e were produced in the United States. In
Oregon alone there are consumed $400,000 worth of nuts annually.

When we consider the limited area suitable to walnut culture in
America--California and Oregon practically being the only territory of
commercial importance--and the fact that the Old World is no longer
planting additional groves to any appreciable extent, there being no
more lands available, we begin to realize the important place Oregon is
destined to take in the future of the walnut industry: for in Oregon,
throughout a strip of the richest land known to man--the great
Willamette basin with its tributary valleys and hills, an area of 60 by
150 miles--walnuts thrive and yield abundantly, and at a younger age
than in any other locality, not excepting their original home, Persia.
In addition, Oregon walnuts are larger, finer flavored, and more uniform
in size than those grown elsewhere; they are also free from oiliness and
have a full meat that fills the shell well. These advantages are
recognized in the most indisputable manner, dealers paying from two to
three cents a pound more for Oregon walnuts than for those from other
groves. Thus the very last and highest test--what will they bring in the
market?--has placed the Oregon walnut at the top.

However, in all of Oregon, throughout the vast domain that seems to have
been providentially created to furnish the world with its choicest nut
fruit, there are, perhaps, not more than 200 acres in bearing at the
present time. The test has been accomplished by individual trees found
here and there all the way from Washington and Multnomah counties on the
north, to Josephine and Jackson counties, bordering California. In a
number of counties but two or three handsome old monarchs that have
yielded heavy crops year after year, without a failure for the past
twenty to forty years, bear witness to the soil's suitability; in other
counties, notably Yamhill, sturdy yielding groves attest the soil's
fitness. In none of the counties of the walnut belt has but the smallest
fraction of available walnut lands been appropriated for this great
industry. People are just beginning to realize Oregon's value as a
walnut center and her destiny as the source of supply for the choicest
markets of the future.

Were it practical to plant every unoccupied suitable acre in Oregon this
year to walnuts, in eight or ten years the crop would establish Oregon
forever as the sovereign walnut center o