Columbia Basin, Ephrata, WA | ronm - 1/12/2015 08:28
Kind of a "here" thing too, actually, Ben. This valley was settled as a fruit paradise, hence the name Fruita...but a few cold winter in the 60's revealed that this end of the valley was too cold...-30 & the peach trees split wide open. The upper end of the valley, Palisade, is more sheltered & the fruit is still viable. Basically no orchards on this end any more-corn, hay, & horsey-type weekender outfits...
There are a few places here in the Basin that were also developed first and very early as fruit orchards. There's actually a former town platted near Soap Lake called Grant Orchards. The town doesn't exist today because all the trees all got wiped out in one hard freeze back before the depression. Just a few miles from my house there's an old natural stone building that I'm told was originally an apple cellar. I don't think it has had apples in it for 80+ years. It's a really cool building though, someone had to have been doing pretty well at one time to build something like that.
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