculty consists of 115 members and for the ensuing biennial period the legislature appropriated the sum of $673,000 for the support of the institution.

The State College of Washington is located at Pullman, in Whitman county. This institution emphasizes technical and scientific education and in its agricultural departments has accomplished remarkable results. It is annually giving the state a number of highly trained experts in modern agricultural science, and the farming interests of the state have been greatly assisted by the work of the college. Instruction is given in civil engineering, mechanical and electrical engineering, geology, botany, chemistry, zoology, economic science and history, modern languages, domestic economy, besides the practical operation of a dairy farm and other branches of agricultural industry. The institution, in addition to its land endowment, receives annual assistance from the federal government and a biennial appropriation from the state legislature.

The state also maintains three normal schools, located respectively in the cities of Bellingham, Ellensburg and Cheney. These institutions have a combined attendance of about 850 and are the recruiting ground for securing instructors in the public schools.

At Vancouver is the State School for the Deaf and Blind. The defective youth of the state are cared for in a well equipped institution located at Medical Lake, in Spokane county, and at Chehalis is the state training school for incorrigibles.

LOGGED-OFF LANDS.

The problem of making a home and providing a competency for old age upon the lands in western Washington is somewhat different and more difficult than doing the same upon the prairie lands of the east. As they come to the hands of the would-be tiller of the soil, they present a forbidding and disagreeable aspect. The loggers have left them with considerable standing timber, with the tops of the giants of the forests lying where they fell, scattered over the land and covering it with an almost impenetrable mass of great limbs and brush and dead logs. If seen in the summer, there is added the view of a mass of green vegetation, rank and to a large extent covering up the mass of dead stuff left by the loggers with the huge stumps sticking up through it all, mute monuments of the lost wealth of the forest. In some instances this is somewhat relieved by the fact that, either by accident or design, the fire has been there and swept through it all, leaving nothing but blackened and smouldering emblems of its prior greatness. In this case, however, only the lighter part of the refuse has been destroyed. The great stumps of fir and cedar are there still, blackened and perhaps with their dead hearts burned out. Great and small decaying logs are there, some too wet to burn, some with the bark alone burned off, and some with the dead centers burned out, scattered about or piled in crisscross masses as they had fallen during the ages of the forest's growth. In either case it looks different from the smooth surface of the sagebrush plains about to be converted into irrigated farms or the clean face of the prairie lands covered with grass and ready and longing for the plow. But with all their forbidding aspects, black with a portentous cloud of hard labor and long waiting, their known hidden wealth lures on the hardy pioneer to the task. He throws off his coat, rolls up his sleeves, gathers together his tools, and with the indomitable courage of the Anglo-Saxon tackles the problem, works and fights and rests by turns till within a few years he finds himself triumphant. Eventually, beneath his own orchard trees laden with fruit, and in the comfort and delight of his big home fireplace, he contemplates the rewards of his struggle, as he sees his cows complacently chewing their cuds in his green pastures and listens to the neigh of his fat horses, and at his table, laden with all the bounty of his rich lands, thanks his Maker for the successful completion of a hard struggle and the enjoyment it has brought to him and his family.