COMMERCIAL CLUB
The Commercial Club came into existence in 1885. It was represented in that year by delegates to an Open River meeting in The Dalles. For a number of years it was suggestive and mutually stimulating to its small membership, rather than possessing any regular organization. It met irregularly both in time and place. In 1904 John H. McDonald became secretary, but the organization was not such as to provide for a secretary who could devote his entire time to it, and hence there was not then a real commercial club in the modern sense. But a new era began with the appointment in 1906 of A. C. Moore as the first regular and exclusive secretary. Mr. Moore had come to Walla Walla in 1888 and had been up to 1906 engaged in the O. R. & N. R. R. office. With his entrance into the secretaryship of the club new and broader plans for publicity and expansion by new memberships were begun. In 1908 the first of a series of regular publicity campaigns was begun. That was a time signalized by the seaboard cities of California, Oregon, and Washington—Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Tacoma, Astoria, Everett and Bellingham—with special efforts to attract immigration and new enterprise. It was the publicity era par excellence.
Tom Richardson and C. C. Chapman of Portland accomplished wonderful things in that city and in Oregon. Both became well known in Walla Walla, where they were greatly admired and where their enthusiasm imparted such an impulse to the Commercial Club as to lead to a new organization with the special aim of advertisement and general publicity. It may be said that the real history of the club as a definite organization begins at that time, 1908.
The articles of incorporation are as follows:
ARTICLES OF INCORPORATION
ARTICLE I
The name of this corporation, and by which it shall be known, is "Walla Walla Commercial Club."
ARTICLE II
The time of existence of this corporation shall be fifty years from the date hereof.