Wenatchee, Washington
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Wenatchee, Washington | |
| Nickname: Apple Capital of the World and the Buckle of the Powerbelt of the Great Northwest | |
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| Coordinates: | |
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| Country | United States |
| State | Washington |
| County | Chelan |
| Incorporated | January 7, 1893 |
| Government | |
| - Mayor | Dennis Johnson |
| Area | |
| - Total | 7.3 sq mi (19.0 km²) |
| - Land | 6.9 sq mi (17.8 km²) |
| - Water | 0.4 sq mi (1.2 km²) |
| Elevation | 780 ft (237 m) |
| Population (2000) | |
| - Total | 35,437 |
| - Density | 4,048.9/sq mi (1,563.3/km²) |
| Time zone | PST (UTC-8) |
| - Summer (DST) | PDT (UTC-7) |
| ZIP codes | 98801, 98807 |
| Area code(s) | 509 |
| FIPS code | 53-77105[1] |
| GNIS feature ID | 1527897[2] |
| Website: www.cityofwenatchee.com | |
Wenatchee (pronounced /wɨˈnætʃi/) is located at the confluence of the Wenatchee and Columbia rivers near the Eastern foothills of the Cascade Mountain range in the U.S. State of Washington. Wenatchee is the most populous city, and the county seat of Chelan County, Washington. Wenatchee is located on the west coast of the Columbia River. On the opposite shore rests the town of East Wenatchee(eastmont). The Columbia River forms the boundary between Chelan and Douglas County. Wenatchee is the principal city of the 'Wenatchee, Washington Metropolitan Statistical Area', which encompasses all of Chelan and Douglas counties. However, the 'Wenatchee Area' generally refers to the land between Rocky Reach and Rock Island Dam on both banks of the Columbia, which includes East Wenatchee, Rock Island, and Malaga.
Wenatchee is known as the "Apple Capital of the World" for the valley's many orchards, which produce apples enjoyed around the world. The city was named for the nearby Wenatchi Indian tribe. The name is a Salish word that means "river which comes [or whose source is] from canyons" or "robe of the rainbow." Awenatchela means "people at the source [of a river]." The City of Wenatchee shares its name with the Wenatchee River, Lake Wenatchee and the Wenatchee National Forest.
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[edit] History
Archeological digs in nearby East Wenatchee have uncovered Clovis stone and bone tools dating back more than 11,000 years, indicating that people migrating during the last Ice Age spent time in the Wenatchee area. The Columbia River and nearby mountains and sagebrush steppes provided an ample supply of food. Clovis points are on display at the [1]Wenatchee Valley Museum & Cultural Center and research findings are available through the Wenatchee World [2].
As early as 1811, fur traders from the Northwest Fur Company entered the Wenatchee valley to trap and trade with the Indians. In 1863, Father Respari, a Catholic priest, began his missionary work with the Indians. He was followed some 20 years later by Father De Grassi, who built a log cabin on the Wenatchee River near the present town of Cashmere. Throughout the 1800s other white settlers came to homestead the land. Wenatchee was platted in September 1888 and officially incorporated as a city on January 7, 1893. The 1900 U.S. Census counted 451 residents.
By the early 1900s the Wenatchee Commercial Club was advertising the region as the "Home of the World's Best Apples." The tree fruit industry provided the economic backbone for the region for a century and still is an important source of revenue along with tourism and other industries.
On October 5, 1931, Clyde Pangborn and co-pilot Hugh Herndon landed their plane, the Miss Veedol, in the hills of East Wenatchee and became the first to fly non-stop across the Pacific Ocean. The 41 hour flight from Sabishiro Beach, Misawa, Aomori Prefecture, Japan won them the Harmon Trophy symbolizing the greatest achievement in flight for the year 1931.
In 1936, with the completion of Rock Island Dam, Wenatchee was protected from the summer flooding of the Columbia River and the first of 14 hydroelectric projects on the Columbia began generating power. The reservoirs behind the dams made it possible to irrigate thousands of additional acres in the Columbia Basin.
