Orchardist Remembered Fondly

Green Bluff was a wild, uninhabited forest when Earl Atkinson was growing up.

He trapped, logged and built roads across the fertile soil as a youth, helping tame the land into the orchard community it became.

Atkinson grew with the community, eventually becoming the respected dean of local apple growers. He was also credited with inadvertently starting the Green Bluff U-pick tradition.

The orchard community he helped build last weekend saluted Atkinson, who died Feb. 29 at the age of 94.

“The man never had a bad thing to say about people,” said Arlene Knott, who knew Atkinson for 30 years. “And he never let a weed grow in his orchards.”

Born in 1901, Atkinson was the father of four daughters, and he had 14 grandchildren, 17 great-grandchildren and two great-great grandchildren. He outlived three of his four wives and one of his daughters.

A non-smoker and non-drinker, he was still active enough to farm, deep-sea fish and dig clams at 81.

Atkinson’s family was one of the first in Green Bluff. His father bought 40 acres for $5 an acre.

In 1923 Atkinson had a minor mishap that changed the community. The rear axle of his Model T broke, making a trip into the crop market in Spokane impossible.

So Atkinson asked mechanics at the Green Bluff service station if they wanted to pick berries out of his fields at 50 cents a crate.

More than 100 people showed up the next day. The U-pick tradition was born.

He built on the idea by persuading conductors of trains traveling through Green Bluff to stop for an hour so passengers could pick berries.

Atkinson once got a note from a North Dakota woman saying, “Your strawberries are sure good!”

He continued farming into his 80s. In the late 1970s, his 100-acre farm was producing 20,000 boxes of apples.

His fourth wife, Elsie, sold the farm after Atkinson had a massive heart attack in 1980, but he recovered and farmed for several more years.

Green Bluff residents said Atkinson had a steel-trap memory and great story-telling ability. His name is listed in the appendix of a Green Bluff history book more often than any other.

He liked to spin tales at weekly pinochle sessions at the Green Bluff Grange, where he was a member for 50 years. He once joked that, while trapping in the late 1920s, he would find homemade gin stills caught in his traps.

Atkinson’s daughter, Irene Sparber, remembers her father’s devotion to farming. He rose before 5 a.m. every morning, she said.

Later in his farming career, when pesticides and other chemicals became more prevalent, Atkinson’s touch was enough to turn silverware black, Sparber said.

He turned to fishing later in life. He bought a cabin on Priest Lake, took trips to the Washington coast to go steelhead fishing and spent summers fishing in California.

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