William La Follette - Business Career

Business Career

He returned to the Palouse after these studies, staked his claim and began farming. He engaged in agricultural pursuits(mainly wheat), stock raising, and fruit growing.Later, he was extensively engaged as an orchardist at Wawawai on the Snake River, having purchased some 375 acreas from his father-in-law, John Tabor (one of the founders of Whitman County) who had been among the first settlers to bring apples to the region. He added to these fruit holdings, expanded his crops, built a tramway to transfer the fruit across river to access the new railroad, created a sawmill to make the wooden boxes for shipping, and was responsible for making Wawawai the largest shipping point for fruit along the Snake River. He shipped many vegetables and hogs as well as fruit, and by the early 1900s his land holdings along the river exceeded one thousand acres. In order to educate his family, La Follette built a large home in Pullman to be near Washington State College. He sold a large portion of his fruit holdings and entered the world of national politics.