The tour winds through the extensively cultivated White River Valley, where in the 1940s great fields of lettuce or celery and smaller acreages in cauliflower, peas, beans, and beets adjoined poultry ranches. The packing season generally started in May with the shipment of rhubarb. Much of the produce was expressed to New York. Today industrial and shipping warehouse development has covered much of the former farm land.
First known as Titusville, then Yesler, honoring Henry L. Yesler of Seattle, the town was platted as Kent by Ezra Meeker on July 3, 1888. The area, like that of the Kentish region in England, was noted for its hop culture. A crop of 859,436 pounds in 1888 spurred the town onward; prior to that time it had been simply a point for scow and boat traffic on the White River.
The fertility of the surrounding black-loam valley lands made Kent an important berry, dairy, and truck-garden center. As shipping point of the valley’s agricultural produce, it had two railroad lines and a busy motor freight terminal with a fleet of 80 trucks. The town became the home of the first Carnation Condensed Milk plant on September 6, 1889. The Carnation Company was soon followed by the Pacific Coast Condensed Milk Company and canneries of Libby, McNeill and Libby, a cheese factory, and large commercial incubating plants.
Although hop culture declined throughout the area, Kent remained noted for the quality and quantity of its crops. The production of lettuce, however, outstripped that of hops. On Kent’s former annual Lettuce Day in early summer, a group of girls in bathing costume, standing in a huge bowl, pitchforks in hand, once prepared a gigantic lettuce salad. The town’s fairest Titian dumps the bucket of mayonnaise over the shredded lettuce.