Butcher, Walter R.
Biographical note
Walter Ray Butcher was born in Riverside, California, in 1933. When he was 12 years old, he moved with his family to a farm in the Boise Valley in southwestern Idaho. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Idaho, and later earned a master's degree and a Ph.D. in agriculture from Iowa State University. In 1958, he married Elinor Ida Johnson; they moved to Pullman, Washington, where they raised three children. Butcher was a professor of agricultural and resource economics at Washington State University in Pullman for 34 years.
Sources: Vital records on Ancestry.com; information provided by Butcher in his interview; Elinor I. Butcher’s obituary, , Corbill Funeral Homes website (accessed December 2025), https://www.corbeillfuneralhomes.com/obituary/elinor-butcher; “Retirees making a difference,” WSU Insider, March 27, 2008, (accessed December 2025), https://news.wsu.edu/news/2008/03/27/retirees-makinga-difference/.
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Oral history interview with Walter R. Butcher
Oral history interview with Walter R. Butcher, conducted by Clark Hansen on October 23, 1999, as part of the Columbia River Dissenters Oral History Series. Butcher discusses government programs that benefit farmers, particularly the Columbia River Basin Irrigation Project, as well as his involvement with cost-benefit studies related to dams and irrigation projects.