Wenatchee Center history

American jurisdiction over the area was established after the Treaty of 1846 which ended British claims in north central Washington and established the Canadian border.

Americans did not settle in Chelan County until after 1860.

One of the first white settlers in Wenatchee, Philip Miller, planted apple trees in 1872.

He was followed in 1883 by Father DeGrassi, who is credited with starting irrigation at Cashmere and teaching agriculture to Indians of that district.

The Post Office Department’s misspelling of Wenatchee was corrected on June 14, 1889.

With this vision in mind, a group of Seattle businessman formed the Wenatchee Improvement Company in December 1890 to acquire property and build a town.

On May 6, 1892, this plat was filed with Kittitas County (Chelan County had not yet been created), and lots were placed on the open market the same month.

By 1893 there was fairly dependable steamship service upriver to the wheat lands around Waterville and the towns of the Okanogan region.

The state legislature created Chelan County in 1899, carving it out of the existing Kittitas and Okanogan Counties.

By 1900 Chelan County has a population of 3,931 and through land development and an orchard planting boom, in the next 10 years grew to 15,104.

The first carload of apples from Wenatchee to Seattle was shipped in 1901, 3 and the future looked bright for growers.

Although a variety of fruit was grown in the valley, Wenatchee would soon become the self-proclaimed “Apple Capital of the World,” a moniker first applied in 1902.

The club began in 1903 and soon included many prominent businessmen whose goal was to increase the City’s population and industrial development.

Irrigation, beginning on a large scale in 1904, provided the means by which the Wenatchee area could irrigate the narrow benches along the river and develop its apple empire.

In 1906 Andy Gossman came to Wenatchee from Minnesota and established the Columbia and Okanogan (C&O) Nursery, supplying fruit trees to growers planting orchards.

In 1908, Mayor John Gellatly issued an ineffective order that all prostitutes leave the city or reform.

In 1909, the state legislature had approved a local option law whereby communities could decide whether to go “dry” or “wet.” No one championed the anti-saloon position more ardently than Rufus Woods and his newspaper.

A major influence was the Ladies Musical Club, founded in 1910, “which has created a refining and uplifting environment throughout the years” (Gellatly, 270, 271). Members performed and also brought in distinguished musicians from outside the region.

Wenatchee was hard hit during the summer of 1913, and among the fatalities were the first two children of Rufus and Mary Woods.

Washington State’s Apple Blossom Festival has been held in Wenatchee each spring since 1920.

Great Northern Railway's Appleyard Terminal, South Wenatchee, 1925

Beginning in 1929 the Ohme family began developing a nine-acre garden.

A bill to establish an experiment station in Wenatchee as a part of Washington State College was passed by both houses and signed by the governor on February 25, 1937.

The economic base of the county began to expand after 1940 to include new types of employment in lumber, mining, hydroelectric construction, food processing and electrical refining of metal.

Beginning in 1943, the federal Bracero program, which recruited workers from Mexico, rescued the wartime apple industry, and since that time, Wenatchee-area growers have relied largely on resident and migrant Mexican labor.

Partly at the urging of the Wenatchee Chamber of Commerce, a new four-lane bridge was built in 1950.

In 1952, the Aluminum Company of America opened a plant next to Rock Island Dam, its power source.

In 1955 Chelan County reached a population of 42,000 supported by agriculture and new industries.

Rufus Woods even took a diversion from his promotion of the Grand Coulee project to support the decision of the Puget Sound Power & Light Company (Wenatchee’s source of power) to build this dam. It has been a part of Chelan County Public Utility District since 1956.

Local people such as Guy Evans, who grew up on apple ranches, recall the “visceral” reaction to seeing orchards ripped out (Bartley). From their hilltop house, Ann Albertson Deal, Apple Blossom queen of 1958, and her physician husband, Fred, now see rooftops where they once looked out on orchards.

In 1977 a new facility was built on the TFREC campus to house USDA-ARS scientists.

Al Bright, Apples Galore! History of the Apple Industry in the Wenatchee Valley, 1988.

And today there is not only a 550-seat theater free of debt, but another 160-seat theater built primarily with volunteer labor that is the home of Music Theater of Wenatchee. It all started in 1989, when the Mission Creek Players, a small theater group, asked Wenatchee’s Allied Arts to study the needs of the community for a performance facility–its size, type, and location.

The Washington State Parks and Recreation Department bought the gardens from the Ohme descendants in 1991, and it is now managed by Chelan County.

They produced a pamphlet in 1992 outlining their proposals: a 400-seat auditorium located on the river, with a smaller rehearsal room, adequate storage, run by a non-profit group but owned by the city or state.

His offer struck a positive chord, and during the winter of 1993-4 a committee was formed to investigate the proposal further.

The year 1994 was one of getting organized for fund raising.

A telephone survey of 400 local residents was conducted by the Gilmore Associates of Seattle during January 1995 The results: the performing arts project was seen as an investment in the future by most respondents, and that private donations should be the primary source of funding.

The year 1996, the fourth under board president John McQuaig, brought a committee together to evaluate architects for the city’s convention center expansion as well as for the performing arts center.

The Woods House Conservatory of Music, founded in 1997 as a private, nonprofit organization by Rufus Woods's son Wilfred and his wife Kathy, is located in the lovely old Woods family home.

On May 12, 1998, a groundbreaking ceremony celebrated the beginning of construction, with Seafirst chairman John Rindlaub in attendance plus local politicians and supporters and contractors and architects, thirteen of them performing their duty with thirteen shovels.

Allowing for inflation, the projected deficit is thus $20,000 to $70,000 for the year 2000.

Productions began in 2001.

In 2002 the center leaders felt they should not be paying rent across the street for office space and moved the office to the concession area in the theater.

The recognition of other contributors to the building fund did not happen until 2005, when the lower lobby wall was used for that purpose.

In 2007, Mayor Dennis Johnson and the Wenatchee City Council selected Graybeal Signs to create the new signage that continues to welcome travelers to the City that well deserves the distinction of being the “Apple Capital of the World”.