On May 23, 1910, three years after being designated as one end of the Coast Division of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, the town of Othello incorporates. Despite the railroad’s prolonged financial difficulties, Othello’s railyards stay busy as trains exchange crews and locomotives on the edge of the bustling town. The 1950s will see a new infusion of economic activity as water from the Columbia Basin Project begins irrigating area farms and orchards. The establishment of potato processing facilities on the edge of town in the 1960s guarantees its continued prosperity – today about 15 percent of the nation’s frozen french fries are processed in Othello.
From Homesteads to Railroad Town
The area around Othello was one of the last parts of Eastern Washington to be homesteaded as dryland wheat farmers looked at the especially arid panhandle of Adams County and wondered whether they could wring a living from the soil. By 1903, a group of farmhouses clustered on the edge of a broad plateau overlooking the drainage of Crab Creek where it encounters the Saddle Mountains and veers west toward the Columbia River. Recognizing the need for a post office, the settlers held a contest to generate suggestions for its name. The winning entry was based not on the Shakespeare play, at least not directly, but on a now vanished Tennessee town where one of the pioneers had lived happily as a girl.
The location was fortuitous. In 1906, surveyors for the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad established a route for a new transcontinental railroad that passed a few hundred yards from the pioneer farmhouses. Farmers struggling with the lack of rainfall hired on with railroad crews to build roadbeds and lay track. The next year, railroad officials announced that Othello would be the eastern end of the railroad’s Coast Division, which meant that the town would be where trains exchanged crews and locomotives arriving from the flatlands to the east and the mountainous regions to the west.
The result was the town’s first economic boom. The years right before and after incorporation, when the population was about 400, saw the construction of hotels, restaurants and cafes, saloons, churches, hardware and grocery stores, lumberyards, a schoolhouse, a bank, a barber shop, newspaper offices, a tobacco store, and a theater. Railroad facilities grew to include section houses, stockyards, ice and coal houses, freight and passenger depots, a roundhouse, a wheel shop, and fueling and sanding stations. Crews bedded down in hotels, bunkhouses, sleep shacks, and rooming houses. Schoolboys known as "callboys" kept track of railroad workers’ schedules and banged on their hotel doors to wake them up and make sure they got to work on time.
The opening of the Panama Canal in 1915 and the steady growth of automobile and truck traffic helped end the railroads’ golden era. But the railyards of Othello stayed busy, especially when the Milwaukee Road electrified its Coast Division, meaning that westbound steam and diesel locomotives had to be exchanged for electric locomotives for the trip over the Boylston and Cascade mountains. Electricity reached the town in 1931 from a railroad substation. Though the population gradually declined – from 649 in 1920, to 558 in 1930, to 420 in 1940, with perhaps another 150 living on nearby farms – the town was stable.
The Arrival of Irrigation Water
In May 1953, many of Othello’s residents gathered on the western edge of town to watch the first trickles of water make their way down the newly constructed Potholes Canal. It was the culmination of a decades-long dream. Since the early part of the twentieth century, Eastern Washington boosters and politicians had been lobbying the federal government to build the infrastructure needed to extract water from the Columbia River and irrigate the parched Columbia Basin plateau. Their efforts were a major force behind the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam from 1933 to 1941 and the initiation of the Columbia Basin Project in 1943. In 1951, six of the largest pumps ever built began lifting water from Franklin Delano Roosevelt Lake behind the dam to an ancient coulee south of the river. From there, the water traveled through thousands of miles of canals, tunnels, and siphons to, eventually, more than 600,000 acres of thirsty farmland.
The arrival of irrigation water inaugurated Othello’s next economic boom. Farmers began to grow potatoes, sugar beets, alfalfa, corn, canola, peas, asparagus, carrots, mint, grapes, and many other crops. Apple, pear, peach, and cherry orchards adorned nearby hillsides. New businesses cropped up to serve farmers’ and townspeople’s needs. From a population of 526 in 1950, the town grew to 2,669 in 1960, 4,122 in 1970, and 4,454 in 1980. In 1961, a frozen food company on the outskirts of town called Othello Packers began to process peas, carrots, and corn. Three years later, farmer Peter J. Taggares opened the Chef Ready french fry factory. It was the beginning of a french fry empire. Over the next few decades, more plants were built to process and freeze french fries, hash browns, and tater tots. By 2023, Othello was producing roughly 1.5 billion pounds of frozen potato processed foods, including about 15 percent of the french fries consumed in America. Agricultural workers, many from Mexico, moved to the area to work on potato farms, in the processing plants, and for associated enterprises.
As the population continued to grow in subsequent decades – from 4,638 in 1990, to 5,847 in 2000, to 7,364 in 2010, to 8,549 in 2020 – its demographics changed. Anglo children who grew up in town tended to move elsewhere after high school and not return. As they began to have children, many of their retired parents also moved to be nearer their children and great-grandchildren. Meanwhile, Hispanic children raised in Othello tended to stay near their families when they came of age, even if they left temporarily to attend college. At the same time, new Hispanic residents arrived from other parts of the United States, from Mexico, and from other Latin American countries. By 2020, the Hispanic population had grown from 30 percent of the town’s residents in 1980 to more than 75 percent, and business in town was as likely to be conducted in Spanish as in English.
Continuity and Change
In 1980, the Milwaukee Road ended its operations west of Miles City, Montana. By then, the agricultural industry in Othello was so strong that the railroad’s closing had minimal economic impacts. In most of Washington, the route of the Milwaukee Road was converted to what is now the Palouse to Cascades Trail, which extends westward from the border of Idaho to Cedar Falls outside North Bend. But the tracks from Warden, about 12 miles northeast of Othello, to Smyrna, about 32 miles to the west, remain in place and are used by the Columbia Basin Railroad to transport agricultural and industrial products.
Other legacies of the Milwaukee Road remain. In 1975, a local group bought a derelict hotel built near the tracks in 1912 and converted it into an arts and handcrafts center. Since then, the Old Othello Art Gallery has served as a center for arts and arts education and has welcomed visitors with a 1946 Milwaukee Road caboose that contains displays on the town’s railroad history. Three blocks up Larch Street, the 1908 First Presbyterian Church building serves as the town’s history museum and includes extensive information on the railroad.
In 2002, a Walmart superstore opened on the outskirts of town. Within a few years, many of the mom and pop stores that had served Othello for years were gone, and their owners had largely moved away. As the town became more Hispanic, it also became younger. In 2020, about 40 percent of the population was 17 or younger, compared with the statewide average of 22 percent. The schools again filled to overflowing as new housing developments rose on the edge of town. Adams County still needs thousands of agricultural laborers, and their relatively low wages help keep Othello’s average income below the state average. But the town, with its wide and freshly paved streets, expansive parks, and verdant surrounding farms, is thriving.
