The History of the Yakima Valley, Washington, Comprising Yakima, Kittitas and
Benton Counties, The S.J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1919, Volume II, page 1081 

JOHN S. KLOEBER, M. D. 

For twenty-eight years Dr. John S. Kloeber has been identified with the
northwest. For about two decades he was an active factor as a representative of
the medical profession but at the present time is one of the most prominent
agriculturists and horticulturists of the Yakima valley, conducting interests of
this kind on a most extensive scale and actuated in all that he does by a
spirit of progress that has placed him in the front rank of those whose
investments and labors have won for them notable success. Endowed by nature with
keen intellectual force, Dr. Kloeber has readily discriminated between the
essential and the non-essential in all business affairs and his keen sagacity,
combined with the utilization of his opportunities, has made for leadership
along all those lines toward which he has directed his energies.

Dr. Kloeber is a native of Baltimore, Maryland. He was born March 1, 1865, a son
of C. E. and M. E. (Smith) Kloeber. The father was a descendant of Frederick
Kloeber, who about 1820 went from Alsace to Virginia. Dr. C. E. Kloeber was a
son of Charles Kloeber and he in turn a son of Frederick Kloeber. Both the
grandfather and the great-grandfather of Dr. Kloeber of this review were
identified with mercantile interests in Richmond, Virginia. His father, Dr. C.
E. Kloeber, became a dentist and practiced his profession successfully for many
years but has now passed away. His wife is a resident of Washington. D. C. She
bore the maiden name of Mary Elizabeth Smith and is a daughter of George S. and
Sophronia (Mayo) Smith. On both the paternal and maternal sides she is descended
from old colonial families that were represented in the Revolutionary war, and
with other events that have figured prominently upon the pages of colonial and
later American history the names of her ancestors lure been associated.

Dr. John S. Kloeber, after completing a public school education at Lynchburg,
Virginia, became a student in the University of Virginia and ultimately entered
the University of Maryland, from which he was graduated in 1888 on the
completion of a course in medicine. In 1889 he took post graduate work in the
Johns Hopkins Medical University and thus with broad scientific training to
serve as the foundation of professional success he came to the northwest in
1890, settling in Seattle, where he opened an office and continuously engaged in
practice until 1900. His marked ability won him a notable patronage and his
contemporaries and colleagues in the profession accorded him high rank as a
practitioner of both medicine and surgery. In 1900 he built the Green River Hot
Springs Sanitarium, which he conducted for ten years, or until 1911, when he
sold that institution and removed to Yakima county. Through the intervening
period he has been identified with the agricultural and horticultural
development of the valley. He first purchased one hundred and seventy acres of
land on Selah Heights, calling his place Selah Vista. He planted one hundred and
ten acres of this to apples and pears and since then he has sold seventy acres
of that tract. He now has seventy-five acres of the remaining hundred acre
tract planted to apples and pears, while the rest of his land is given over to
the production of hay and various cereals. In 1915 he bought two hundred acres
of land near Harrah, on the Yakima Indian reservation, and has used it for
general farming purposes. The entire tract is under cultivation and is producing
large crops of alfalfa, potatoes and other things. He had one hundred and twenty
acres planted to potatoes in the year 1918. He uses only double certified
government seed for potatoes, paying as high as one hundred and twenty dollars
per ton for his seed. He employs the most modern machinery in the development
and cultivation of his land, which he plows with tractors, while harvesting his
crops with the latest devices for the care of the produce. In the year 1918 he
gathered potatoes from an eighty acre tract to the value of fifty thousand
dollars, or over six hundred dollars to the acre. He rents much of his land to
the Japanese and has a Japanese tenant who started with him at a salary of two
dollars per day about eight years ago and who is today worth one hundred
thousand dollars. The orchard upon his home place is one of the finest in the
Yakima valley. At one time it was the second largest in the valley but is now
scarcely surpassed in extent owing to the fact that others have subdivided their
holdings. Mr. Kloeber has erected a very fine residence upon his home place,
owns a packing house and has every modern facility to further his business. He
is actuated by a most progressive spirit and resolute purpose. He is constantly
studying the nature of the soil and its needs and the possibilities for crop
production. He knows just what can be produced in this section and the best
methods of irrigating the land and enhancing its fertility. There is no phase of
agricultural or horticultural life in the northwest with which he is not
familiar, as he has taken up this line of work with the same thoroughness that
he manifested in his professional career.

On the 25th of August, 1908, Dr. Kloeber was married up Miss Anna Rubish, a
native of Wisconsin and a daughter of John and Anna Rubish, Fraternally he is
connected with Yakima Lodge, No. 318, B. P. O. E., also with the Masonic
fraternity at Kenosha, Wisconsin. In politics he is a republican and he is now
serving as chairman of the medical advisory board for district No. 22,
accepting this position as a war measure. He was the president of the State Fair
Commission from 1908 until 1913 and was a member thereof in 1907. He stands for
every phase of substantial development in the community, for progress and
improvement along all lines having to do with the welfare of community,
commonwealth or country. His life work has been of marked value to his
fellowmen, both as a representative of the medical profession and as a
representative of the horticultural and agricultural development of the
northwest.

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Submitted to the Washington Bios Project in January 2008 by Jeffrey L. Elmer.
Submitter has no additional information about the subject of this article.