The following narrative, which details Walla Walla’s periods of development, is adapted from a Historic Preservation Plan compiled by Northwest Vernacular.
Northwest Vernacular notes these development periods are synthesized from the Downtown Walla Walla Historic District National Register of Historic Places nomination (2021), Downtown Walla Walla Intensive-Level Survey (2017), the Reconnaissance Built Environment Survey of Walla Walla’s Germantown – Portions of Chase’s Addition, Henderson’s Addition, Freise Addition, and an Unplatted Area (2015), and Green’s Park Additional Reconnaissance-Level Historic Survey (2013).
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Cayuse, Walla Walla, and Umatilla Peoples and Early Contact
The land now encompassing the city of Walla Walla has been home to the people of the Cayuse (Weyíiletpu), Umatilla (Imatalamłáma), and Walla Walla (Walúulapam) tribes since time immemorial. Their ancestral lands stretch from the lowlands of the Columbia River to the highlands of the Blue Mountains in present-day southeastern Washington and northeastern Oregon.
Prior to the arrival of Euro-American settler-colonists, the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla people traveled on the Columbia Plateau, setting up seasonal camps to participate in annual cycles of hunting, fishing, trading, and celebration. Their winter villages were located along the Columbia and Snake rivers and their tributaries; they returned to the adjacent mountains during the spring, summer, and fall. The region’s natural resources supported the tribes as they gathered roots and berries, hunted elk and deer, and fished salmon. They also participated in a large network of trade with multiple tribes.
The Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla felt the impacts of non-indigenous colonialism on the continent by the mid-18th century as horses, disease, and trade goods affected the tribes. However, the first recorded contact with Euro-Americans occurred in 1805 as the Corps of Discovery, led by William Clark and Meriwether Lewis, noted the use of the Columbia River for travel for trade purposes.
The Euro-American fur trade then extended into the Pacific Northwest in the following decades, impacting the tribes and their trade practices. Both the British Hudson’s Bay Company and Canadian North West (Northwest) Company fur trade companies moved into the Northwest and clashed over control of the region.
Initial Trading and Settlement (1818-1858)
In 1818, the North West Company established a fort, called Fort Nez Perces (or Fort Nez Perce), at the confluence of the Walla Walla and Columbia Rivers. The Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) renamed it Fort Walla Walla in 1821.
In the 1820s, French Canadian Metís settled in the Walla Walla Valley. The Cayuse and Walla Walla directed them to where they could settle and allowed them to marry into local tribes. Their settlement became known as Frenchtown, but it was scattered over 50 square miles and “simply a community of log cabins scattered among Indian camps.”
In the 1830s, white Christian missionaries followed the traders and explorers and sought to convert local tribes to Christianity. Presbyterian missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman established a mission at Waiilatpu (west of present-day College Place) in October 1836, which became a key stop on the Oregon Trail as settler-colonists traveled westward. By the time the Whitmans arrived, there were over a dozen log cabins in the Frenchtown area near the mission.
Tensions rose between the arriving Euro-Americans and the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla tribes as the immigrants interfered with traditional tribal lifeways. Disease, likely carried by Euro-Americans, devastated the tribes, culminating in a measles epidemic in 1847. The conflict escalated and in late November 1847, a band of Cayuse attacked the Whitman Mission, killing the Whitmans and 12 others.
The Cayuse War followed in 1848 and continued through 1850. The conflict ended when five Cayuse turned themselves in for the Whit-man Mission incident; the “Cayuse Five” were subsequently tried, convicted, and executed in 1850.
In the same year, Congress passed the Donation Land Claim Act of 1850 encouraging white settlement in the West. However, due to the conflict in the Walla Walla area, white settlement was limited for the next several years and the American Board of Commissioners ended its sponsorship of mission work in the region.
Congress established the Washington Territory from a portion of Oregon Territory in 1853; Walla Walla County formed in April 1854. On May 29, 1855, representatives of the U.S. government met with tribal representatives Niimíipuu (Nez Perce), Weyíiletpu, Walúulapam, Mámačatpam (Yakama), and Pelúucpuu (Palouse). The outcome of the Treaty of 1855 for the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla tribes was the establishment of a reservation, ceding 6.4 million acres for a 510,000-acre reservation on Cayuse homeland.
The treaty was signed on June 9, 1855, but not ratified by Congress until March 8, 1859. After ratification, the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla people were prevented from continuing their traditional lifeways and were systematically relocated, sometimes by force, to the reservation.
After the Treaty of 1855 was ratified, the U.S. government declared the ceded land open to American settlement, initiating the first wave of American settlement into the Walla Walla Valley. Fort Walla Walla was relocated in 1856 to a location southwest of the present-day city. Ransom Clark filed the first land claim in the valley in 1859 and built a cabin.
