The North Olympic Library System (NOLS) will host Humanities Washington speaker Amanda Van Lanen, an author and historian, for her talk, “Big Apples, Big Business: How Washington Became the Apple State.”

The free virtual presentation is set for 6:30-8p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 29; register in advance at NOLS.org/hw to receive the Zoom link.

In this talk, explore how Washington state became the top apple- producing state in the country, and how, in the process, it transformed apples into an industrialized commodity. Many regions in the West attempted to grow apples, but in Washington, big apples became big business thanks to the work of scientists, investors, irrigators, railroad corporations, marketers and apple growers.

Van Lanen considers how the history of Washington apples reflects larger changes happening in the American food system — changes that continue to affect our environment and the way state residents eat today.

Van Lanen is a professor of history at Lewis-Clark State College and the author of “The Washington Apple: Orchards and the Development of Industrial Agriculture.” She earned a Ph.D. in history at Washington State University, and blogs about food history at historyreheated.com. Van Lanen lives in Asotin.

Humanities Washington is a nonprofit organization “dedicated to opening minds and bridging divides by creating spaces to explore different perspectives.” For more about Humanities Washington, visit humanities.org.

For more information about this and other library programs, visit NOLS.org, call 360-417-8500 or email to discover@nols.org.