The Changing Face of the Palouse

Remember how picturesque the Palouse was with those crop covered rolling hills?  A photographers paradise with a beautiful vista just beyond the next rise.  From the high point in the Palouse, Steptoe Butte was the vantage point to oversee what seemed the entire expanse of Washington State's rural wonder.  What you saw were the magnificient rolling hills touching the sky, fields of wheat, lentils and other grain crops abounding, sparse trees, barns, small towns and farms dotting the scenery.

 Well, we're afraid that image is becoming a thing of the past.  The invention of the Wind Turbine and the ever advancing infiltration of Wind Farms is changing the face of the Palouse. We have all seen them in other areas of the country including Washington State, but locally, those areas were a bit more remote. A few years ago the change began in the southern part of the Palouse near Dayton,WA. We discovered on a recent trip through the Palouse just north of Steptoe Butte on SR 195 the following sight:

 The hills are no longer the highest point touching the beautiful blue and white cloud patched sky it's the Wind Turbines towering over everything in site.

It must be mentioned here that we even drove by a sign near a Wind Turbine Farm that stated something to the effect that...  "You are now entering Washington's Scenic Palouse".  That sign must have been installed prior to Wind Turbine construction.

 

 With the new fiscal crises bill being passed, it appears that additional tax credits will be allowed to the green energy industry for new project starts in 2013...could this mean even more Wind Turbines on other hills across the Palouse???

Being photographers however, you have to adjust to field situations.  So, we found ways to make the photographs more interesting even though the scenery has changed.

Wind Turbine with a dwarfed Steptoe Butte in the distance

 

A distant Steptoe Butte off to the left

Remnants of last years apples 

 

 

The photographs of the Palouse that many of us dedicated photographers have shot over the years are historical. Every time we visit the Palouse we see changes.  Different crops; changing weather; seasons; color and lighting conditions; also old barns that were once picturesque, now gone but it has always been pristine in the farming sense. We never expected to see this type of change. It is all the more reason to continue shooting images and documenting what is seen in the present; for these sights too, may some day be gone and those images, historical.