Lyman's History of old Walla Walla County, Vol. 1 / Embracing Walla Walla, Columbia, Garfield and Asotin counties

by William Denison Lyman

A few general statistics as to the average records at Walla Walla may be of interest. The average annual temperature as shown by official records during thirty-one years is fifty-three degrees. The average for January is thirty-three degrees; for July and August, seventy-four degrees. The lowest ever recorded was seventeen degrees below zero, and the highest was 113 degrees. The average rainfall is 17.4 inches. The average date of the last killing frost of spring is March 30th, and the first of autumn is November 7th. The average number of clear or mainly clear days is 262, of cloudy is 103. The prevailing wind is always from the south, and the highest velocity ever recorded was sixty-five miles per hour. There is an average of eight thunder showers in a year. The other parts of the four counties included in this history have essentially the same climate as Walla Walla. There is, however, a regular decrease of temperature and an increase of rainfall from the west to east. Recent records of the Weather Observer at Walla Walla, giving a comparison of various stations, show extraordinary differences in rainfall according to elevation and proximity to the mountains. Thus, the average precipitation, including melted snow, for some years past, has been at Kennewick, 6.46 inches; at Lowden, 11.18; at Eureka, 14.35; at Walla Walla, 17.37; at Milton, 19.50; at Dayton, 22.14; and at the "intake," only fourteen miles from Walla Walla, but at an elevation of twenty-five hundred feet (Walla Walla being nine hundred and twenty), and at the entrance to the mountains, it was, in 1916, 47.93. The natural rainfall is sufficient for all the staple grains and fruits in all parts except the areas in the west and north bordering the Columbia and Snake rivers. In those semi-arid tracts irrigation is necessary, and the same means of artificial moisture is practiced for a succession of vegetables and small fruits and alfalfa in considerable parts of the other valley lands. One of the interesting and important features of Walla Walla is the fine system of spouting artesian wells. There are now over thirty of these wells in the Walla Walla Valley, the largest having a flow of twenty-five hundred gallons per minute, sufficient to irrigate a half section of land. Owing to the immense snowfall on the Blue Mountains, ranging from ten to fifty or sixty feet during the season, a large part of the slopes and valleys below seems to be sub-irrigated and also to be underlaid by a great sheet of water. Hence it seems reasonable to expect that artesian water will be found in other places. In general it may be said that the climate of the sections considered in this work is eminently conducive to health, wealth, and comfort. It is a happy medium between the extreme dryness of the Great Plateau and the extreme humidity of Western Washington; as also between the rather muggy and enervating climate of the South and the biting cold of winter and prostrating heat of summer of the belt of northern states east of the Rocky Mountains. If we may judge by a comparison of the native races, as well as by the "bunch-grass" horses and cattle, the "bunch-grass" boys and girls will be on the road to becoming superior specimens of humanity. Thus far there is too much of a mixture of the human stock to make scientific comparisons.

Old Walla Walla County shares with other parts of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and British Columbia, the distinction of joint ownership of one of the sublimest systems of waterways on the globe. This system consists of the Columbia and its tributaries. The Columbia itself washes the western verge of Walla Walla County for a distance of only about sixteen miles. Yet, in this short distance the great stream sustains its reputation as belonging in the front rank of scenic rivers. Although the region around the junction of the blue, majestic Columbia and the turbid and impetuous Snake is regarded as a desert in its native condition, yet on one of the bright, still days of spring or autumn views of such grandeur looking either up or down can be obtained that no appreciative observer would ever say "desert." The azure and gold and russet and purple that play upon the mountains and islands looking up river, or upon the Wallula Gateway looking down, with the mile-wide majesty of the river in the midst, must be seen to be understood. No words of description can do justice to those scenes.

