What will be the state of medical science forty or fifty years from now? Will physicians make their country calls in airplanes, soaring over hills and plains high in air? In pioneer days anxious ears strained for the sound of the gallop of the doctor's horse; later the patter of horses' feet and the rattle of the buggy denoted the approach of medical aid; now the gleam of the motor car lights announce that relief is near. A few years hence, mayhap, anxious ones awaiting awaiting the doctor will be made aware of his coming by the whir of the airplane motor and anxiously view his approach through powerful binoculars. Even now the most rosy dreams of our trail-making fathers have been far surpassed. That vast expanse of sage and sand that formed a large part of the Columbia River Valley will have become the garden and granary of Northwestern America.
But the beautiful homes, fertile fields, green expanses of alfalfa, the fruit-laden orchards, the cities and towns, schools, churches, factories, mills and marts of industry, will, to those who never saw the country in its original wildness, have little to tell of the toils, struggles, waiting and weariness that were the cost of this marvelous transformation.
PART III
PERIOD OF COUNTY DIVISIONS
CHAPTER I
POLITICAL HISTORY OF WALLA WALLA COUNTY SINCE COUNTY DIVISION