Small-Town Washington -- Toppenish: Murals Evoking The Past Paint A Vision Of The Town's Future

This is the seventh and last in Travel's weekly Small-Town Washington" series.

TOPPENISH, Yakima County - When the sugar-beet refinery moved out and empty store fronts were added to the litter and rusted car bodies, something obviously had to be done to stop the downward slide of the town that prided itself on being the hop-growing capital of the free world.

That something, in a town noted more for beer-drinkers than for artistic pretensions, turned out to be murals: magnificent, bigger-than-life Western-theme murals, painted by some of the Northwest's top artists.

There were 35 at last count - a national record for sure; probably a world record, too. And more are coming.

The Toppenish Mural Society, which oversees the artwork, says there's no end in sight. Merchants are standing in line to have their buildings painted by some of the top muralists in the country.

All the merchants have to do is pay to have one big outside wall or storefront cleaned and the holes plastered. The Toppenish Mural Society buys the paint, hires the artist and comes up with a theme guaranteed to be historically accurate.

Toppenish - in south-central Washington, just off Highway 97, in the hot, flat and fertile Yakima Valley - got into the mural business in 1989, the year of the state's Centennial. The town needed an infusion of civic pride. A winery was suggested, but some said there already were too many wineries in the valley.

Enter Roger McCarthy, a man with a vision. Murals - big, colorful Western-theme murals - were the way to go, he said.

Oh, sure, other towns were going for centennial murals - most notably Ilwaco, Long Beach and Ocean Park on the Long Beach Peninsula. But Toppenish could outdo them all by having a top Western artist, assisted by a dozen or so professional artists, paint a mural in a single day on a downtown building. That would bring the crowds.

Five-hundred people showed up for the first Mural-in-a-Day in '89, a veritable mob scene for a town unaccustomed to outside attention. But it was nothing compared to what has happened in subsequent years.

In 1994 - on the traditional first Saturday in June - 14,000 people came to watch as the mural was painted on sheets of plywood, which were then bolted to the side of a downtown building. (This year, when the big day happened to coincide with the also-popular Yakima Air Fair, the number of visitors dropped to about 10,000.) The town has a population of about 7,500.

To accommodate the crowds, Mural-in-a- Day has been moved permanently to Pioneer Park. Bleachers are set up and arts-crafts-and-food booths opened for business.

The spin-off from the murals has been dramatic.

Six years ago, what is now Old Timers Plaza was mostly sagebrush and beer bottles; sidewalk planters were filled with weeds and cigaret butts. Today the plaza - surrounded by murals - is litter-free, the grass is green and the benches comfortable; and the planters brim with flowers.

McCarthy - who started it all - has been president of the Toppenish Mural Society board since 1989. Board members say the job is his as long as he wants it.

"It's caught on beyond our wildest dreams," says McCarthy, a leathery faced man with the look of a cowboy searching for strays.

"Our job now is to add new murals carefully and at the same time make sure the ones we have are maintained. Down on the peninsula, the enemy of murals is salt air. Here it's too much sunshine, if you folks from Seattle can understand such a thing."

The board of the Mural Society meets regularly to discuss themes (subjects must date between 1850 and 1920). Popular ones are agriculture (hops are big), cattle drives, covered wagons, early-day architecture, historical events, Native Americans and the town's pioneer shakers and movers.

Once a theme is chosen, the society's research committee, which includes native sons Beryl Thomas and Lowell Evans, works from hundreds of photographs to select the elements needed to give the mural authenticity. Then one of the Northwest's top muralists is invited to submit a sample painting of the subject.

After the research committee verifies the historical details, the board votes on the mural's artistic appeal. Opinions of board member Karen Gulley, a Native American, carry considerable weight. She's the Society's only bonafide artist and has worked on more than a dozen murals.

"We're always looking for a little humor," says Bill Davison, the Society's director of publicity and public relations. An upcoming mural will "recognize Toppenish's early-day ladies of the night." They'll be in colorful, if scanty, attire as they wave and smile at passersby from the windows of a building near Old Timers Plaza.

To fit the limited space on a very narrow building, a soon-to-come mural will honor an early-day deputy sheriff, a man reputed to be 7-feet-4-inches tall.

Muralist Newman Myrah, with tongue in cheek, painted himself - standing on a ladder, paint brush in hand - in front of his mural. Visitors often say, "Oh look, there's a man painting a mural right now."

Word of the murals is spreading. Visitors have come from every state, plus such far-away places as Siberia, the Marshall Islands and Madagascar. There have been write-ups in slick magazines and major newspapers.

One day a couple, dressed in leather, roared up to the Society's downtown office on a Harley, dismounted and pushed open the front door. As the clerk inside smiled nervously, the man said, in broken English, "We're from Germany . . . came to see the murals."

Among the mural painters: Fred Oldfield, Hulan Fleming, Val and Gary Kerby (father and son artists), Robert Thomas, Don Crook, Lesa Delisi, Roger Cooke, Larry Kangas and Mavis Willson.

Oldfield, a native of Toppenish and one of the Northwest's best-known Western artists, has done three murals. His first (of a potato harvest) is on the front of the building housing the Mural Society. It had special significance, because at that very spot, in November 1940, Oldfield's brother had died in a natural-gas explosion.

Robert Thomas, a Toppenish native who went off to Idaho to become a well-known artist, discovered a whole new career after being hired to paint his first mural in Toppenish. It was such a success that he's painted two more in Toppenish and has a backlog of orders around the country.

Getting a dozen or more artists to produce a Mural-in-a-Day is an exercise in planning. The lead artist (Roger Cooke this year) overlays his small sample mural with a grid. He then does a full-size rough sketch on plywood. Assistants are given copies of the master plan and the responsibility for filling certain squares.

Scaffoldings and ladders are set up and the fun begins. At day's end, the artists shake hands and sign the mural.

In keeping with its slogan ("Where the West Still Lives"), many of the town's store fronts look as if Wyatt Earp should appear at any moment. From the refurbished brick City Hall (circa 1908) recorded Western music fills the streets throughout the day.

Six years ago, the land just east of Old Timers Plaza was filled with junk. Today its the starting place for horse-drawn, narrated tours of the murals, the town's new American Hop Museum (the only one in the country) and the Rail and Steam Museum in the recently restored railroad depot.

Nina Zutter, a Society director, says, "It's sad to say, but people used to not want to admit they were from Toppenish."

Davison chimed in, "Yeah, when we had visitors, we'd sneak them off to Yakima to entertain them. Now the folks in Yakima, why they bring their friends over to Toppenish to see the murals."

Don Duncan retired as a reporter for The Seattle Times.

More information Call the Toppenish Chamber of Commerce (509) 865-3262; the Toppenish Mural Society (509) 865-6516, or the Yakama Indian National Cultural Center (509) 865-2800.