I come now to a period of my life, as one might say, on the border land between pioneer days of the old Oregon country and of the later development of the younger territory and this giant State bearing the great name of the father of our country.
An account of these ventures follows in the order of their occurrence.
The public, generally, give me the credit of introducing hop culture into the Northwest.
As this business created such a stir in the world's market, and made the Puyallup Valley famous, and as my name has become so prominently connected with hop culture, I can hardly pass this episode of my life by without notice. As I say elsewhere, this should not properly be called a venture, although the violent fluctuations of prices made it hazardous. But I can truly say, that for twenty-two years' successive crops, I did not raise a single crop upon which I lost money, and that for that many years I added each year some acreage to my holdings. But few hop-growers, however, can say so much as to losses incurred.
A history of the establishment and destruction of the business follows:
About the fifteenth of March, 1865, Chas. Wood, of Olympia, sent about three pecks of hop roots to Steilacoom for my father, Jacob R. Meeker, who then lived on his claim nearby where Sumner was afterwards built in the Puyallup Valley. John V. Meeker, my brother, carried this sack of roots on his back from Steilacoom to my father's home, a distance of about twenty miles, passing by my cabin (the remains of which are still standing in Pioneer Park, Puyallup) with his precious burden. I fingered out of the sack roots sufficient to plant six hills of hops, and so far as I know those were the first hops planted in the Puyallup Valley. My father planted the remainder in four rows of about six rods in length, and in the following September harvested the equivalent of one bale of hops, 180 pounds, and sold them to Mr. Wood for 85 cents per pound, receiving a little over $150.00.
[Illustration: One Group of Five of Ezra Meeker's Hop Houses.]
This was the beginning of the hop business in the Puyallup Valley, and the Territory of Washington.
This was more money than had been received by any settler in the Puyallup Valley, excepting perhaps two, from the products of their farm for that year. My father's nearby neighbors, Messrs. E. C. Mead and L. F. Thompson, obtained a barrel of hop roots from California the next year, and planted them the following spring—four acres. I obtained what roots I could get that year, but not enough to plant an acre. The following year (1867) I planted four acres, and for twenty-six successive years thereafter added to this plantation until our holdings reached past the five-hundred-acre mark, and our production over four hundred tons a year.