The Palouse

The "Palouse" region of North Idaho is characterized by low, gently rolling hills. Once blanketed with tall native grasses that sustained huge herds of Nez Perce Indian horses, the land now supports one of the finest wheat-growing enterprises anywhere in the world. The unmistakable contours of the Palouse landscape is the work of glaciers and the wind--the glaciers ground up granite rock, and the wind blew it to the Palouse.

The first turning of the sod in the Palouse was very difficult because of the ancient grasses that grew there and their thick tangle of roots. Settlers only had horses and walking plows. After they had turned the earth, the farmers broadcast seed by hand. The work had its reward: early farmers got yields of 45 bushels of wheat per acre.

The "sod" of the Palouse region came from ice-age glaciers that ground mountain rock into particles fine enough to be carried by the wind. In some places near Moscow, Idaho, the mantle of wind-blown soil is 200 feet thick. It is rich and productive, piled up in rounded hills unlike those of any other part of Idaho.

The ancestors of many Palouse farmers were Germans who had been invited to settle the Volga region of Russia by Catherine II in the 1760s. A hundred years later, the Volga Germans suddenly faced a revocation of their special privileges and an increasing hostility to their practice of the Lutheran religion. Henry Villard, owner and promoter of the Northern Pacific railroad, encouraged them to come to the Palouse. Of the 300,000 Volga Germans who came to the United States, about 2500 settled in the Palouse country of Idaho and eastern Washington.

Farmers learned to make the most of the Palouse hills. The high slopes were a problem at first because of primitive equipment, but wheat grew best at the tops of the hills. The lowlands were more exposed to frost. As elsewhere in Idaho where the land is extremely productive, farmers needed railroads to ship their products to distant markets.

At the end of the 19th century, the world's demand for soft winter wheat began to grow, replacing the dwindling demands by miners and railroad laborers, and assuring the prosperity of the Palouse region. Japan has been an important wheat customer for nearly a hundred years. The climate in the Palouse is so stable that crop failure due to insufficient moisture is unknown.

As the 20th century unfolded, the diversity of people and product in the Palouse continued to grow. The town of Moscow became home to the University of Idaho, Idaho's land-grant college. In addition to wheat, the Palouse is the center of Idaho's lentil, dry pea, canola, mustard, and rape seed industries.

Farming has changed from horsepower to steam power to petroleum, all within the lifetime of one generation of farmers. Palouse farmers continue as innovators, developing no-till "direct seeding" techniques in which tilling, planting, fertilizing, and cultivation all take place in one pass of the equipment, a method improving efficiency and reducing erosion of the foundation of it all -- the rich Palouse soil.