formed with a capital of one million dollars to develop the mineral wealth of the Kittitass and tributary country. Among other projects is one to build a smelter to reduce the ores of the Conconully Mines at the north, and another to organize an iron and steel manufacturing company. Limestone, sandstone, pumice, coal, gold, and other minerals, it is said, are only awaiting the action of associated capital to create a great deal of wealth.
The second town in the Yakima Basin is North Yakima. Why North Yakima? Only because when some people of their own accord had laid off a town two or three miles south of them, then came the Northern Pacific Kailroad Company, and in 1885 laid off a town of its own, on the most approved plan, north of them, and drew to itself the trade of the country of Yakima. This proceeding naturally was greatly irritating to the South Yakimas, who complained of the treatment of the railroad company. The company as a corporation could not be expected to have a soul, but it had a fair-to-middling kind of brain, and made a proposition to the residents of South Yakima to come over and dwell in the tents of the north town, or, in other words, to let the railroad company remove them, houses and inhabitants, on the railroad town site, where they were to be given lots for those they left behind, and made welcome. As the business of the place had already departed, the majority felt forced to accept the proposition, and the company accordingly had the south town removed, house by house, and set down on its town-site. This procedure increased the value of North Yakima real property. History is silent as to the financial and mental condition of real-estate dealers in the old town, but they probably threw themselves off a rock into the sea.
North Yakima is a flourishing town, situated near the confluence of the Nachess and Yakima Eivers. It is admirably laid out, with streets from eighty to one hundred feet in width, shaded by handsome trees, and irrigated by rivulets of pure water flowing next the sidewalks. The county-seat is located here, and its three thousand inhabitants pay taxes on an assessed valuation of one million dollars, which is about one-fourth of the actual value of the town property. It is equipped, like all the new towns of Washington, with water, fire, light, and street
