Cashmere - 2

Like the Vale of Kashmir, the surrounding environs of Cashmere, Washington embrace a spectcular topography. The panoramic vista to the west offers the commanding rise of Mount Cashmere, soaring upwards of 8,500 feet. Just to the east flows the mighty Columbia River, which provides electrical power to much of the Pacific coast and irrigation water for hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland. Like the Jhelum River which flows through the Vale of Kashmir, the Wenatchee River sweeps majestically through Cashmere. Combined with several other creeks and streams which are fed by run-off from the Cascades, the Wenatchee endows this terrain with enough water to ensure consistant productivity in the abundant fruit orchards which line the river's embankments.

Following the pattern of early settlements into the northwestern United States, the first Catholic missionaries arrived in the Wenatchee Valley during the late 1850s. From the single-room log missions constructed by the Oblate Fathers to those later established by the Jesuits, so many of these small enclosures dotted the banks of the Wenatchee River that the area became known as "Old Mission." In 1855, gold was discovered in the region. For roughly the next decade, this small vicinity in the valley fell prey to miners and to the episodic warring with Native Americans that followed "gold fever." In 1873, Father Grassi erected the first log church, and the community's name was shortened to Mission.

Cashmere was not always the fertile glen that it is today. In the mid-nineteenth century, its rough-hewn slopes were sparsely dotted with shrubs resembling sagebrush. Occasional clusters of fir trees were all that divided the skyline. Despite of the rather forbidding territory, a gradual migration of new settlers began into the valley during the 1880s. They built homesteads, determined to stay and till the land. This meant that water had to be directed to the surrounding hillsides; accordingly, the first irrigation ditches were dug toward the end of that decade. Gradient countryside, which had been sere for so many erstwhile spring and summer months, suddenly remained green.