Every year from the last week of April through the end of the first week of May, Wenatchee hosts the Washington State Apple Blossom Festival, which probably brings in the largest number of people Wenatchee sees annually, with the exception of all the migrant workers coming in to pick the crop. It features 2 relatively large parades, the Apple Blossom Youth Parade on the last Saturday in April and the Apple Blossom Grand Parade on the first Saturday in May, a food fair representing cuisine from around the world, and a travelling carnival.
According to CNN's Money Magazine, Wenatchee has the second fastest forecasted real estate value growth for June 2006–June 2007 in the country.
[edit] Education
[edit] Public K-12
Public K-12 education in Wenatchee is provided by the Wenatchee School District #246, which also serves the communities of Malaga, Olds Station, South Wenatchee, Sunnyslope, and Wenatchee Heights. The city is served by seven elementary schools which provide education from kindergarten through Grade 5. Columbia, Lewis and Clark, Lincoln, Mission View, Newbery and Washington Elementary schools provide instruction within, or near, the city limits of Wenatchee, whilst Sunnyslope Elementary provides instruction in the orchard and suburban hills of Sunnyslope, north of Wenatchee. Students then progress to one of the city's three middle schools, Foothills, Orchard, or Pioneer Middle Schools, which provide Grade 6 through Grade 8 instruction within the City Limits. All Wenatchee middle schools transfer their graduating student body up to Wenatchee High School, which operates Grade 9 through Grade 12, with the option for students to enroll in Running Start and attend Wenatchee Valley College for grades 11 and 12, or attend North Central Skills Center in Olds Station. The School District does maintain Westside High School, an alternative high school, and the Valley Academy of Learning, which is an alternative education program where parents play the active role in education of their children.
[edit] Wenatchee Internet Academy
In 2006, the Wenatchee School District #246 began offering students of Wenatchee High School and Westside High School the ability to take selected classes online at the Wenatchee Internet Academy. These classes employ use of Moodle and Blackboard software packages for managing the distance learning program. All classes are designed by educators at Wenatchee High School and operated by local instructors within the Wenatchee School District.
[edit] Private K-12 Instruction
The city is also supported by numerous private schools, most of which are religious, including Children's Gate Montessori School (Pre-K - K, Non-Sectarian), Cascade Christian Academy (K-12 Seventh Day Adventist), The River Academy (K-12 Non-Denominational/Christian), St. Joseph School (K-5 Catholic), St. Paul's Lutheran School (K-5 Lutheran Church). [3]
[edit] Higher Learning and ESD
Wenatchee is also home to the North Central Educational Service District, serving all of North Central Washington, and Wenatchee Valley College, a 2-year Community College with its main campus in Wenatchee and a satellite campus in Omak, WA. The main campus has an average student population of 3500 of all ages. Wenatchee Valley College has one of the largest community college service areas in the state of Washington, covering more than 10,000 square miles (30,000 km²). [4]
Wenatchee is commonly referred to as the "buckle of the power belt" of WA state.
[edit] Sports
The Wenatchee Fire is a member of the semi-professional Premier Arena Soccer League(PASL) and plays at the Wenatchee Valley Sportsplex in Cashmere. The Fire won the Northwest Conference championship in 2005/06. The Ridge to River relay race, a fund raiser for local non-profit organizations, kicks off the Apple Blossom Festivaleach spring. Modeled after Bellingham, Washington's Ski to Sea, athletes participate in one or all of following legs; cross country skiing, downhill skiing/snowboarding, running, bicycling, and kayak/canoeing and portage. Auto racing is quite popular. The Wenatchee Valley Super Oval in East Wenatchee is a quarter-mile mile high banked asphalt oval used for local racing. Plans for a much larger permanent NASCARracing track are currently underway.
