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The Cascades split the region into two Northwests by affecting weather patterns. Moist winds from the Pacific push up the western mountain slopes, cool and turn to rain. Two-thirds of Washington's population live in the rainy and green environs of Puget Sound, concentrated—although far from crowded—in Seattle, Tacoma, Everett, and Olympia, the capital. Coastal dwellers shake their heads and tell visitors of the dour, damp days, perhaps hoping to dissuade them from moving in. Actually, Seattle gets less rain (average: 38.79 in. per year) than New York City (40.19 in.), but if the water falls gently, it often seems to fall ceaselessly.
East of the Cascades, the climate is so dry that farmers constantly worry about their crops, especially when the previous winter's mountain snow is light, as it was last year. Still, the land is usually bountiful. The region yields about 15% of the nation's wheat and almost half of its potatoes. With the help of irrigation, Washington is the leading producer of apples, hops and sweet cherries.
The farming areas of the Northwest have a rare, raw beauty. As winter approaches, the wheatfields in the highlands of the Saddle Mountains and on the Palouse prairie to the east are plowed and furrowed like circles of whipped cream on a pie. Near Yakima, the winds blustering through the hills set the bare branches of the apple trees clattering. A cantilevered bank of clouds passes over a mountainside, and the green landscape turns black and white, resembling a Japanese tapestry. When snow caps the peaks, the Blue Mountains near Walla Walla are indeed blue—electric blue.
Novelist Bernard Malamud has written that without investment to speak of, a person in the Northwest becomes "rich in the sight of nature, a satisfying wealth." Just as well, because the Northwest is not the ideal place to get rich in the pocketbook. People are generally better off than most Americans—the per capita income is 6% over the national average—but the wise highrollers head for the Sunbelt.
The Northwest was settled late in the 19th century by industrious people who came for the long haul. To populate the lands it was opening up, the Northern Pacific Railroad recruited migrants in Britain and Northern Europe. Scandinavians and Germans also moved west from Wisconsin and Minnesota. North westerners are still overwhelmingly Protestant, and politicians with Scandinavian roots start with a distinct advantage. Two examples: Senators Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, 65, and Warren G. ("Maggie") Magnuson, 72, who have been in the other Washington for 36 and 40 years, and who are regarded by the electorate as ambassadors who deal with that outer world—the Federal Government and the rest of the U.S.—on an equal basis.
Washingtonians tend to care deeply for education and to be self-reliant, moderate and tolerant in most things. Yet Seattle trails only San Francisco in the U.S. incidence of alcoholism and suicide—a bleak fact sometimes blamed on the long, gray and wet winters.