Quincy, Washington — Potato Fields and the Physical Internet

Quincy spent most of its history worrying about agriculture.

Then the internet moved in.

The Columbia Basin Project brought irrigation after World War II, allowing surrounding fields to produce potatoes, corn, apples and other crops on an industrial scale. Food processors followed.

Technology companies later noticed another regional resource: inexpensive hydroelectric power.

Data centers need enormous amounts of electricity, along with land, network connections and cooling. Quincy could provide all of them.

Microsoft and other technology companies built server campuses among the farm fields.

That created a peculiar local economy. A data center can consume power on the scale of a small city while employing far fewer people than a traditional factory, making utility capacity, tax revenue and water use unusually important civic questions.

Agriculture never left.

Trucks still haul crops and processors still handle potatoes.

Nearby, thousands of computers move pieces of the world's digital life through buildings surrounded by farmland.

Quincy grows potatoes.

It also houses the internet.