City Founding, Incorporation, and Early Construction (1859-1889)
Walla Walla County Commissioners asked county surveyor H. H. Chase to plat a city in 1859 at the developing townsite, initially called Steptoeville after Lt. Colonel E. J. Steptoe, commander of Fort Walla Walla. The town initially supported the nearby fort and area ranchers. The town’s population in 1860 reached over 700 and primarily consisted of white men, a mix of U.S. citizens and European immigrants, although there were some women as well as Chinese immigrants in the community at this time.
After the discovery of gold in 1861 in present-day Idaho, Walla Walla’s growth was fast-tracked as it became a key supply stop for miners heading east. Area merchants, ranchers, and farmers flourished as a result. Many Chinese also arrived in the area, like others, seeking fortune and prosperity from the mines.
Walla Walla was incorporated as a city in January 1862 and became the county seat. The number of commercial buildings constructed in Walla Walla quickly grew, doubling in the year following incorporation, many of them timber and constructed in the Western false-front form.
Additional plats to the city filed in the 1860s extended the city’s boundaries to the north and the southwest, with additions from the 1870s radiating out from the original townsite. Residential construction supported the growing population. By 1870, the city’s population had swelled to nearly 1,400 residents and included more women, indicating Walla Walla’s shift towards a more established community rather than simply a supply point.
As the boom of the gold rush faded, the farms and ranches supporting Walla Walla needed to expand the market for their goods. Dryland wheat farming had taken over the hills surrounding the city. Local business people, led by Dorsey Syng Baker, successfully financed construction of a rail line to connect Walla Walla with Wallula on the Columbia River to the west (at the original Fort Walla Walla site). Construction began in 1872 and the line reached Walla Walla in 1875.
A second wave of Chinese immigrants arrived to construct the railroad, joining those who remained after the end of the gold rush. A fire swept through downtown Walla Walla in 1875, destroying the first wave of wood-frame construction.
By 1880, Walla Walla had grown to a population of 3,500—the largest city in Washington Territory. In the same year, the city had between 600 and 800 Chinese residents, the largest Chinese community in eastern Washington.
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Immigrants comprised a significant portion of Walla Walla’s working class in the late 19th century, including the Chinese, Italians, and Volga German. The Volga German immigrants were Germans from Russia that came to Walla Walla between 1880 and 1920. Eventually approximately 300 of these families settled in the southwestern portion of Walla Walla. They called their community Russaecke or Russiche Ecke (Russian Corner) but it was known in the larger community as Germantown. Germantown was roughly bounded by W Chestnut Street, S Second Avenue, Willard Street, and Chase Avenue.
Walla Walla was selected as the location for the territorial prison in 1886, later called the Washington State Penitentiary, on a site to the west of the city (the prison is currently within the city limits). This large employer drew more people to the area.
There were a number of publicly and privately funded schools established in the city by this time, including Whitman College in 1882. Whitman College began as Whitman Seminary, a pre-collegiate academy for pioneer boys and girls established by Cushing Eells in 1852. Several churches had been founded with both Catholic and Protestant congregations.
According to the 1884 Sanborn Fire Insurance maps, Walla Walla’s business district was centered along Rose, Main, and Alder streets and extended just beyond Seventh Avenue (formerly Seventh Street) to the west and beyond Colville Street to the east. The primary commercial core was along Main Street, between First and Fifth avenues, and featured primarily masonry construction with the occasional wood-frame building. More wood-frame dwellings were located north and south of the commercial core.
The former county courthouse stood at the west end of downtown and occupied the entire block bounded by W Main Street, S Sixth Avenue, W Alder Street, and S Seventh Avenue. By 1889, a new city hall and fire station stood at the southwest corner of W Rose Street and N Third Avenue.
The 1884 Sanborn map identified the area along the north side of W Alder Street between S Second and S Third avenues as “Chinatown” but also showed clusters of Chinese dwellings and businesses at the southeast corner of W Rose Street and N Fourth Avenue as well as the southeast corner of W Rose Street and N Fifth. A fire in 1887 burned much of this Chinatown. The Chinatown district then relocated to encompass the south side of W Rose Street, between N Third and N Fourth avenues, where there were already clusters of Chinese dwellings and businesses. The 1888 Sanborn maps then labeled this area as “Chinatown.”
City Beautiful and the Automobile (1890-1928)
This period covers a stage of significant growth for Walla Walla and the majority of its downtown construction projects. It also reflects substantial residential expansion, with increased construction in previously platted additions as well as the platting of 20 new additions. This period concludes with the construction of the 11-story Marcus Whitman Hotel, the last prominent building constructed in the downtown area before the Great Depression swept the nation.
The city’s street railway system began in 1890 when the Walla Walla Street Railway and Investment Company began to run horse-drawn streetcars from Second Avenue and Main Street to Park Street. The system eventually encompassed six cars and 4 miles of track, and operated until 1899.
