Hence farming and gardening and fruit raising had been abundantly tested in the more favorably situated locations long prior to the founding of Walla Walla. With the establishment of the Fort at its present location, Capt. W. R. Kirkwood laid out a garden, the success of which showed the utility of that location. The next year Charles Russell, then the wagon master at the fort, tested the land north of the post, afterwards owned by Mr. Drumheller, with eighty acres of barley, securing a yield of fifty bushels to the acre. He raised 100 acres of oats on the place which he afterwards took up on Russell Creek. The location must have been on the land now owned by O. M. Richmond, and there is remarkable evidence of the productiveness of that land in that it has produced nearly every year to the present. It is worth relating that after Mr. Russell had sowed the oats the Indians were so threatening that he abandoned the place, and cattle ate the growing grain so closely that there seemed no hope of a crop. But in June, the Indians having withdrawn, Mr. Russell went out and fenced the field, the oats sprung up anew and yielded fifty bushels to the acre. In the same year of 1858, Walter Davis seeded 150 acres to oats at a place on Dry Creek. The Indians warned him to leave, but a squad of soldiers went out and cut the oats for hay. In 1860 Stephen Maxson raised a fine crop of wheat on the place on Russell Creek still owned by his descendants.
Perhaps the operations of Messrs. Russell, Davis, and Maxson may be considered the initiation of the grain production in the Inland Empire. Probably there would have been but a slow development had not the discovery of gold stimulated the demand for all sorts of agricultural products.
In 1863 a few experiments on the higher land began. Milton Evans has told the author that in that year he tried a small piece of wheat a few miles northeast of Walla Walla, but that it was a complete failure, and hence the impression already common was confirmed that the upland was useless, except for grazing. In 1867, however, John Montague raised a crop of oats, over fifty bushels to the acre, on land apparently afterwards part of the Delaney place northeast of town. Even that was not generally accepted as any proof of the use of the uplands. Some of the old-timers have said to the author that they seemed determined that grain should not grow on those lands.
But with the rapid influx of settlers and the flattering returns from the trade in provisions with the mines, the more desirable places in the foothill belt, and then on the benches and plains and then on the hills, were taken up, and by 1875 it was generally understood that a great wheat belt extended along the flanks of the Blue Mountains all the way from Pendleton to Lewiston, with a somewhat variable width upon the plains. Not until another decade was it understood that the grain belt covered the major part of what now composes the four counties of our story.
We find in the valuable history of Colonel Gilbert, to which we have made frequent reference, so good a summary of certain essential data in respect to the development to date of publication in 1882 of that great fundamental business of wheat raising, in which are included also certain allied data of importance, that we insert it at this point in our narrative.
"An agricultural society was organized in July of this year, 1866, by an assemblage of citizens at the courthouse, on the 9th of that month, when laws and regulations were adopted, and the following officers chosen: H. P. Isaacs, president; A. Cox and W. H. Newell, vice presidents; J. D. Cook, treasurer; E. E. Rees, secretary; and Charles Russell, T. G. Lee, A. A. Blanchard, executive committee. For the fair to be held on the 4th, 5th and 6th of the ensuing October, the last three gentlemen became managers and the following executive committee: H. P. Isaacs, J. D. Cook, J. H. Blewett and W. H. Newell.
In 1867 the grain yield of the Blue Mountain region exceeded the demand, and prices that had been falling for several years left that crop a drug. It was sought to prevent an entire stagnation of agricultural industries, by shipping the surplus down the Columbia River to the seaboard. Freights on flour at that time were: From Wallula per ton to Lewiston, $15; to The Dalles, $6; to Portland, $6; and the following amounts were shipped:
To Portland, between May 27 and June 13, 4,156 barrels; to The Dalles, between April 19 and June 2, 578 barrels; to Lewiston, between April 18 and May 14, 577 barrels; total to June 13 by O. S. N. Company, 5,311 barrels.
The same year Frank & Wertheimer shipped from Walla Walla 15,000 bushels of wheat down the Columbia, thus starting the great outflow of bread products from the interior.
In 1868 Philip Ritz shipped fifty barrels of flour from the Phoenix mills in Walla Walla to New York, with the following result: (It was the first of Washington Territory products seen in the East.)