APPLE Archaeology
THE NIGHT IN 1888 that Robert Burns married his bride, the snow fell so bitterly over the rolling Palouse prairie that the guests stabled their animals and took shelter in the small homestead. Burns was new to eastern Washington, one of thousands of greenhorns who flooded into the newly opened territory to plant wheat and apples. More than a century later, the old apple trees were the clue “apple detective” David Benscoter needed to rediscover some apple cultivars America forgot and the story of the people who grew them.
HISTORICAL HEIRLOOMS RESURFACE
“This is a place to make money with less effort and worry than in other occupations.… An apple orchard provides as sure an income as government bonds, and more than 25 percent on the investment,” promised an advertorial brochure from the era.
Burns knew that apples were a homesteading staple — brochures at the time rationed 100 trees per family for eating fresh, canning, drying, fermenting into cider, or storing in the cellar. With the newly laid train tracks, Burns figured
