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

by William Denison Lyman

The captains, pilots, and pursers of that period were as fine a set of men as ever turned a wheel. Bold, bluff, genial, hearty, and obliging they were, even though given to occasional outbursts of expletives and possessing voluminous repertoires of "cusswords" such as would startle the effete East. Any old Oregonian who may chance to cast his eyes upon these pages will recall, as with the pangs of childhood homesickness, the forms and features of steamboat men of that day; the polite yet determined Ainsworth, the brusque and rotund Reed, the bluff and hearty Knaggs, the frolicsome and never disconcerted Ingalls, the dark, powerful, and nonchalant Coe, the patriarchal beard of Stump, the loquacious "Commodore" Wolf, who used to point out to astonished tourists the "diabolical strata" on the banks of the river, the massive and good-natured Strang, the genial and elegant O'Neil, the suave and witty Snow, the tall and handsome Sampson, the rich Scotch brogue of McNulty, and dozens of others, whose combined adventures would fill a volume. One of the most experienced pilots of the upper river was Captain "Eph" Baughman, who ran steamers on the Snake and Columbia rivers over fifty years, and is yet living at the date of this publication. W. H. Gray, who came to Waiilatpu with Whitman as secular agent of the mission, became a river man of much skill. He gave four sons, John, William, Alfred, and James, to the service of the river, all four of them being skilled captains. A story narrated to the author by Capt. William Gray, now of Pasco, Wash., well illustrates the character of the old Columbia River navigators. W. H. Gray was the first man to run a sailboat of much size with regular freight up Snake River. That was in 1860 before any steamers were running on that stream. Mr. Gray built his boat, a fifty ton sloop, on Oosooyoos Lake on the Okanogan River. In it he descended that river to its entrance into the Columbia. Thence he descended the Columbia, running down the Entiat, Rock Island, Cabinet, and Priest Rapids, no mean undertaking of itself. Reaching the mouth of the Snake he took on a load of freight and started up the swift stream. At Five-mile Rapids he found that his sail was insufficient to carry the sloop up. Men had said that it was impossible. The crew all prophesied disaster. The stubborn captain merely declared, "There is no such word as fail in my dictionary." He directed his son and another of the crew to take the small boat, load her with a long coil of rope, make their way up the stream until they got above the rapid, there to land on an islet of rock, fasten the rope to that rock, then pay it out till it was swept down the rapid. They were then to descend the rapid in the small boat. "Very likely you may be upset," added the skipper encouragingly, "but if you are, you know how to swim." They were upset, sure enough, but they did know how to swim. They righted their boat, picked up the end of the floating rope, and reached the sloop with it. The rope was attached to the capstan, and the sloop was wound up by it above the swiftest part of the rapid to a point where the sail was sufficient to carry, and on they went rejoicing. Any account of steamboating on the Columbia would be incomplete without reference to Capt. James Troup, who was born on the Columbia, and almost from early boyhood ran steamers upon it and its tributaries. He made a specialty of running steamers down The Dalles and the Cascades, an undertaking sometimes rendered necessary by the fact that more boats were built in proportion to demand on the upper than the lower river. These were taken down The Dalles, and sometimes down the Cascades. Once down, they could not return. The first steamer to run down the Tumwater Falls was the Okanogan, on May 22, 1866, piloted by Capt. T. J. Stump.

The author enjoyed the great privilege of descending The Dalles in the D. S. Baker in the year 1888, Captain Troup being in command. At that strange point in the river, the whole vast volume is compressed into a channel but 160 feet wide at low water and much deeper than wide. Like a huge mill-race this channel continues nearly straight for two miles, when it is hurled with frightful force against a massive bluff. Deflected from the bluff, it turns at a sharp angle to be split in sunder by a low reef of rock. When the Baker was drawn into the current at the head of the "chute" she swept down the channel, which was almost black, with streaks of foam, to the bluff, two miles in four minutes. There feeling the tremendous refluent wave, she went careening over and over toward the sunken reef. The skilled captain had her perfectly in hand, and precisely at the right moment, rang the signal bell, "Ahead, full speed," and ahead she went, just barely scratching her side on the rock. Thus close was it necessary to calculate distance. If the steamer had struck the tooth-like point of the reef broadside on, she would have been broken in two and carried in fragments on either side. Having passed this danger point, she glided into the beautiful calm bay below and the feat was accomplished. Capt. J. C. Ainsworth and Capt. James Troup were the two captains above all others to whom the company entrusted the critical task of running steamers over the rapids.

