Northrup Canyon

Northrup Canyon runs east from the upper Grand Coulee and does something nothing around it does: it holds a forest. Springs water a stand of Douglas fir and other trees uncommon on the dry plateau, and the same water drew homesteaders. John and Caty Northrup planted an irrigated orchard and garden here, and in 1891 John wrote that people came ten miles to see the flowers.

By 1894 John was ill, and the Northrups leased the place to Israel Sanford and moved away. John died in 1901. Caty came back to the area, and the lease went sour between them; Sanford accused her of digging up grown trees from the orchard and taking them. In July 1903 he shot and killed her. At trial he was acquitted as of unsound mind from his service in the Civil War.

Her son George and his wife, Joella, moved onto the ranch after the trial, mortgaged it to improve the irrigation, and lost it to the bank in 1905. George left for Idaho. In 1906 Joella came back with their six children, worked the orchard from dawn until dark, and paid off the debt within a year. She stayed until 1926, a midwife and herbalist, and the ranch became the place families from around the coulee came to picnic, camp, and put up fruit in the fall.

In 1976 the Bullitt Foundation bought out eight owners and gave the canyon to the state. A trail runs up the canyon to Northrup Lake.