HUDSON BAY POST AT WALLULA. ERECTED IN 1818

An inspection of the map will show that Snake River touches a much larger rim than the greater stream. For it borders each one of the four counties, for a total distance of about a hundred and fifty miles. For this entire space Snake River is swift and turbid, having an average fall of about three feet to the mile. Nevertheless, it is navigable the whole distance during six or eight months in the year. The immense volume of these two big rivers is not generally understood by strangers. The Columbia is less than half as long as the Mississippi, yet it is but slightly inferior in volume to the "Father of Waters," and far surpasses any other river in the United States. Its maximum flood stage at Celilo in the flood of 1894, the greatest on record, was estimated at one million six hundred thousand second feet, while the maximum of the Snake, just above its mouth, was about four hundred thousand. We shall have occasion later to speak of the steamer traffic upon these rivers and the improvements, past and prospective, by the Federal Government. Suffice it to say here that as that phase of early history was among the most important, so it is plain that the future will bring on a new era of water-borne traffic, and that with it will come a new era of production. Nearly all the tributaries of the two big rivers flow from the snow banks and the canons of the Blue Mountains. Though conveying in the aggregate during the flood season an immense volume, the tributaries are too swift for navigation. They supply abundant water for irrigation where needed, and each is a superb trout stream. The largest, the Grande Ronde, is in truth an Oregon river, for its main supplies come from the Grande Ronde and Wallowa valleys, but it crosses the corner of Asotin County and enters Snake River within that scenic country. The Grande Ronde is a powerful stream and for varied scenes of wild grandeur and gentle beauty, it is not easily matched. The Wallowa Basin (the "Far Wayleway" of Longfellow's Evangeline) is sometimes called the Switzerland of the Inland Empire. Of the historic interest of that region which thus finds its exit through one of the counties of Old Walla Walla, we shall speak again. The next affluent of the Snake River below the Grande Ronde is Asotin Creek, a small stream and yet one of the busiest and most useful for it is the source of the water supply of that fair and productive region around Clarkston and extending thence to Asotin City. Some distance below Clarkston is the Alpowa, also a historic stream. Yet another stage and about half way between the Grande Ronde and the mouth of Snake River we find one of the most charming in appearance as well as most attractive to the fishermen of all the Blue Mountain streams, the Tucanon. This also is invested with historic interest, as we shall see later. Below the mouth of the Tucanon the previously lofty, almost mountainous, shores of Snake River rapidly drop away and the vast expanse of arid plain stretches away toward the crests of the Blue Mountains. No more tributaries of the Snake River enter, and with another stage that most interesting point in the history of this turbulent and historic river is reached—its mouth, and its individuality is lost in the mighty sweep of the Columbia. A few miles below the junction the most historic and in some respects most beautiful of the small tributaries of the Columbia streams in through the verdant meadow and overhanging willows, the Walla Walla. The events which have made the place of entrance, as well as many other places on the course of this stream famous in the history of the Northwest, will become manifest as our story proceeds.

In the great semicircle of one hundred and fifty miles in which Snake River borders our four counties, there are frequent profound canons through which the snow-crested mountains from which the streams issue can be seen. The observer who has made that long journey and reaches the open prairie at the mouth of the Snake will behold with wonder and delight the distant chain, all in one splendid picture, of which he had before seen broken glimpses through the rifted canon walls or up the sources of the foaming creeks. But whether in broken glimpses or in their grand unity, the Blue Mountains possess a unique charm and individuality. While not so bold and aiguillated as the Cascades, and while there are no peaks standing in lonely sublimity to compel the vision of the traveller, like Mount "Takhoma" or Mount Adams or Mount Hood, the Blue Mountains are not inferior in many of the features of mountain charm to their greater brothers. The marvelous coloring is perhaps the most distinctive of these features. While most mountains are blue, these are blue blue. They are all shades of blue, according to the hour and the month and the season—blue, indigo, ultramarine, violet, purple, amethyst, lapis lazuli, everything that one can think of to denote variations of blueness. "Blue Mountain" is a real name. The French voyageurs of the fur-traders were the first to note the characteristic blue, and according to Ross Cox, began at once to say, "Les Montagnes Bleues." Another characteristic feature of these mountains is the fact that they do not so much constitute a range or chain, like the long, narrow, regular Cascade Range, as a huge mass with prongs radiating from something like a central axis which might be considered the great granite and limestone knot of peaks about Wallowa Lake, of which Eagle Cap is the loftiest, over nine thousand feet in elevation. On account of this ganglionic structure there are many radiating canons from the long ridges and plateaus to the lower levels. The views from the open ridges and rounded summits down these canons constitute a scenic gallery of contours and colorings which may challenge comparison with even the views of the loftier and bolder Cascades.

The value of the Blue Mountains in condensing the moisture of the atmosphere and dropping it upon the plains below in rain and snow can hardly be conceived unless we reflect that without this vast reservoir of salvation to all growing things the Inland Empire would be a desert. Nor could it even be irrigated, for in the absence of the Blue Mountains there would be no available streams for distribution. Wonderful indeed is it to consider how the ardent sun of the Pacific lifts the inconceivable masses of invisible vapor from the ocean and the west wind carries them inland. The coast mountains constitute the first condenser of that vapor, and almost constant rain during half the year with a predominance of clouds and fogs at all times prevails along the ocean margin of Oregon and Washington. The Cascade Range lifts its stupendous domes and sentinel-like cliffs to catch the vapor that still sweeps inland and to feed the greedy rootlets of their interminable forests and to clothe the heights with perpetual snow and ice. But those vast demands fail to exhaust the limitless resources of the sky, and there are yet remaining infinite treasures of moisture floating eastward. And so the next great suppliant for the vital nourishment of all life stands with uplifted, appealing hands, our wide-extended and clustered uplift of the Blues. Nor do they appeal in vain, as the fertile prairies and benches with their millions of bushels of grain and their far-reaching cattle ranges and their orchard valleys and their countless springs can testify.

Whether from the standpoint of the forester or the farmer or the stockman or the gardener or the orchardist or the fisherman or the artist or the poet, the Blue Mountains constitute one of the great vital working facts, the very framework of the life of Old Walla Walla County. We shall discover that they are not simply a picture gallery, but that the history of this region is fairly set within this stately frame.

With these necessarily hurried and fragmentary glances at the physical scene of the story, we shall be prepared to bring the human characters upon the stage.