During the final decade of the 19th century, additional large-scale buildings were constructed downtown. Residential platting between 1890 and 1899 included new additions as well as subdivisions of earlier plats. The new additions from this period were small in comparison to earlier additions and were primarily located around the southeast corner of the Original Townsite plate and northeast of Cain’s 1865 Addition.
The city continued to grow at the turn of the century, reaching over 10,000 people in 1900 and over 19,000 in 1910. Development in the city reflected the elements of the City Beautiful Movement, which promoted the beautification of cities with well-designed civic and urban centers with high-style architecture, and residential neighborhoods with open green spaces. The movement promoted order, harmony, and structure.
The city paved many of its downtown streets between 1904 and 1905; other early 1900s civic improvements included the construction of the Keylor Grand Theater (1905), Walla Walla City Library/Carnegie Library (1905), 43-acre City/Pioneer Park (1908), a new city hall (1908), and the seven-story Baker Boyer Bank building (1911).
Construction of a hydroelectric dam on the Walla Walla River in 1904 and the associated power plant in 1905 provided reliable and affordable electricity to the city. In 1905, a new school, designed by architect Henry Osterman, was constructed in the Green’s Park Addition. In 1910, Fort Walla Walla was closed as a military post; it was converted into a veterans hospital in 1921.
More than 60 additions were platted between 1900 and 1910, illustrating the city’s population boom and need for additional housing. These additions ranged in size and configuration, but some followed the principles of the City Beautiful Movement and incorporated street trees, graded roads, curbs and sidewalks, and utilities into the developments.
There were numerous promoters of the city during this period, including the Walla Walla Woman’s Reading Club and the Commercial Club. The reading club’s efforts led to the construction of the Walla Walla City Library/ Carnegie Library. The Commercial Club worked to promote population growth, heralding Walla Walla as the “Garden City.” The prominence of the Commercial Club was reflected in the addition of a third floor to City Hall, to house the club. (The City of Walla Walla took over the floor in 1956 after the Commercial Club—by then known as the Chamber of Commerce—opened its own building on Sumach Street.)
The return of the streetcar to Walla Walla occurred during this period. The Walla Walla Valley Traction Company incorporated in 1905 to run an electric street railway system in the city connected with an interurban railroad to Oregon. Additional lines were opened in the following years, connecting the downtown area with the Prospect Heights and East Walla Walla neighborhoods. City streetcar lines were discontinued by 1926 with interurban service ending in 1931.
The city’s population fluctuated between 1910 and 1920, decreasing by nearly 20 percent. Although the arrival and expansion of the transcontinental railroad in the 1880s and 1890s helped establish Walla Walla as a regional center for agriculture, Spokane became the rail hub for the Inland Empire.
The downtown core became gradually denser during this period, with over 60 buildings constructed downtown in the first three decades of the 20th century alone.
Great Depression and World War II (1929-1945)
The city’s population reached nearly 16,000 by 1930 and it continued to slowly grow during the depression and war years. During this period, the city survived a massive flood, economic hardships from the depression, and construction curtailment during the war years.
In the midst of the Great Depression, Walla Walla experienced a devastating three-day flood, the Mill Creek Flood of 1931, in the downtown area. The flood compromised the sewer system and damaged buildings, streets, and bridges.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) recommended improvements to Mill Creek in 1938. Improvements included the construction of trash barriers, a reservoir, a diversion structure, and channelization. The work was completed partially by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), one of President Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, with the rest completed by a private contractor. The initial scope of work was completed in 1942.
The price of wheat, Walla Walla County’s cash crop, dropped significantly during the Great Depression and a Canadian tariff closed the region’s primary market for their fresh fruits and vegetables. However, the community’s agriculture rebounded following the opening of an experimental cannery, Walla Walla Cannery Company, in 1932, which canned the fresh produce to expand marketability. The success of this cannery led to the establishment of others in the region.
Building construction slowed during this time, but a few key projects included the Congregational Church (1931) and a Firestone Service Station (ca. 1930), along with new housing projects. Building permit activity increased during the mid-1930s as home-buyers took advantage of New Deal programs to fuel residential construction.
New residences constructed in Walla Walla were primarily small to medium in size, reflecting popular architectural styles like Minimal Traditional, Tudor Composite, and the WWII-Era Cottage. Many of these new houses were built east of N Clinton and north of Boyer Avenue. Duplexes and apartment building construction also increased during this period. A few larger scale residences were completed in the late 1930s, mostly near Whitman College or in neighborhoods like Green’s Park Addition.
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In the lead up to—as well as after—the United States’ involvement in World War II, military presence expanded in Walla Walla. In addition to military installations nearby at Hermiston and Pendleton, Walla Walla was selected as a site for an airfield. The United States Army Corps of Engineers built a bomber air-training base at the Walla Walla municipal airport in 1941 and runway work began in early 1942.
