Buena, Washington — Neighborhood Inside the Yakima Valley's Waterworks

Buena sits in a landscape that looks agricultural because an enormous amount of engineering makes it so.

The lower Yakima Valley is naturally dry. Canals, reservoirs and irrigation districts redirected water across it, allowing orchards, vineyards, hops and other crops to occupy ground that could never support the same intensity of farming on rainfall alone.

Buena developed inside that system rather than around a traditional downtown. Homes and agricultural businesses share roads with irrigation infrastructure and working fields.

The community is recognized by the Census Bureau but remains unincorporated.

Buena is less a town separated from its surroundings than one inhabited piece of a larger machine. The houses are visible. Much of the infrastructure explaining why they are there runs quietly past them carrying water.