Move over, Mossyrock. We may be launching a Blueberry Cheesecake Festival in Toledo.
News of two Canadian companies purchasing more than a thousand acres of farmland around Toledo for the planting of blueberries has the community buzzing.
US Golden Eagle Farms Limited Partnership and GE Toledo Farms Limited Partnership, apparently owned by the same parent company, Golden Eagle Group in Vancouver, British Columbia, invested more than $2.6 million in the Toledo area. GE Toledo Farms paid $1,790,550 for 13 parcels totaling 829.49 acres of farmland, while GE Toledo Farms paid $900,000 for 27 parcels totaling 192.07 acres.
I’ve watched heavy machinery digging up dirt on both sides of Jackson Highway north of Toledo for months and heard recently it was for blueberries.
Other land purchased by the company, along Tucker Road, Schoolhouse Lane, and Spencer Road, hasn’t yet been disturbed. I’ve heard people express concerns about depleting the aquifer from which we draw our well water. I hope those concerns are addressed, but I can think of a lot worse things than blueberries that could have gone onto that agricultural land.
In 2015, Washington surpassed Georgia as the top blueberry-producing state in the nation, a title it has retained. Washington in 2016 harvested 120 million pounds of blueberries, up from 110 million the year before. Oregon and Michigan ranked second and third, but their harvests pale in comparison with that in British Columbia, which harvested 170 million pounds in 2016. Washington and British Columbia both have harvest seasons that run from mid-June through the end of October, according to Alan Schreiber, administrator of the Washington State Blueberry Commission in Pasco, as quoted in a July 28 Capital Press article.
In 2015, Schreiber noted that a third of Washington’s blueberry growers have come from British Columbia, North America’s largest blueberry region, which is running out of land for that crop, according to a June 27, 2016, article in The Capital Press.
He attributed the growth to public awareness of the health benefits of blueberries as a good source of fiber, Vitamin C, and high in antioxidants, which can help fight cancer and heart disease. But he also noted that small growers have had a hard time competing with larger companies.
As of October 2017, the top counties for growing blueberries were Whatcom, Snohomish and Skagit in Western Washington and Benton and Franklin on the eastern side. It looks like Lewis County may soon be added to that list with blueberry farms in Mossyrock, Toledo and Boistfort.
But Lewis County has a long way to go before it can ever claim the title of Blueberry Capital of the World, a moniker held by Hammonton, New Jersey, which claims more than 7,500 of New Jersey’s 8,800 harvested acres of blueberries. A close runner-up to the title in our state is Whatcom County, which has 7,000 acres in blueberries, according to an Oct. 16, 2017, article in The Spokesman-Review in Spokane. Altogether, Washington has 18,000 acres planted in blueberries.
As someone who loves history, it’s interesting to note that these Canadian companies have purchased land that once belonged to the Hudson’s Bay Co.’s 5,000-acre Cowlitz Farm, which extended from the Cowlitz River to the northeast of present-day Toledo. The prime agricultural land grew 10,000 bushels of wheat a year and fed a hundred head of cattle and 500 ewes, providing food for the Hudson’s Bay post at Vancouver.
In June 1846, as more pioneers crossed the Oregon Trail, the British had ceded everything below the 49th parallel to the United States, and the Hudson’s Bay Co. relocated its headquarters to Vancouver Island. However, the company retained ownership of the Cowlitz Farm, which was managed by clerk George B. Roberts from 1846 to 1851. He later complained about the American “squatters of ’54 and ’55” who took up donation land claims on the British-owned company’s property. Among them were Jackson Barton, Thomas Pearson, J.L. Finch, Horace Howe and James Galloway.
Roberts shared his recollections with The Oregonian, and N.B. Coffman and Charles Miles wrote about his views in their Claquato Landmarks series published in The Chehalis Bee-Nugget in the 1930s and reprinted in The Daily Chronicle May 30, 1968. They said Roberts “claims that they went about armed and shot at him and his son.
In his recollections, Roberts wrote, “I let them have it, giving up the graves of my wife and family.”
For their part, the Americans claimed the land wasn’t being worked and appeared abandoned.
We live on what was the Pearson Donation Land Claim, established by the New York wagon maker, and US Golden Eagle Farms has now purchased the property across from us on Tucker Road, so that part of what was the Cowlitz Farm is once again in Canadian (aka British) hands.
Perhaps George B. Roberts is resting more peacefully now.
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at chaptersoflife1999@gmail.com.
