Palouse

The Palouse is a region of the northwestern United States, encompassing parts of southeastern Washington, north central Idaho and, in some definitions, extending south into northeast Oregon. It is a major agricultural area, primarily producing wheat and legumes. Situated about 160 miles (250 km) north of the Oregon Trail, the region experienced rapid growth in the late 19th century, for a brief time surpassed the population of the Puget Sound region of Washington. The region is home to two land grant universities, the University of Idaho in Moscow and Washington State University in Pullman. Located just eight miles (13 km) apart, both schools opened in the early 1890s.

The origin of the name "Palouse" is unclear. One theory is that the name of the Palus tribe (spelled in early accounts variously Palus, Palloatpallah, Pelusha, et al.) was converted by French-Canadian fur traders to the more familiar French word pelouse, meaning "land with short and thick grass" or "lawn." Over time, the spelling changed to Palouse. Another theory is that the name was in the first place a French word, describing the area which was then applied to the indigenous people inhabiting it.
Traditionally, the Palouse region was defined as the fertile hills and prairies north of the Snake River, which separated it from Walla Walla Country, and north of the Clearwater River, which separated it from the Camas Prairie, extending north along the Washington and Idaho border, south of Spokane, centered on the Palouse River. This region underwent a settlement and wheat-growing boom during the 1880s, part of a larger process of growing wheat in southeast Washington, originally pioneered in the Walla Walla Country south of the Snake River.
While this definition of the Palouse remains common today, sometimes the term is used to refer to the entire wheat-growing region, including the Walla Walla Country, the Camas Prairie of Idaho, the Big Bend region of the central Columbia River Plateau, and other smaller agricultural districts such as Asotin County, Washington, and Umatilla County, Oregon. This larger definition is used by organizations such as the World Wide Fund for Nature, who define the Palouse Grasslands ecoregion broadly.
The community of Palouse, Washington, is located in Whitman County, about 7 miles (11 km) west of Potlach, Idaho.
Nevertheless, the traditional definition of the Palouse region is distinct from the older Walla Walla region south of the Snake River, where dryland farming of wheat was first proved viable in the region in the 1860s. During the 1870s, the Walla Walla region was rapidly converted to farmland, while the initial experiments in growing wheat began in the Palouse region, which previously had been the domain of cattle and sheep ranching. When those trials proved more than successful, a minor land rush quickly filled the Palouse region with farmers during the 1880s. The simultaneous proliferation of railroads only increased the rapid settlement of the Palouse. By 1890 nearly all the Palouse lands had been taken up and converted to wheat farming.
Unlike the Walla Walla Country, which was solidly anchored on the city of Walla Walla, the Palouse region saw the rise of at least four centers, all within several miles of each other: Colfax (the oldest), Palouse, Pullman, and on the Idaho side, Moscow. These four centers, along with at least ten lesser ones, resulted in a diffused urban pattern, relative to the centralized Walla Walla country.
Cities along the borders of the Palouse, in some definitions included within the Palouse region, include Lewiston, Idaho, serving the Camas Prairie farmlands, Ritzville, serving the eastern edge of the Big Bend Country, and Spokane, the major urban hub of the entire region. So dominant was Spokane's position, it became known as the capital of the Inland Empire, including all the wheat producing regions, the local mining districts, and lumber producing forests. Spokane also served as the main railroad and transportation hub of the entire region.
By 1910, although local terms like Palouse, Walla Walla Country, Big Bend, Umatilla Country, and Camas Prairie, continued to be common, many people of the region began to regard themselves as living in the Inland Empire, the Wheat Belt, the Columbia Basin, or simply Eastern Washington, Oregon, or North Idaho.

A Bit More About Snake River

The Snake River is the largest tributary of the Columbia. The river begins in Northwestern Wyoming south of Yellowstone Park and west of the Continental Divide at an elevation of just over 9,800 feet. From there, where several small streams converge to form the river, the Snake flows south for more than 100 miles before turning west into Idaho and flowing across the southern part of the state, and then north to its confluence with the Clearwater at Clarkston, Washington, and Lewiston, Idaho. From there the river flows west through southern Washington to its confluence with the Columbia a few miles south of Pasco. At the confluence, the elevation of the river is 340 feet above sea level. Thus in its 1,056 miles the Snake drops more than 9,400 feet, a step decline.

