Where to Stay in Yakima, Washington

What is Yakima known for?

Yakima is the principal city of the Yakima Valley, an agricultural region on the Columbia River Plateau noted for apples, wine, and hops, and the county seat that administers it. The Yakima Valley Museum sets that story out. Capitol Theatre and the Yakima Electric Railway Museum carry the other half, the town's own civic and transport past.

What are the main landmarks in Yakima?

The listed district holds most of it. Old North Yakima Historic District takes in the older grid, with the A. E. Larson Building and the Capitol Theatre inside it, and the William O. Douglas Federal Building standing for the civic side. Houses come next.

Reuben Sweet House, Powell House, and the E. William Brackett House are the domestic entries, while the Yakima Valley Museum, the Yakima Electric Railway Museum, and Vineyard Church complete a list without a single dominant monument.

What is the history of Yakima?

The date on the record is 1847. Settlement began here long before the buildings that now carry listings, and the name Yakima passed from the valley to the city that would come to administer Yakima County from within it. Old North Yakima explains the rest.

That name survives in the listed historic district, marking the part of the grid where the early commercial town stood rather than the ground the city later spread across. Building followed the valley's returns. The A. E. Larson Building and the Capitol Theatre belong to the built-up centre of a city whose returns came from apples, wine, and hops, and both stand inside the Old North Yakima Historic District.

Rails came with the growth. The Yakima Electric Railway Museum holds the record of the electric line the name refers to, a system that belonged to the same decades as the theatre and the office block. Houses record the same decades.

Reuben Sweet House, Powell House, and the E. William Brackett House carry family names rather than civic ones, and they mark the streets where the people behind the valley's trade lived. Federal business came later. The William O. Douglas Federal Building and the Yakima Valley Museum belong to the later city, while West Valley and Terrace Heights grew as unincorporated ground counted into greater Yakima rather than into the incorporated city itself.

Where is Yakima?

The Columbia River Plateau holds the valley. Yakima sits inside the Yakima Valley, an agricultural region on that plateau, and the orchards, vineyards, and hop fields spread around the city that serves as the valley's principal one. Two suburbs sit outside the line.

West Valley and Terrace Heights are unincorporated ground counted as part of greater Yakima, and together they hold much of what has grown beyond the old grid.

What is the climate of Yakima?

The Columbia River Plateau does the work. Inland ground on that plateau gives the Yakima Valley the dry, sunlit growing season that apples, wine grapes, and hops all need, and it is the reason the region turns on fruit rather than on anything else. Winter is the quiet half.

The Yakima Valley Museum, the Capitol Theatre, and the Yakima Electric Railway Museum fill the months when the orchards have nothing to show.

How do you get to Yakima?

Roads through the valley carry it. Yakima sits at the centre of the Yakima Valley, so approaches run along the valley floor and pass through orchard country well before the grid begins. West Valley marks one approach.

Terrace Heights marks another, and both are unincorporated ground counted into greater Yakima, which a traveller crosses before reaching the Old North Yakima Historic District at the core.