BELLINGHAM, on a salt-water bay of the same name, is the county seat, and commercial metropolis not only for this county but much other territory.  It has a population of about 40,000 people.  Into it all the railroads center, while the harbor is one of the best in Washington.  It is largely a manufacturing town, having plants for the production of sash, doors, columns, tin cans, boilers, engines, flour and feed, canned fish, condensed milk, and many others.  It is a substantial, live business community of wide-awake people, and growing rapidly.  It has a gravity water system, electric lights, and gas plant.

BLAINE is a city of about 3,000 inhabitants, situated close to the Canadian line and on the Great Northern railway.  Timber and lumber manufactures are the chief sources of its prosperity.  Fishing and the canning of salmon are also important industries.  The railroad [Page 89] company has recently expended considerable sums in improving its facilities.  Blaine is a growing community.

SUMAS, on the Canadian border, is a lumbering town of 1,100 people.

LYNDEN is an agricultural center of 1,200 citizens.

FERNDALE is a lumber center of 1,000 people.  Besides, there are a dozen smaller business centers in the county, growing and prosperous.

WHITMAN COUNTY

Whitman county is one of the chief agricultural counties of the state, lying immediately south of Spokane county and on the Idaho state line, having the Snake river for its southern boundary.  The county is a plateau of rolling prairie lands, a large portion of which is farmed, watered by a number of streams, which are utilized for irrigation purposes in some of the bottom lands—­although the rainfall is sufficient to mature crops, and no irrigation is had on the great bulk of the farms.  The area is about 2,000 square miles.  The population is about 40,000.  The soil is a strong mixture of volcanic ash and clay of great fertility and permanence.  Twenty years of wheat-growing still leaves the soil able to produce from 25 to 50 bushels per acre.

RESOURCES.

All the resources of the county originate in this splendid soil.  For growing all the cereals and fruits and vegetables it has no superior.  The county is well settled, and probably no county can excel Whitman county in the per capita wealth of its farmers.  The products of the county are varied, and include wheat, oats, barley and hay, all giving splendid yields—­wheat from 30 to 50 bushels, oats 60 to 100 bushels, barley from 50 to 80 bushels, and hay from 4 to 6 tons per acre.  Potatoes, sugar beets and other vegetables produce fine crops.

The hardier fruits, such as apples, pears, plums and cherries, are successfully raised in all parts of the county, while on the bottom lands, along the Snake river, peaches, melons, etc., are produced in abundance.  Seventy-five carloads of fruit go out annually from one orchard.