There are a number of waterfalls across southern Idaho. Early French fur traders called the Snake a “mad river,” apparently for good reason. The annual discharge of the Snake into the Columbia is 27.5 million acre feet, or about 14.5 percent of the annual discharge of the Columbia into the ocean. The Snake drainage basin encompasses 92,960 square miles, or about 36 percent of the entire Columbia River Basin. Obviously, while vast, the Snake River Basin is quite arid.

The rapid descent and rocky canyon of the Snake made it a good river for hydropower development; the first hydropower dam was built in 1900 at Swan Falls and supplied electricity to the Trade Dollar Mine at Silver City 28 miles away. The Snake also is heavily tapped for irrigation. Above Milner Dam, near Burley, Idaho, virtually the entire flow of the river is pumped or diverted. Downstream of Milner Dam, the Snake is replenished by springs and tributaries, essentially amounting to a reborn, or second river.

The Snake has been called the lifeline of southern Idaho and the multi-billion-dollar agricultural industry in that part of the state. Hydropower dams and irrigation facilities were developed simultaneously along the Snake, as pumping facilities were powered by electricity and communities developed around the farm settlements.

The last major dam was completed in 1975 — Lower Granite, a federal dam in Washington. In all, there are 22 hydropower dams on the mainstem Snake River — 15 in Idaho, three on the Idaho/Oregon border, and four in Washington. The Snake produces more than 1,100 megawatts of electricity — enough for the city of Seattle — and the water withdrawals irrigate 3.8 million acres.

Before the construction of dams, the Snake produced huge volumes of salmon and steelhead, and the fish spawned in the mainstem and in tributaries as far inland as Shoshone Falls about 600 miles from the confluence with the Columbia. Salmon passage today ends at Hells Canyon Dam, at river mile 247. In its upper reaches, the river remains a popular destination for sport fishing and water recreation; Hells Canyon, the deepest river gorge in North America, is a national recreation area.

The river was named after Indians who lived along its shoreline in present-day southeastern Idaho. Early European fur traders noted that the Indians marked their territory with sticks that showed an image of a snake. The Indians also greeted people by making a snake-like hand motion.

A Bit About Snake River

The Snake is a major river of the greater Pacific Northwest in the United States. At 1,078 miles (1,735 km) long, it is the largest tributary of the Columbia River, the largest North American river that empties into the Pacific Ocean.[9] Rising in western Wyoming, the river flows through the Snake River Plain then rugged Hells Canyon and the rolling Palouse Hills to reach its mouth at the Tri-Cities of the state of Washington. Its drainage basin encompasses parts of six U.S. states, and its average discharge is over 54,000 cubic feet per second (1,500 m3/s).

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Rugged mountains divided by rolling plains characterize the physio-graphically diverse watershed of the Snake River. The Snake River Plain was created by a volcanic hotspot which now lies underneath Yellowstone National Park, the headwaters of the Snake River. Gigantic glacial-retreat flooding episodes that occurred during the previous Ice Age carved out many topographical features including various canyons and ridges along the middle and lower Snake. Two of these catastrophic flooding events significantly affected the river and its surrounds.

More than 11,000 years ago, prehistoric Native Americans lived along the Snake. Salmon from the Pacific Ocean spawned in the millions in the river. These fish were central to the lives of the people along the Snake below Shoshone Falls. By the time Lewis and Clark crossed the Rockies and sighted the valley of a Snake tributary, the Nez Perce and Shoshone were the most powerful people in the region. Contact with Europeans introduced horses to some tribes, reshaping their lifestyles for the next few hundred years before outside settlement. Later explorers and fur trappers further changed and utilized the resources of the Snake River basin. At one point, a hand sign made by the Shoshones representing fish was misinterpreted to represent a snake, giving the Snake River its name.

By the middle 19th century, the Oregon Trail, a pioneer trail of which a major portion followed the Snake River, had been established. Steamboats and railroads moved agricultural products and minerals along the river throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. The powerful, steep flow of the Snake has been utilized since the 1890s to generate hydroelectricity, enhance navigation and provide irrigation water from fifteen major dams that have transformed the lower river into a series of reservoirs, several of which have been proposed for removal to restore some of the river's once tremendous salmon runs.