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

by William Denison Lyman

In 1864 there came into operation the first of the great stage systems having transcontinental aims and policies. This was the Holladay system. That period was the palmy time for hold-ups, Indians, prairie-schooners, and all the other interesting and extravagant features of life, ordinarily supposed to be typical of the Far-West and so dominating in their effect on the imagination as to furnish the seed-bed for a genuine literature of the Pacific Coast, most prominent in California with the illustrious names of Bret Harte and Mark Twain in the van, and with Jack London, Rex Beach, and many more in later times pursuing the same general tenor of delineation. The Northwest has not yet had a literature comparable with California's, but the material is here and there will yet be in due sequence a line of story writers, poets and artists of the incomparable scenery and the tragic, humorous and pathetic human associations of the Columbia and its tributaries, which will place this northern region of the Pacific in the same rank as the more forward southern sister. Indeed we may remark incidentally that the two most prominent California poets, Joaquin Miller and Edwin Markham, belonged to Oregon, the latter being a native of the "Webfoot State."

The amount of business done by those pioneer stage lines was surprising. In the issue of the Statesman of December 20, 1862, it is estimated that the amount of freight landed by the steamers at Wallula to be distributed thence by wheel averaged about a hundred and fifty tons weekly, and that the number of passengers, very variable, ran from fifty to six hundred weekly. As time went on rival lines became more and more active and rates were lowered as competition grew more keen. The author recalls vividly his first trip from Wallula to Walla Walla in his boyhood in the summer of 1870.

The steamer was jammed with passengers who disembarked and made a rush for something to eat in the old adobe hotel on the river bank at the site of the old Fort Walla Walla. There were a dozen or so stages, the driver of each vociferating that on that day passengers were carried free to Walla Walla. It is asserted that on some occasions competition became so hot that the rival stage managers offered not only free transportation, but free meals as a bonus. Whenever one line succeeded in running off competitors the rates were plumped right back to the ordinary figure. In view of the wagon traffic of that period it is not surprising that sections of the road are yet worn several feet deep and that for years there were four or five tracks. They never worked the roads, but depended purely on nature, Providence, and the movement of teams to effect any changes. With the somewhat strenuous west winds which even yet are sometimes noticed to prevail on the lower Walla Walla it is not wonderful that a good part of the top dressing of that country has been distributed at various points around Walla Walla, Waitsburg, Dayton, "and all points east." How regular teamsters got enough air to maintain life out of the clouds of dust which enveloped most of their active moments is one of the unexplained mysteries of human existence.

The closing scene of the stage line drama may be said to have been the establishment in 1871 of the Northwestern Stage Company. It connected the Central Pacific Railroad at Kelton, Utah, with The Dalles, Pendleton, Walla Walla, Colfax, Dayton, Lewiston, Pomeroy, and "all points north and west." During the decade of the '70s that stage line was a connecting link not only between the railroads and the regions as yet without them, but was also a link between two epochs, that of the stage and that of the railroad.

It did an extensive passenger business, employing regularly twenty-two stages and 300 horses, which used annually 365 tons of grain and 412 tons of hay. There were 150 drivers and hostlers regularly employed for that branch of the business.

THE RAILROAD AGE

But a new order was coming rapidly. As the decades of the '60s and '70s belonged especially to the steamboat and the stage, so the decade of the '80s belonged to the railroad. It is one of the most curious and interesting facts in American history that during the period between about 1835, the coming of the missionaries and the period of the discoveries of gold in Idaho in 1861 and onward, there was an obstinate insistence in Congress, especially the Senate—a great body indeed, but at times the very apotheosis of conservative imbecility—that Oregon could never be practically connected with the older parts of the country, but must remain a wilderness. But there were some Progressives. When Isaac I. Stevens was appointed governor of Washington Territory in 1853 he had charge of a survey with a view of determining a practical route for a northern railroad.

It is very interesting to read his instructions to George B. McClellan, then one of his assistants. "The route is from St. Paul, Minn., to Puget Sound by the great bend of the Mississippi River, through a pass in the mountains near the forty-ninth parallel. A strong party will operate westward from St. Paul; a second but smaller party will go up the Missouri to the Yellowstone, and there make arrangements, reconnoiter the country, etc., and on the junction of the main party they will push through the Blackfoot country, and reaching the Rocky Mountains will keep at work there during the summer months. The third party, under your command, will be organized in the Puget Sound region, you and your scientific corps going over the Isthmus, and will operate in the Cascade range and meet the party coming from the Rocky Mountains. The amount of work in the Cascade range and eastward, say to the probable junction of the parties at the great bend of the north fork of the Columbia River, will be immense. Recollect, the main object is a railroad survey from the headwaters of the Mississippi River to Puget Sound. We must not be frightened by long tunnels or enormous snows, but must set ourselves to work to overcome them."

Growing out of the abundant agitation going on for twenty years after the start given it by Governor Stevens, the movement for a Northern Pacific Railroad focalized in 1870 by a contract made between the promoters and Jay Cooke & Company to sell bonds. It is interesting to recall that Philip Ritz of Walla Walla, one of the noblest of men and most useful of pioneers, was one of the strong forces in conveying information about the field and inducing the promoters to turn their attention to it. In fact Messrs. Ogden and Cass, two of the strongest men connected with the enterprise, afterwards stated that it was a letter from Mr. Ritz that drew their favorable attention to the possibilities of this country. Work was begun on the section of the Northern Pacific Railroad between Kalama on the Columbia and Puget Sound in 1870, but the financial panic of 1873 crippled and even ruined many great business houses, among others Jay Cooke & Co., and for several years construction was at a stand still. In 1879 the Northern Pacific Railroad Co. was reorganized, work was resumed and never ceased till the iron horse had drunk both out of Lake Superior and the Columbia River.