The airfield brought troops in to the area for training and two United Service Organizations (USOs) were established in town for servicemen—one for white soldiers and one for Black soldiers. In addition to the training base, McCaw General Army Hospital opened in 1943 with 1,850 beds. The hospital closed in February 1946.
Housing construction practically halted in Walla Walla during the war years, with the exception of housing for service members and their families. These dwellings included duplexes, barracks, and other multi-family homes.
Post-War Construction and Population Boom (1946-1970)
As World War II ended and veterans returned home—many returning to school, starting families, and buying homes—Walla Walla experienced a construction boom with commercial and residential projects picking up where they left off. Construction projects once again shifted to private development.
The city’s population reached nearly 25,000 by the 1950 Census. Agriculture, particularly wheat farms, remained a dominant industry in the area, but there was an increasing shift to large, mechanized farms.
The USACE formed the Walla Walla District in 1948 as headquarters for its operations in Washington, Idaho, Oregon, and Wyoming, plus portions of Utah and Nevada. The new district office supervised construction of nearby McNary Dam and continued the work to channelize Mill Creek, widening the channel and reinforcing it with concrete flumes in 1948.
Downtown prospered early on in this period, with new businesses opening and many buildings receiving modern façade improvements. However, by the 1970s a shift away from downtown for new commercial activity emerged, particularly with the construction of the Eastgate Shopping Center in 1970 which reflected national suburbanization trends.
Between 1940 and 1950, Walla Walla’s population grew by almost 6,000 residents, from approximately 18,000 to 24,000. The population remained relatively stable through the 1960s and 1970s. This growth led to a significant increase in residential addition and subdivision platting and construction.
New residential neighborhoods often featured curvilinear streets and cul-de-sacs and catered to the automobile. These new subdivisions included: Milbrook Park Addition, northeast of the City Park; Meadow View, south of downtown; and Crestview Addition, south of town and east of S Second Street.
Suburban development was taken on by builders and developers in the post-war era as government financing made residential development more profitable. The speculative building process became widespread during this period with builders and developers constructing houses for anticipated, rather than existing, clients.
The city’s economic and population gains were reflected in other construction in and around the city, including the expansion of medical facilities (e.g., the veteran’s hospital) and educational construction, both K-12 and higher education institutions.
Winemaking and Revitalization (1971-present)
The city’s population had slightly declined by fewer than 1,000 residents by 1970, to 23,610, but then began a slow but steady upward trend for the next few decades. As of 2022, the population is approximately 34,000.
A period of urban renewal in the early 1970s resulted in the demolition of entire blocks downtown. According to the Downtown Walla Walla Historic District’s National Register nomination, these efforts resulted “in a number of historic building demolitions around the downtown core, including most of the pre-1888 two-story masonry buildings in the block east of the Delmonico Hotel along W Main between N Third and N Fourth streets that historically had linked W Main Street west to the county courthouse to downtown Walla Walla.”
A few investors pushed for investment in downtown Walla Walla and several new buildings were constructed downtown. These new modern buildings included Pacific Power & Light’s office building (1971) and a two-story, commercial office building (1976) primarily used by Fidelity Mutual Savings Bank.
The Walla Walla Main Street Foundation (now Downtown Walla Walla Foundation/DWWF) was formed in 1984 to help revitalize downtown. The award-winning program worked with banks to establish a low interest façade loan program (1987), created the “Walla Walla Redevelopment Plan” (1988), and supported building and streetscape improvements. The efforts of DWFF, investors, and Walla Walla citizens once again made the city’s downtown a commercial hub.
During this revitalization, grape growing and winemaking became a prominent industry in Walla Walla and the surrounding farmland by the mid-1980s. The wine industry has had a significant impact on reinvestment in Walla Walla’s downtown as it has become a destination for residents and tourists with shops, tasting rooms, and restaurants.
Walla Walla City Managers
On Nov. 4, 1959, the residents of Walla Walla voted to adopt the Council-Manager system of government, ending 48 years of commission government. Since then, the people who have served as City Manager have been:
- 1960-1966 – Leland Kraft
- 1966-1977 – Larry Smith
- 1977-1980 – Michael Gleason
- 1981-1987 – Ed Ivey
- 1987-1992 – Harry Kinzer
- 1992-2001 – Scott Staples
- 2001-2009 – Duane Cole
- 2009-2022 – Nabiel Shawa
- 2022-present – Elizabeth Chamberlain
Walla Walla, Then & Now™
Then-and-now views of Walla Walla scenes using vintage images and current-day photographs taken from the same vantage point.
If you are interested in viewing vintage images of Walla Walla, please visit Bygone Walla Walla, an extensive repository of local images collected by Joe Drazan.
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