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proposition to build an independent railroad to Puget Sound, while others along the Columbia propose a steamboat company. But the great railroads are not going to allow independent companies to succeed, although the fear of them may compel a better service.]
It is not to grain alone that land-owners are now giving their attention, although when wheat-raisers have a good year they make money in one season. Fruit and vegetables are more profitable per acre, and fruit once in bearing gives very regular returns. To any observer it is evident that not more than half enough fruit is raised for the. requirements of the population. Indeed, how should it be, when the population doubles every year or two? But fruit is no longer an experiment in the Palouse country, and large orchards are being planted along the Palouse Biver, while in the Snake Biver Yalley this is the chief interest of the settlers. Spokane depends on the Snake Biver Fruit Growers' Association for peaches, pears, prunes, and small fruits. Even the Walla Walla crop of berries and peaches may have to be helped out by their abundance. But while fruit is shipped from California, as it now is, to this distant region, it is evident there is room for new orchards.
Colfax, at the south fork of the Palouse Biver, of which I have before spoken, is the county-seat of Whitman, and a thriving place of seven or eight hundred. It was founded about 1876, and is touched by railroads from three directions,— roads that go everywhere but in a straight line, seeking freights from the great grain centres. One of these is over the line in Idaho, at Genesee; another, also in Idaho, at Moscow; Garfield, Farmington, Salteese, Oaksdale, Bosalia, all in Whitman County; and another at Bockford, in Spokane County. Most of these roads were or are being constructed by the Oregon Bailway and Navigation Company.
It will be readily seen how great an area and what vast resources Spokane Falls claims as tributary to itself in Washington. But there remains to be added the rich mineral regions of Coeur d'Alene and Kootenai. There may and will build up rival cities in the Colville and Big Bend countries, at no very distant day; but the pan-handle of Idaho does not seem adapted to such designs, at least in its northern end, therefore Spokane
