NEWPORT, Wash. — Separating this northeastern Washington town and Seattle are 300 miles as diverse as any on Earth--stark desert, the majestic Columbia River and the startling beauty of the Cascade Range.
But that expanse is trifling compared with the economic gap between this town and the state's largest city.
The urban-rural economic gap in Washington state is the largest in the country, and for most of the state's rural counties, the software millionaires and aerospace engineers of Puget Sound seem worlds away.
The disparity can be traced in part to a slump in natural resource-based industries like timber and mining--long the lifeblood of the rural West and now stymied by debate over new priorities that value forests over timber, mountains over mines.
The gap is especially wide here in Pend Oreille County, population 10,700, with forested mountains along its borders with Idaho and British Columbia. Many local residents look with envy toward the Seattle area, where Boeing makes jets as fast as it can hire people to design and build them and where Microsoft, the software giant, makes millionaires.
"Pend Oreille County has really missed the boat," said Mark Cauchy, an official with the county's Public Utility District and a member of the county's economic-development council board and Newport's Chamber of Commerce.
The county is working to catch up, but keeping its goals realistic.
"We're not looking for the pie-in-the-sky Microsoft to land here. We're looking for something small in scale," Cauchy says.
In the meantime, folks make do. Some commute 60 miles to jobs in Spokane, the state's second-largest city, though that's not for everyone.
"A lot of people would rather work up here than have that drive every day, but there are no jobs," said Denise Teeples, who supports two children working locally--doing chores for elderly people and others who need help around the home.
Washington's dubious distinction--having the biggest economic gap between urban and rural counties--is based on earnings and unemployment levels, according to a recent study by the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Corporation for Enterprise Development.
Other Western states with big disparities are Montana, which ranked 12th in the nation; Utah, which was 13th; and Wyoming, 14th.
Alaska boasts the smallest disparity, followed by Nevada--for years the nation's fastest-growing state--and, fifth from the bottom, Hawaii.
