In a very short span of time, a generation of Mexican families were uprooted from their familiar spaces in states like Wyoming and Texas and brought to a totally foreign environment in the Yakima Valley. Agriculture cemented the new arrivals to the farm labor economy, but their lives became much more than that as did the lives of their children. These pioneering families formed small clusters of very tight knit Latino communities. Everyone in Toppenish or Granger knew each other and relished a strong sense of comradeship. Even if not directly related through family ties, a shared migrant experience, or personal struggle, families and their children hung together as one resilient community.
Today, the Town of Granger remains an anchor point for the Latino community of Yakima County. Take a drive or a stroll around the town center, stop for lunch at a Mexican restaurant, or bring some homemade tamales along for your road trip. Try to see the layers of culture in the buildings – notice the applied ornament and signage, the adaptions of preexisting buildings to new uses and new lifeways.
Granger is also the home of the Spanish-language station KDNA (91.9 FM), which has a long history of social justice and education programming. Murals showing imagery related to the United Farm Workers (UFW), including Caesar Chavez, were painted on the old KDNA radio station building (demolished) in Granger. The station has long been known as “The Voice of the Farm Worker/La Voz Del Campesino.”
