Editor’s note: This year, Yelm will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the city’s official incorporation, which took place on Dec. 8, 1924. Each month, the Nisqually Valley News is presenting an aspect of the city’s history. The history of farming in Yelm is September’s topic.
A drive through the most rural sections of Yelm today will reveal vast amounts of farmland featuring crops, cattle, horses and more.
But many years ago, even decades before the city’s incorporation in 1924, one wouldn’t have to travel so far to find such land in Yelm. After the Nisqually Tribe first occupied the Yelm Prairie in the 1840s, Hudson’s Bay Company sheep farmers settled the area to watch the sheep at Yelm’s outstations.
The sheep farmers told incoming travelers, including James Longmire, the man widely regarded as Yelm’s first citizen, not to settle on any lands north of the Nisqually River. Many emigrant farmers from the East and Midwest traveled to the Pacific Northwest after Congress passed the Donation Land Claim Act of 1850, which offered incentives to settlers looking for land in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Wyoming.
In the 1850s and 1860s, the demand for produce in the Pacific Northwest was growing, and by the mid-1870s, Yelm became a booming farming community. More farmers, loggers and cattlemen settled in Yelm once the Northern Pacific Railroad began serving the area starting in 1873. Not every farm was dedicated for crops or livestock; some families provided solely for themselves.
Farmers in the 19th century relied on weather and natural resources to shape their farming, but the dependence on the sun, rain and flowing water often produced unpredictable results. There was little water retention for the large farms in Yelm, as irrigation and rainwater drained.
The 1890s brought a time of financial distress for farmers, as some newspaper accounts reported that many farms were lost while others were abandoned or sold. While farming in the community eventually improved due to the demand for food for gold hunters headed to Alaska, farmers and families in Yelm realized an irrigation system would be necessary to continue the economic prosperity on the prairie. After all, industries continued to grow with the population. The community grew from less than 10 people in 1853 to 50 by 1908 and over 400 in 1926.
In 1910, Yelm officials, including James Mosman, began to consider irrigation as a method of increasing crop productivity, property values and attracting settlers. Mosman, along with L.M. Rice and W.F. Smith, formally organized the Yelm Irrigation Company in April of 1911. The process of creating the irrigation system was laborious, as the company hired an engineering company for $4,000 to lay out a plan to deliver water from the Nisqually River to 4,300 acres on the prairie. The engineering company estimated the cost of the project at $76,000, which was about $40,000 more than the men had anticipated. After they secured water rights and chose the route, they began to discuss the feasibility of clearing the ditch themselves, which involved falling trees and removing stumps.
It took five and a half years for the formal opening of the Yelm Irrigation District on June 29, 1916, to take place, a day that was celebrated with a ceremony. The project was an investment of $100,000 and eventually watered 6,000 acres. For several years after, Yelm residents gathered for a picnic on the anniversary of the project’s opening.
The irrigation project was a hit with farmers in Yelm, which soon became a commercial hub for beans, cucumbers and berries. Red and black raspberries, strawberries, black caps and green beans all grew on the prairie with the help of the new system. Yelm was even called “the blackcap capital of the state” in one news article. Residents and visitors, especially youth, made money picking berries around town and were paid by the pound to help earn a living or buy school clothes.
During the years of the Yelm Irrigation District, the community put on an annual Berry Pickers’ Ball to celebrate the productivity of crops. While the ball was named for berries, the evening celebrated farmers of all kinds. There was music and dancing in the street as Yelm Avenue was cleared of all cars and wagons.
The success of the irrigation district wouldn’t last, however. Frequent floods occurred, including major ones recorded in 1918, 1922 and in the 1930s. Wooden flumes began to leak, and water delivery became sporadic. Thurston County agricultural agent Robert McKay warned that irrigation by means of ditches and flooding was wasting water and increasing the danger of leaching. He believed that Yelm’s prosperity and productivity could be found in the dairy or poultry industry. Not only was the infrastructure failing, but the Great Depression and the mosaic plant disease hurt berry farming. The disease killed 79% of the berry crops in Yelm and the surrounding areas, according to History Link. Yelm became what locals called a “bedroom town,” as farmers left the prairie to take jobs in Olympia, Tacoma and at Fort Lewis. The Yelm Irrigation Company closed in bankruptcy in the 1950s.
In more recent years, Yelm has become home to many public and private farms as the city has rapidly grown in population. While businesses now line the streets that once inhabited farmland decades ago, farms are still a core piece of commerce in Yelm. Dancing Goats and Singing Chickens Organic Farm, The Healing Farm, Kimball’s Ranch, Hidden Prairie Farm, Green Branch Ranch, Cosmic Carrot Farm, La Vida Alpaca and Tahoma Vista Fiber Mill and many more operate in Yelm. The spring and summer also offer the annual Yelm Farmers Market, which features 20 or more vendors every Saturday from early May to late September.
