"My resources were exceedingly slender, and the question of how meal tickets were to be obtained was much on my mind. That was fifty-four years ago—and like many of you present here today I watched the years go by with gradually increasing faith in the country's resources; a faith that ripened into love for the beautiful valley, its people and its magnificent surroundings. Walla Walla all these years has been my home, her people became my people, her interests were my interests. It is hoped you will pardon these personal allusions but after all history is defined as 'the essence of innumerable biographies.'
"It is a goodly land—a fit abode for a superior race of people, a race to match its mountains, worthy of its magnificent surroundings.
"Along in the early '60s, stockmen from the Willamette Valley, attracted by the bunch grass that grew in wild luxuriance over all the hills and valleys of this inter-mountain region, brought horses and cattle and established stock ranches along the streams. Later it was discovered that grain would grow on the foothills, and that the yield was surprisingly large. The wheat area was gradually widened and land supposed worthless grew enormous crops. Now wheat has everywhere supplanted the bunch grass and the Inland Empire sends annually about sixty-five million bushels to feed a hungry world.
"Walla Walla in the early '60s was a town of about two thousand inhabitants and the only town between The Dalles and Lewiston. Now this region is filled with cities and towns and villages, dotted all over with the happy homes of a brave, enterprising, peace-loving, law-abiding people.
"Many of us have seen the country in its making, have helped to lay the foundations of the commonwealth, have seen the territory 'put on the robes of state sovereignty,' have seen it become an important unit in the great federation of states, have recently seen its young men pour forth by thousands to engage in a war not of our making but in the language of President Wilson, 'that the world may be made safe for democracy.'
"These pioneer meetings are significant events; they afford opportunity for meeting old friends. They are occasions for retrospection and reminiscence. We live over again in memory 'the brave days of old.' We recount the courage, the lofty purpose, the sacrifices of the early settlers not only of those still living, but of those who have crossed the Great Divide.
"They were a sturdy race; they braved the perils of pioneer life, and 'pushed back the frontiers in the teeth of savage foes.' We are old enough now to begin to have a history. In fact, this Walla Walla country is rich in historic interest, and inspiring history it is. Lewis and Clark passed through it on their way to and from the coast. Whitman established his mission here in 1836 and eleven years later gave up his life as the last full measure of his devotion to the cause he loved so well. Other missionaries and explorers saw it and were impressed with its fertility and the mildness of its climate. Indian wars raged here, and it was here, almost on this spot, that Governor Stevens held the council and made treaties with 5,500 Indians.
"No other part of the northwest has such a historic background. All this will continue to be an inspiration to the people who are to reside here.
"Wherever the early settler built his cabin, or took his claim, he left the impress of his personality. These personal experiences should be woven into history and it is hoped that Professor Lyman in his forthcoming history of old Walla Walla County will include many of these personal memorials.
"The restless impulse, the wanderlust implanted in the race, the impulse that carried the first wave of emigration over Cumberland Gap in the Alleghenies and down the Ohio to Kentucky, 'the dark and bloody ground,' swept over the prairies of Illinois and Iowa, across the Mississippi and Missouri. Here it halted on the edge of the Great American Desert, until the gold discovery in California in '49 gave it new impetus and it swept on again. These indefatigable Americans crossed the Great Plains, they climbed the Rocky Mountains, they opened mines, they felled forests, tilled the land, developed water powers, built mills and manufactories, filling all the wide domain with 'the shining towers of civilization.'