Toppenish, Washington — Downtown Became a Painted History Book

Toppenish has put much of its public history directly on its walls.

The city sits within the Yakama Indian Reservation and grew as rail transportation and irrigated agriculture expanded through the lower valley.

Beginning in the late twentieth century, an ambitious mural program covered downtown buildings with scenes of railroads, farms, businesses and regional history.

The paintings became a tourism strategy and a distinctive civic identity.

They also raise a useful question about what gets painted.

Toppenish's history includes Yakama sovereignty, federal land policy and demographic change that cannot be reduced to nostalgic street scenes.

The murals are worth seeing.

They are an invitation into the history, not the final word on it.