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Mr. H. M. Gilbert
Horace M. Gilbert was raised and educated in Illinois, where he
obtained a Liberal Arts Degree and a Veterinary Science Degree.
As a member of a well established family, he was a community leader
and respected farmer having started a corn and hog ranch. He married
a friend from Knox College, Marion Richey, in 1893.
The Northern Pacific Railroad invited Mr. Gilbert to ride an emigrant
train to the state of Washington in 1896, hoping he would examine
the area, decide to settle in the newly developing land, and influence
others from the Midwest to do likewise. After a second trip to the
West that same year, Mr. Gilbert decided to move his family to the
Yakima Valley in the fall of 1897. His young family, including three
children, came by train, and they brought livestock with them to
help establish a farm. Even though he thought the land in the Lower
Valley would be more productive, Mrs. Gilbert preferred to build
the family home near North Yakima closer to cultural interests.
Twenty acres of land a mile west of North Yakima was purchased for
$50. an acre from E. F. Barge, a former teacher in Illinois, and
construction began immediately to build a barn to house the animals
as well as the family for the first year. The home was begun in
1898, small at first, but extended over the years to accommodate
the growing family of seven children.
Mr. Gilbert formed a partnership with Mrs. Gilbert's father, the
Richey-Gilbert Land Company, and they began developing 3,500 acres
of Indian Reservation land January 1, 1900. After getting that land
cleared of sagebrush and irrigating it from small "Gilbert
ditch" out of the Yakima River, they did the same for another
3,500 acres. When under production, it was necessary to build a
warehouse in Toppenish to prepare produce for shipping to Puget
Sound. They were involved in initial road building in the farming
area, and later in banking. While he was working week days in the
Lower Valley, he commuted to Yakima by train on week ends.
After the Tieton Canal was built in 1911, Mr. Gilbert bought 160
acres where the Westpark Shopping Center is now located, and there
he planted apples, pears, and peaches. By 1913, he expanded the
Gilbert Orchards to the Wiley City area. To handle the fruit from
these orchards, the Gilbert Company built a cold storage building
in 1919 at First Avenue and B Streets where the Yakima Fruit and
Cold Storage is now headquarted. In 1926 a second cold storage plant
was constructed in the Wiley City area. In the community, H.M. was
president of the Tieton Irrigation Project for many years, president
of the State Horticultural Union, a Trustee of the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce in 1929, causing him to travel to Washington D.C. four
times that year, and they were very involved as a family in the
Congregational Church. He ran for the state Senate at one time,
but was not successful in being elected. The Gilbert Family was
very much part of the growth and development of the city and county
of Yakima. He died in the home in 1934 at the age of 72.
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