Turning now from the county and its relations to the territorial and national Government, to Walla Walla City, we may for the sake of topical clearness repeat a little of what was given in earlier chapters.
By act of the Legislature of January 11, 1862, Walla Walla became an incorporated city, with the limits of the south half of the southwest quarter of section 20, township 7 north, range 36 east. The charter provided for the election, on the first Tuesday of each April, of a mayor, recorder, five councilmen, marshal, assessor, treasurer and surveyor. All vacancies were to be filled by appointment of councilmen, except mayor and recorder. The council also had the power to appoint a clerk and attorney.
The first election under the charter occurred on the first day of April, 1862, at which election the total vote was 422. In the Statesman of April 5 there is a criticism in rather mild and apologetic terms for the loose and careless manner in which the judges allowed voting. The assertion is made that men who were well known to reside miles out of the city were allowed to vote. Not over three hundred voters, according to the paper, were bona fide residents. A well considered warning is made that such a beginning of city elections will result in a general illegal voting and ballot-box stuffing. In the Statesman of April 12 is a report of the first council meeting on April 4. At this first meeting the votes of the election of the first were canvassed, showing that out of the 422 votes, E. B. Whitman had received 416. The recorder chosen was W. P. Horton, whose vote was 239 against 173 for W. W. Lacy. The councilmen chosen, whose votes ran from 400 to 415, were I. T. Rees, J. F. Abbott, R. Jacobs, B. F. Stone and B. Sheideman.
George H. Porter was chosen marshal by a vote of 269, with 136 for A. Seitel and 17 for A. J. Miner. E. E. Kelly was the choice for treasurer by the small margin of 219 to 200 for D. S. Baker. The assessor was L. W. Greenwell by 413 votes. A. L. Chapman was chosen surveyor by 305 against 119 for W. W. Johnson. S. F. Ledyard was appointed clerk by the council, B. F. Stone was chosen president of the council at the meeting of April 10.
One of the first questions which the council had to wrestle with, as it has been most of the time since, was revenue and the sources thereof. The saloon business being apparently the most active of any at that time became very naturally the foundation of the revenue system. People supposed then, as many have since, that they could lift themselves by their boot straps and that a traffic which cost a dollar for every dime that it brought into the treasury was essential to the life of the town. However, a "dry town" at that day and age and in a place whose chief business was outfitting for the mines and serving as a home for miners off duty, would have been so amazing that the very thought would have been sufficient to warrant an immediate commitment for lunacy. If the spirits of the city authorities and citizens of that date could return and see the Walla Walla of 1917, with not a legal drop of intoxicating fluid, it is safe to say that "amazement" would but feebly express their mental state. According to the revenue ordinance of that first council, a tax was to produce about a third, and licenses and fines the remainder of the city income. During the first six months the total revenue was $4,283.25, and the licensing of liquor sales and gambling tables amounted to $1,875. Tax amounted to about $1,430. The rest of the revenue was from fines. We may note here by way of comparison that in 1866 the city revenue was $15,358.97, of which $9,135.13 was from licenses.
The year of 1862 was one of great activity. A. J. Cain laid out his addition, though the plat was not recorded till the next year. The Statesman of October 18th gives a glowing account of the improvements, stating that fifty buildings had been completed during the summer and that thirty more were in progress of construction. Most of these were no doubt flimsy wooden structures, but it is mentioned that the buildings of Schwabacher Brothers and Brown Brothers & Co. had been nearly completed. At the head of Second Street A. J. Miner was erecting a planing mill, and a sash and door factory. Beyond the city limits Mr. Meyer had put up a brewery (this afterwards developed into the Stahl brewery on Second Street). In Cain's addition, where there had been only eight houses, the number was more than doubled. As a matter of fact, though there was much improvement at that time, our fair City of Walla Walla of the present, with its elegant homes and trees and flowers and broad verdant lawns, with paved streets and bountiful water supply, would not recognize the ragged, dusty, dirty, little shack of a town of which the Statesman was so proud in 1862. The ease with which the people of that time have adjusted themselves to all the conveniences and elegancies of the present day, shows something of the infinite adaptability of human nature, and still more it shows that the foundation builders of the pioneer days had it in them to create all the improvements of later days. Raw as Walla Walla must have looked in the '60s, the essential conditions were there which have made our later age; rich soil, water, good surrounding country, industry, taste, brains, home spirit, good citizenship—and a certain reasonable amount of time. There we have all the elements that wrought between the Walla Walla of 1862 and that of 1917.
Courtesy of F. W. Paine
WALLA WALLA IN 1866