Mayor—Jas. McAuliff.
Marshal—John P. Justice.
Treasurer—H. E. Holmes.
Assessor—S. Jacobs.
Council—G. P. Foor, Wm. Kohlhauff, A. H. Reynolds, O. P. Lacy, M.
Belcher.
It remains in this chapter to speak of the events leading to the division of Old Walla Walla County. The first movement in that direction originated at Waitsburg. That active place, in the center of one of the fairest and most fertile tracts in all this fertile region, had come into existence in 1865. We find an item in the Statesman of June 30, 1865, to this effect: "Waitsburg is the name of a town just beginning to grow up at Wait's Mill on the Touchet. The people of that vicinity have resolved to celebrate the coming 4th, and are making arrangements accordingly. W. S. Langford of this city has accepted an invitations to deliver the oration. "In 1869 a sentiment developed that the large area south of Snake River, 3,420 square miles, was too large for a single county, and that it was only a question of time when there must be another county. Not seeming to realize that if such event occurred the natural center must be farther east than Waitsburg, the citizens of the "Mill Town" pushed vigorously for their project of division, with their own town as the seat of a new county. A petition signed by 150 citizens was conveyed to Olympia by a delegation who presented it to the Legislature. Though their effort failed it served to keep the plan of division alive, and with a rapid flow of immigration into the high region of the Upper Touchet, the movement for a new county constantly grew. We have already spoken of the early locations on the Touchet and Patit. In 1871 and 1872, there became a concentration of interests which made it clear that a town would develop. It became known as Dayton from Jesse N. Day. Here was a location more suitable geographically than Waitsburg, and sentiment rapidly gathered around Dayton as the natural vantage point for a new county. Elisha Ping was chosen to the Territorial Council in 1874 to represent Walla Walla County, and as a citizen and prominent land owner of Dayton he became the center of the movement.
The first boundary proposed called for a line running directly south from the Palouse ferry on Snake River to the state line, thus putting Waitsburg just within the new county. This was not acceptable to that place. If it could not be the county seat, it preferred to play second fiddle to Walla Walla rather than to Dayton. Mr. Preston went to Walla Walla to represent the Waitsburg sentiment. As a result a remonstrance against county division was prepared and forwarded to the Legislature. Representatives Hodgis, Lloyd, Lynch and Scott took positions in opposition to division. A. J. Cain and Elisha Ping conducted the campaign from the standpoint of Dayton. It became a three cornered combat in the Legislature. The Walla Walla people, as almost always is the case in a growing county, though it is very poor and selfish policy, opposed any division. The Waitsburg influence was for division provided it could have the county seat but otherwise opposed, and the Dayton influence was entirely for division with the expectation that Dayton would become the county seat. Like most county division and county seat fights, this was based mainly on motives of transient local gain and personal advantage, rather than on broad public policy for the future. But so long as human nature is at such a rudimentary stage of evolution it would be too idealistic to expect otherwise. But whether with large motives or small, the final outcome, as well as the subsequent divisions by which Garfield and Asotin were laid out, was for progress and efficiency. Walla Walla interests were overpowered in the Legislature and a bill creating Ping County was duly passed. This, however, encountered a snag, for Governor Ferry vetoed it. Another bill, avoiding his objections, naming the new county Columbia, was finally passed and on Nov. 11, 1875, Columbia County duly came into existence, embracing about two-thirds of Old Walla Walla County, being bounded by Snake River and the state line on the north, east and south, and by Walla Walla County on the west.
The history of the erection of Garfield and Asotin counties will belong properly to a later chapter, and with this final view of old Walla Walla County as it had existed from 1859 to 1878, we pass on.