Garfield County, Washington

Garfield County, Washington was created on November 29, 1881 from Columbia County. The county was named in honor of James A. Garfield (1831–1881), 20th U.S. President. In the nineteenth century, many of the region’s major explorers passed through the county, Lewis and Clark in 1806 and Captain James Bonneville in 1834. Today Garfield County is the state’s least populous county. Its economy is based primarily on growing grain, livestock raising and the processing of food. Agriculture, particularly wheat, continued to dominate life in Garfield County as the twentieth century ended. The 1997 Census of Agriculture reported Garfield County had 182 farms, down from 504 in 1910. But at the end of the twentieth century these farms were larger and wealthier: The Census found the average farm size in Garfield County in 1997 to be 1,787 acres, or more than two square miles per farm, while the average market value per farm was about $650,000.