Grandview, WA – Celebrating 100 Years

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From the desk of Evan Robb Who is this man standing in a field somewhere near Grandview, Washington? Will we learn even a small part of his story? Or will he remain unidentified indefinitely? A fascinating part of working on a digital library project with contributors dispersed across an entire state is that we regularly see material before it has been cataloged or described in any way. The faces staring back at us from black-and-white photos often seem to suggest their own stories (some even beg to be the basis for entire novels), but we can only ever guess at the true nature of the content depicted. The images shown here were recently added to the Grandview Heritage collection, and are a small part of a photo album presented, at some point in time, to the Grandview Commercial Club, by the Oregon-Washington Railroad & Navigation Company. Our local subject experts in Grandview are hard at work indexing the document; all we can do is wait in expectation, and hope that some of our questions will be answered.

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In the meantime, the rest of Grandview Heritage (the newest collection in Washington Rural Heritage) was recently published, and just in time, as the city of Grandview is readying for its Centennial celebration. This diverse collection includes material from the collections of the Bleyhl Community Library and R.E. Powell Museum. Of particular interest: a collection of artwork by Grandview/Yakima Valley artist Blanche McClane Cook (1901-1991); a collection of Grandview High School class photos from as early as 1913; and material from the R.E. Powell Museum, such as a vintage barbed wire collection and the locally famous mastodon bone (read a bit about its digitization here; see exactly where it was found on our map, here). In honor of Grandview's upcoming Centennial, we thought we'd point to a few great "firsts" taken from what is perhaps the centerpiece of the Grandview Heritage collection, The History of Grandview.

• First baby born in Grandview, 1907.
• First bakery.
• First bank.
• First postmistress, Mrs. A.E. Sykes, atop a beautiful Appaloosa (a true Pacific Northwest horse breed).
• First fruit sizer in Yakima County.
• First baseball game.