[edit] Recreation
The Wenatchee Valley and the surrounding areas provide an abundance of sports and recreational activities for any season. There are several facilities including the [3] tennis club, an Olympic size swimming pool, an ice arena, several 18-hole and 9-hole golf courses, a 9-hole disc golf course, and countless baseball diamonds and soccer fields. There are lots of places to hike, fish and hunt, both birds and larger game. Boating and water recreation are also quite common. Many kayak, windsurf and water-ski on the Columbia. Whitewater rafting and inner-tubing is frequent on the Wenatchee River. In the winter, the mountains near Wenatchee provide great snowmobiling, sledding at Squilchuck State Park, as well as skiing and snowboarding at Mission Ridge (30 minutes drive) and Stevens Pass (1 hour and a half drive). Nordic skiing is available at the Stevens Pass Nordic Center, Leavenworth (25 minute drive), and the Methow Valley (1 hour and 45 minute drive).
The city also offers a large system of parks and paved trails known as the Apple Capital Recreational Loop Trail. The 10-mile (20 km) loop which runs both banks of the Columbia River is used by cyclists, walkers, joggers, and skaters. In the winter cross country skiers and snowshoers also use the trail. The trail connects in the south at the Old Wenatchee-East Wenatchee Bridge, better known as the walking bridge, and in the north at the Richard Odabashian Olds Station Bridge. The foothills trail system along the western edge Wenatchee provides numerous short trails of varying difficulty for walking, hiking and mountain biking.
The Wenatchee Youth Circus, ("The Biggest Little Circus in the World") founded by Paul K. Pugh in 1952, continues to provide circus fans with opportunities to watch a real, live circus (minus the wild animals) with performers ranging in age from 6-18. The circus travels and performs in the summer months, practices indoors in the winter, and sets up its rigging for outdoor practices during the fair weather of springtime.
[edit] Music
Wenatchee is the home of the Wenatchee Valley Symphony.[5]
Wenatchee currently has a small independent music scene growing from open mic nights at Caffè Mela, a locally owned coffee cafe.
[edit] Sister Cities
Wenatchee has four sister cities:
[edit] Geography
Wenatchee is located at (47.423316, -120.325279)[4] at the confluence of the Wenatchee River and the Columbia River in the Columbia Basin just east of the foothills of the Cascade Range. Unlike the climate of Western Washington, Wenatchee's climate is arid. Nested in the rain shadow of the Cascade Mountains, there are blue skies 300 days of the year. Technically a desert, irrigation from the Columbia River and her tributaries allows for the large amount of agriculture in Wenatchee and the surrounding areas.
The city of Wenatchee is bordered by the Wenatchee River on the north, the Columbia River to the east, and the Wenatchee Mountains to the south and west. These high, rugged peaks form a wall around the western and southern sides of the city. Although there are numerous jeep trails and forest roads out of Wenatchee to the south and west, most are too rugged to be passable by most vehicles. Because of this, the city of Wenatchee proper has only three entrances and exits, the North Wenatchee Avenue Bridge (North End Bridge) to the north, and the Senator George Sellar Bridge (South End Bridge) to the south. Once across these bridges, motorists can continue on to other points in the state. Colockum Pass is listed as a route out of Wenatchee via the south end of the city on most maps produced by the Washington State Department of Transportation, it is clearly labeled as not being suitable for passenger autos. A second road leading north from Mission Ridge ski area to a split off that extends west to US 97 or north into Cashmere is also present on some maps, but again is frequently marked as not suitable for passenger autos. Because of the dangers involved in having only two points of ingress and egress into the city during an evacuation, not to mention traffic congestion, officials have mentioned the possibility of additional bridges potentially being designed in the future over the Columbia or Wenatchee Rivers, as reported periodically by the Wenatchee World.
Link to local weather information from the NWS Spokane Office (National Weather Service) – http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/otx/
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 7.3 square miles (19.0 km²), of which, 6.9 square miles (17.8 km²) of it is land and 0.4 square miles (1.2 km²) of it (6.14%) is water.
