Think Idaho. Now go left just a tad into the state of Washington. Okay, now go down to the Washington/Oregon state line. Just thirteen miles into Washington from the state line you have Walla Walla!
I guess the earliest white men to come to this area were fur trappers for the North West Company and Hudson's Bay Company working out of Fort Nez Perces (named after a tribe of Indians.)
 |
| Granpa's Granpa* |
Before the Civil War, in 1836 a missionary and his wife arrived in the area intent on converting the Indians to Christianity.
Named for an old American Indian tribe, Walla Walla the river joins the Columbia River and flows to the Pacific Ocean. In 1859 the U.S. military built a road to connect people overland from the Walla Walla River to Fort Benton, Montana. From there you could ride the Missouri River eastward to the Mississippi River. From that connection one could travel either east to the Atlantic seaboard or south to the Gulf of Mexico. Rivers were the super highways before automobiles.
Walla Walla the town was incorporated in 1862 on that road.
Sometime in the next ten years there was a gold rush to Idaho. (I've always wondered if someone "leaked" "there's been gold found in..." in order to start a stampede of fools off to populate a particular area. I can just see some land speculator back east going into a saloon or tavern and "letting slip" the fact that gold had just been found in so-and-so. Like the restless wind of old, men run home grab a shovel, kiss their wives or mothers and head west. I suppose there are worse winds that they could follow. I've always found that slow and steady wins the race - not the chance at a lottery.) The gold rushers and other immigrants (mostly Italian) moved on into Washington state and settled into the largest community in the territory of Washington, Walla Walla.
Walla Walla in Indian means "Place of Many Waters," but when Walla Walla gets translated into Latin and then into English it means Elk Valley. Either way works!
A few of the folks that hail from Walla Walla?
NFL quarterback Drew Bledsoe and
Wide receiver Charly Martin,
TV's Batman, Adam West,
Connor Trinneer from Star Trek: Enterprise,
World War II hero Jonathan Wainwright, and
William O. Douglas graduated from Whitman College in 1920 and went on to become the longest-serving Supreme Court justice in history.
So, come Monday, Granpa and I will mosey our way up to his next contract hospital and check out the hearts of Walla Walla!
*Not really. That's just Granpa tryin' to fool ya! Tho' we DO live in a log cabin ... in Texas.
No comments:
Post a Comment