Betty Cora Johnson Titchenal: Pioneering the Wenatchee Valley’s apple industry

Cora was born on Aug. 16, 1865, in Missouri — the second youngest of seven children. By 1879, Cora's parents, Nancy Adaline Johnson and William Rodney Johnson, had passed away. Her sister, Alice Johnson asked Cora to move in with her and her husband in Washington Territory.

Cora — just 14 at the time — made the 100-day, covered-wagon trek from Missouri to Washington in 1880. She was accompanied by three of her brothers, her sister-in-law and a handful of nieces and nephews ranging from 5 years old to eighteen months.

“You can not imagine, nor can I describe, the feeling I had when the time came for us to leave our lovely home and I was homesick many times, but have never been back to see it since,” Cora wrote in a letter to her descendants that was penned about 15 years after her trek West.

That letter is included in a book compiled by Cora’s great-granddaughter, Vera Zachow: “The diaries of Betty Cora Johnson 1885, 1886, 1887, 1888, 1898 and the diary of Lewis Hamilton Titchenal 1887: and other historical documents.”

Zachow said reading through Cora’s diaries was somewhat repetitive — canning food, tending to cattle, sewing and letter writing — but that doing so allowed her to get a sense of who Cora was and what she was doing on a daily basis. One common theme in Cora’s life stuck out.

“There was a real connection between the family unit and unconditional love,” Zachow said. “Whatever happened, you came together and you did things out of necessity.”

Cora married Lewis Hamilton Titchenal on Nov. 2, 1887, at Spokane Falls. Her journal entry from that day reads, “My wedding day. I did some trading and took dinner at the restaurant with Lewis, Emma and Minnie and was married at Mr. Corbaley’s at 8 o’clock and came home happy.”

The couple would have five children: Bessie, Ray, Virginia, Charlie and Mabel. Cora’s love for Lewis, who had been a dear friend for years prior, is evident in her diary entries, where she frequently mentions him and their activities together, and in her letters to him.

Cora and Lewis’ emphasis on family was apparent after three of their daughters-in-law died in childbirth and their daughter succumbed to tuberculosis. After each tragedy, some or all of the women’s children went to live with Cora.

Cora and Lewis’ impact extended far beyond the boundaries of their home on Badger Mountain and later their ranch on Warner Flats near Cashmere (then known as Mission). The couple played an important role in establishing and growing the area’s apple industry.

“They were movers and shakers,” Zachow said. “He was very instrumental and she went with him.”

It was Lewis’ idea, for example, to create a farm-to-market road through Stevens Pass, and he played an integral role in convincing state officials that such a route was possible, according to the book “Stevens Pass: Gateway to Seattle.”

Lewis and his father were among the first white settlers in the Wenatchee area. He and others petitioned to cut off Douglas, Lincoln and Adams counties from Spokane County. His other contributions to the local agriculture industry included exhibiting apples across the U.S and working to construct the Highline Ditch Canal still used today to get water from the Columbia River to orchards. 

Lewis was also rumored to have created the apple box. Although Zachow hasn’t been able verify that family tale, she did find proof that Lewis took a wooden box to Washington D.C. and demonstrated its use for produce in front of the Committee for Weights and Measures. It’s believed Lewis owned the first automobile — a Stevens Duryea — in the Wenatchee Valley.

When Lewis and Cora established their ranch in Cashmere in 1897, there was nothing but sagebrush and sunflowers. They planted a single acre of fruit trees in the spring of 1902 and relied on hauling water from the river in a barrel on a one-horse sled to keep the trees alive.

“We leveled the ground and improved upon it, living there a little more than six years without any water to irrigate with,” Cora wrote in a letter to the editor published in The Wenatchee Daily World on Oct. 9, 1925. “Some of the land was very rough and rocky and to me it seemed unreasonable to think it could be made to produce the rich bearing orchids and lovely homes that are here now.”

Cora died in May 1942 after a short illness, according to a May 15, 1942, Wenatchee Daily World article. She was 76. Lewis died in October 1951 at the age of 91. He had been in ill health for some time, states a Wenatchee Daily World article from Oct. 18, 1851.

“Our children and grandchildren who are living in this fast age, having all the advantages of graded schools, telephones and electricity, will never realize what we pioneers had to experience, and the hardships we endure,” Cora wrote in the letter to The Wenatchee Daily World editor. “Some may never think of it, perhaps, unless their attention is called to it by an old settler in this way.”

Editor’s note: This article is largely based on Vera Zachow's book The diaries of Betty Cora Johnson 1885, 1886, 1887, 1888, 1898 and the diary of Lewis Hamilton Titchenal 1887: and other historical documents.”