Yakima Valley Highway Diversion

There’s something about autumn light.  After so much rain, seeing it again makes me more compelled to examine its qualities with a critical eye.  Weighed and measured, I have to say it feels longer, like that extra bit of stretch mellows the intensity and cools it down some.  Driving the Yakima Valley Highway recently on a sunny afternoon, the long, pale yellow light hits the spot.  That road is a Sunday drive any day of the week, but right now, with the yawning yellows of lengthening light, it’s something to behold.  Changing leaves, grasses going from green to golden, goats, Christmas tree farms, orchards, vineyards, low hills and ridge, this was supposed to be a story about a road.  But one quick turn off that road later, it was a different story entirely—one of my favorite things about rooted.

I have passed the Country Garden Antiques sign many times over the years.  “I should check that out sometime,” I think to myself.  Then the thought falls out of my head to go sparking down the highway like a discarded cigarette until the next time I drive by.  But this particular day had exploration written all over it, and I was longing for diversion.  I made the turn.  Moving up the driveway, I was struck by how beautiful it was immediately.  Meandering orchard road all yellow and orange with fall.  Then I saw the house.  Wow.  Old school huge and lovely with towering trees all around.

But I was looking for an antique shop and noticed a wooden out building adjacent to the house.  Pulling up, there is an old car parked in front, many flowers still in bloom in bright orange pots, wooden outdoor furniture and statuary are littered around the entrance.  As I get out of the car thinking what a pearl this is tucked back here off the road, I see a sign that says “Please Honk for Assistance.”  Before I have the chance, owner Pat Erickson comes around the corner to see who just pulled in.

Pat opens things up for me and we get to chatting.  The shop is amazing.  Shipped in mostly from England, it is full of unique and fun items.  Lovely old furniture, dishes and kitchen goods, a bar-top grape press from France, gardening items, rugs, and it goes on.  Very handsome European antiques are everywhere.  Two rooms upstairs as well.  I make my way through every area slowly, taking it all in.  The rooms are laid out beautifully.  Pat tells me that this was once the carriage house for the main house.  As I ask about the history, it all comes tumbling out.

The orchard we are surrounded by is pears.  Pears planted by W.P. Sawyer in the 1890’s.  Of course many of the trees have been replaced over the years, but it is still the original orchard, and the first pears planted in the Yakima Valley.  Now growing up in Salt Lake City, my Yakima Valley history knowledge lies in the shallow end.  I have seen on a map that part of this northern section of the greater Wapato area is called Sawyer, so I spot the connection. As Pat explains, W. P. Sawyer, a fruit man, being a member of the state legislature and having become a prominent community figure in Yakima, decided to build himself a grand home in 1910.  He had just been on the board which built the Yakima Masonic Temple, so he secured one of the same architects, a W. W. Deveaux, to design his house.  He had it built on a hill at his Elmwood Farm.  In 1969, W.P.’s youngest daughter Shirley was still living in the house when she decided to sell it to Fred and Pat Erickson and their five young children.

When Pat was young her grandmother began to take her antiquing, a seed which grew into a lifelong obsession.  When she and Fred acquired the home, it was important to them to preserve its history, and they have done a beautiful job.  The house and grounds sit among the giant trees that surround it like a queen at court.  In 1985 they collaborated with some friends in England to bring antiques back to the states and started Country Garden Antiques.  They fixed up the carriage house, and over 30 years and about 15 shipping containers later, here it still stands, waiting for someone like me to pull off the Yakima Valley Highway.

I had the most wonderful afternoon walking around with Pat in the long autumn light.  Something I was not expecting when I made the turn.  A history lesson in a most beautiful location with a gracious host.  Truly, rooted in the valley.