100 years ago in Spokane: Apple warehouse to be constructed; ‘Spokane spuds’ to be promoted
Spokane was still an apple-growing powerhouse in 1920, and now it was poised to acquire a gigantic apple warehouse.
In a front-page headline type usually reserved for world wars, the Spokane Daily Chronicle announced the construction of a four-story cold storage warehouse, capable of holding 800 carloads (that is, 800 train-car loads) of apples and other fruit, and expandable to 1,000 carloads. It would have 1 1/2 million cubic feet of storage space.
The head of the cold-storage company said that a plant of this size has “become a community necessity.”
“There are 20,000 cars of apples produced in this territory annually, but shippers cannot consign to Seattle for cold storage because of the back haul rates,” he said. “… The apple industry has reached a point where some provision must be made for cold storage in Spokane.”
Also from the agriculture beat: Meanwhile, farmers were hoping that Spokane would become a national center for another crop, potatoes. The newly organized Foothill Potato Growers’ Association announced that they wanted to develop and advertise “Spokane spuds.”
The head of the group said that experiments proved that Spokane and the Inland Northwest could lead almost any other region in the U.S. in the production of seed potatoes – if only farmers would start planting them.