[edit] Demographics
As of the census[1] of 2000, there were 27,856 people, 10,741 households, and 6,884 families residing in the city. The population density was 4,049.6 people per square mile (1,563.3/km²). There were 11,486 housing units at an average density of 1,669.8/sq mi (644.6/km²). The racial makeup of the city was 80.93% White, 0.39% African American, 1.13% Native American, 0.95% Asian, 0.13% Pacific Islander, 13.99% from other races, and 2.48% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 21.52% of the population.
There were 10,741 households out of which 33.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 49.4% were married couples living together, 10.2% had a female householder with no husband present, and 35.9% were non-families. 30.1% of all households were made up of individuals and 13.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.53 and the average family size was 3.17.
In the city the population was spread out with 27.4% under the age of 18, 10.0% from 18 to 24, 28.3% from 25 to 44, 19.3% from 45 to 64, and 15.0% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 34 years. For every 100 females there were 95.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 92.8 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $34,897, and the median income for a family was $45,982. Males had a median income of $35,245 versus $26,062 for females. The per capita income for the city was $19,498. About 10.6% of families and 15.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 19.7% of those under age 18 and 5.7% of those age 65 or over.
[edit] Transportation
[edit] Air
The city is served by Pangborn Memorial Airport with flights to/from Seattle on Horizon Air.
[edit] Rail
Wenatchee is in the major railroad line of the Great Northern Railway (now BNSF Railway) to Seattle. It was once the eastern terminus of electric operations (1909-56) on its Cascade Tunnel route, which went all the way to Skykomish. Here, steam or diesel locomotives were changed or coupled to electric locomotives for this route. Today, Amtrak's Empire Builder serves the city.
Also see:
[edit] Related Stories
[edit] References
- ^ a b American FactFinder. United States Census Bureau. Retrieved on 2008-01-31.
- ^ US Board on Geographic Names. United States Geological Survey (2007-10-25). Retrieved on 2008-01-31.
- ^ WRAC
- ^ US Gazetteer files: 2000 and 1990. United States Census Bureau (2005-05-03). Retrieved on 2008-01-31.
[edit] External links
- Wenatchee High School local high school.
- The City of Wenatchee, Washington, city government website.
- Wenatchee Valley Convention & Visitors Bureau, area convention and visitors center.
- Wenatchee Valley Chamber of Commerce, area chamber of commerce.
- Wenatchee Downtown Association, downtown association.
- Wenatchee.mobi, Mobile city guide for Wenatchee accommodations, attractions Wenatchee real estate etc.
- Port of Chelan County, county port district.
- Link Transit, Public Transit System serving Wenatchee and nearby communities
- Mission Ridge Ski Resort, local ski and snowboard resort.
- Greater Wenatchee Area Technology Alliance, regional tech alliance.
- North Central Home Builders Association, regional construction association.
- NCWJobs.com, Wenatchee jobs, Wenatchee employers, and relocation information.
- The Wenatchee World, daily newspaper.
- The Clovis Conflict: 1987-1992, historical site
- El Mundo, Spanish-language weekly newspaper for Washington State, based in Wenatchee.
- Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center, regional museum.
- Information and photos of Wenatchee
- [6] Mike McGregor Coldwell Banker realtor
- Adonai Media, Inc., local graphic design and web development firm.
- http://money.cnn.com/popups/2006/moneymag/re_topten/frameset.1.exclude.html Growth forecast of home prices, top 10 cities
- Axeon Technologies, Inc., Computer and Networking services company located in downtown Wenatchee
- Wenatchee, Washington is at coordinates Coordinates:
| Club | Sport | League | Stadium | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wenatchee AppleSox | Baseball | West Coast Collegiate Baseball League | Paul Thomas Stadium | ||||||||||||||
| Wenatchee Valley Rams | Football | Evergreen Football League | Apple Bowl | ||||||||||||||
| Wenatchee Packers | Baseball | American Legion | Recreation Park | ||||||||||||||
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