1953 Map of Selah Springs

About this map

The Yakima Firing Center Military Reservation dominates this mid-century landscape, illustrating the cold-war era development of military testing and training infrastructure in Washington. The terrain is marked by the presence of multiple aviation sites, including a Drone Landing Strip, a Drone Take-off Strip, and an Abandoned Landing Field north of Selah Springs. The land between Umtanum Ridge and Yakima Ridge reveals a history of water management and shifting land use, evidenced by an Abandoned Irrigation Ditch and an Abandoned Dam along Selah Creek. Surveyed in the 1950s, the map documents a sparse, high-desert environment where early agricultural efforts were increasingly giving way to specialized military functions, including an Observation Post and a centralized Airstrip.