In the Overland Monthly of June, 1886, there is a valuable account by Capt. Lawrence Coe of the maiden journey of the Colonel Wright from Celilo up what they then termed the upper Columbia.

This first journey on that section of the river was made in April, 1859. The pilot was Capt. Lew White. The highest point reached was Wallula, the site of the old Hudson's Bay Fort. The current was a powerful one to withstand, no soundings had ever been made, and no boats except canoes, bateaus, flatboats, and a few small sailboats, had ever made the trip. No one had any conception of the location of a channel adapted to a steamboat. No difficulty was experienced, however, except at the Umatilla Rapids. This is a most singular obstruction. Three separate reefs, at intervals of half a mile, extend right across the river. There are narrow breaks in these reefs, but not in line with each other. Through them the water pours with tremendous velocity, and on account of their irregular locations a steamer must zigzag across the river at imminent risk of being borne broadside on to the reef. The passage of the Umatilla Rapids is not difficult at high water, for then the steamer glides over the rocks in a straight course.

In the August Overland of the same year, Captain Coe narrates the first steamboat trip up Snake River. This was in June, 1860, just at the time of the beginning of the gold excitement. The Colonel Wright was loaded with picks, rockers, and other mining implements, as well as provisions and passengers. Most of the freight and passengers were put off at Wallula, to go thence overland. Part continued on to test the experiment of making way against the wicked-looking current of Snake River. After three days and a half from the starting point a few miles above Celilo, the Colonel Wright halted at a place which was called Slaterville, thirty-seven miles up the Clearwater from its junction with the Snake. There the remainder of the cargo was discharged, to be hauled in wagons to the Oro Fino mines. The steamer Okanogan followed the Colonel Wright within a few weeks, and navigation on the Snake may be said to have fairly begun. During that same time the City of Lewiston, named in honor of Meriwether Lewis, the explorer, was founded at the junction of the Snake and Clearwater rivers.

THE PIONEER STAGE LINES

While the river traffic under the ordinary control of the O. S. N. Company, though with frequent periods of opposition boats, was thus promoting the movements of commercial life along the great central artery, the need of reaching interior points was vital. The only way of doing this and providing feeders for the boats was by stage lines and prairie schooners. As a result of this need there developed along with the steamboats a system of roads from certain points on the Columbia and Snake rivers. Umatilla, Wallula, and Lewiston became the chief of these. And in the stage lines we have another era of utmost interest and importance in the old time days.

J. F. Abbott was the pioneer stage manager of old Walla Walla. It is very interesting to note his advertisements as they appear in the earliest issues of the Washington Statesman. But he began before there was any Statesman or paper of any kind between the Cascade Mountains and the Missouri River. For in 1859 he started the first stages between Wallula and Walla Walla. In 1860 he entered a partnership with Rickey and Thatcher on the same route. In 1861 a new line was laid out by Miller and Blackmore from The Dalles to Walla Walla. The stage business went right on by leaps and bounds. In 1862 two companies started new lines, Rickey and Thatcher from Walla Walla to Lewiston through the present Walla Walla, Columbia, Garfield and Asotin counties, and Blackmore and Chase between Wallula and Walla Walla. During the next two decades the stage business became one of the great factors in the growth of the whole vast region from Umatilla eastward into the mining regions of Oro Fino, Florence, Boise Basin, and ultimately into Wyoming and Utah.

The most prominent manager on the longer routes and one of the most prominent and useful of all the business men of early Walla Walla, was George F. Thomas. He laid out a route from Wallula to Boise by way of Walla Walla and the Woodward Toll Gate Road over the Blue Mountains.