PHYSICAL AND GEOLOGICAL FEATURES, SOIL, CLIMATE, WATER-COURSES, AND MOUNTAINS

A land of scenic charm, of physical interest, of fertile soil and ample resources, of climate in which living is a delight, of two great rivers and many impetuous tributaries, of mountain chains with rich and varied hues and contours of stately majesty,—such is the imperial domain included in that portion of the State of Washington lying east of the Columbia River and south of the Snake. While this region has distinctive physical features, it yet has a sufficient family resemblance to the other parts of Eastern Oregon and Eastern Washington to indicate a common origin. We may therefore properly take first a general view of this larger area. The greater part of the vast Inland Empire of Northeastern Oregon and Eastern Washington consists of rolling prairies, sometimes fairly hilly, with extensive "flats" in various parts, and low-lying, level valleys bordering the numerous streams. These valleys are usually quite narrow, the three marked exceptions being the broad valleys of the Walla Walla, Umatilla, and Yakima, the two latter being outside of the scope of our story. The Inland Empire varies in elevation above sea-level from about three hundred and fifty feet on the Columbia River to about nine thousand at the highest summits of the Blue Mountains. The larger part of the cultivated portions ranges from eight hundred to two thousand feet. The variations in elevation have a remarkable effect on temperature and rainfall, the former decreasing and the latter increasing very rapidly from the lower to the higher levels. The atmosphere throughout this region is ordinarily very clear, and the majestic sweep of the Blue Mountains and the wide expanses of hills and dales and flats lie revealed in all their imposing grandeur with vivid distinctness.

As there is a general physical similarity in the different parts of this entire Columbia Basin, so has there been a common geological history. Broadly speaking, the upper Columbia Basin from near Spokane on the north to Wallowa on the south is volcanic in origin. The scope of this work does not permit any detailed discussion of the geology of the region, but it is of interest to refer to the fascinating little book of Prof. Thomas Condon, formerly of the Oregon State University, on the "Two Islands." Professor Condon was the first systematic student of the geology of the Northwest, and during his active career, extending from about 1855 to 1890, he accumulated a large and valuable collection of fossil remains as data from which to infer the stages in the geological history of the Northwest. One of his working hypotheses was that there were two islands as the first lands in what is now the Northwest. These were the Blue Mountain Island and the Siskiyou Mountain Island. Later geologists have not entirely accepted all the details of Professor Condon's hypothesis, though they regard his general reasoning as sound. It is generally believed now that there was a very early uplift, possibly a third island, in what is now the Okanogan, Methow, and Chelan highlands and mountains. At any rate, there is a general concurrence in the opinion that the oldest land in this part of the continent was those very regions where the two or perhaps three islands are supposed to have risen. The Chelan region and thence a vast sweep northeast and then southeast toward Spokane is of granite, andesite, and porphyry, the primeval crust of the earth. Again on the south, the core of the Blue Mountains, especially in the vicinity of Wallowa, is limestone and granite. All these formations are very ancient. On the other hand, the volcanic regions are comparatively recent, and those compose practically all the central parts. This area between those two ancient formations, the part covering the four counties of our present story being in the very heart of it, seems to have undergone almost every possible dynamic influence, fire, frost, and flood. Apparently it was a deep basin between the earlier elevations and was the scene of stupendous volcanic and seismic energy. Then it was covered with water and for ages a great lake extended over much of what is now the Walla Walla Valley and the valleys of its tributaries and the lower courses of the other streams, as the Touchet and Tucanon. When the water had drained off, there succeeded an age of ice and frost, with disintegration by cold and even some glaciation. Probably there were several alternating eras of fire and frost and flood. The Yakima Indians have a fantastic tale of the formation of these lakes and from them the Columbia River, which may have some basis of scientific fact. They say that in the times of the Watetash (animal people, before the Indians) a monstrous beaver, Wishpoosh, inhabited Lake Kachees, now one of the sources of the Yakima. Wishpoosh had the evil habit of chewing up and cutting to pieces all the trees as well as other animals in his reach. Speelyi, the chief God of the Mid-Columbia Indians, endeavored to make way with this destructive monster, but succeeded only in wounding him severely and making him so angry that he laid around him with furious energy and soon burst the rocky barriers of the lake. The water flowing out streamed over the country and formed the Upper Yakima. The deluge was checked by the mountain ramparts of the Kittitas Valley, as we know it, and thus was formed a great lake over all that valley. But the raging beaver finally tore out that barrier also and the flood passed on into the Yakima Valley, making another lake over the whole region where Yakima now is, but it was stayed for a time by the ridge just below the Atahnum of the present. In like manner that barrier was torn out and the accumulation of waters swept on to the vast level region where the Snake and Columbia, with the lesser streams of the Yakima and Walla Walla, unite. Thus, a large part of the region which we shall describe in this history was a lake. But the infuriated Wishpoosh was not yet content, and by successive burstings of barriers the Walla Walla lake was emptied through the Umatilla highlands, then the Cascade Mountains themselves were parted, and the chain of lakes was opened to the ocean, the Columbia River itself being the connecting stream. Wishpoosh having reached the ocean making havoc among the whales and all other objects of creation, when Speelyi at last pierced him to the heart and his monstrous carcass was cast up on Clatsop Beach. There Speelyi cut him into fragments and of him made the various Indian tribes.

Whatever may be the facts in regard to Wishpoosh, it is quite obvious that considerable areas of the lower level parts of the Columbia basin and the tributary valleys are lake beds. While the soil has all the indications of having been washed from the hills and mountains and then settled in the lakes, it is plain also that it was originally the product of fire. For the soil of this region is essentially volcanic. In the parts which have the larger rainfall, the decaying vegetation of ages upon ages has covered the volcanic ash with a deep, rich loam. In other places the action of glaciers grinding and dumping the triturated marls and clays of the mountains has resulted in the deposit of heavy white and blue clays. In yet other parts erosion of the volcanic rocks by wind and rain and frost, together with the wash of the streams at flood stage, has left great beds of gravel. Through successive strata of these varying materials there have burst at intervals new volcanic eruptions. These in turn, worn away by sun and wind and frost and stream, have been blown and washed over the earlier strata and have formed a new blanket of the richest soil. This process of successive stages of volcanic outflow, disintegration, wash deposit, glacial dumping, dust drift, growth and decay of vegetation, has gone on through the ages. The result has been that the greater part of the Inland Empire has a soil of extraordinary depth and fertility. Analysis has shown that it possesses the ingredients for plant food to an unusual degree. It is said to have an almost identical composition with the soil of Sicily. That fair and fertile island was made by the volcanic matter blown out of Mount Etna, covered by decayed vegetation and worked over by frost and sun and rain until it became almost an ideal region for grain production. Two thousand years ago Sicilian wheat-fields fed the hungry multitudes of Rome, and the same fields still produce a generous quota of food products. Soil experts expect a similar history in this country.

In no part of the Columbia basin have the processes of soil creation been more active than in the parts of the Old Walla Walla County of this history. Beginning with the Columbia River on the west we find as soon as we have passed the margin of river sand, which in a few places has encroached upon the customary volcanic covering, that the soil, though dry, is susceptible of the highest cultivation and with water is capable of producing the finest products in the greatest profusion. Almost every mile from the river eastward towards the mountains seems to increase the blanket of loam upon the underlying volcanic dust, until upon the foothills of the Blue Mountains there is a soil hard to match anywhere in the world, a mingling of volcanic dust, loam, and clay, a strong and heavy soil, not difficult to work, and retaining and utilizing moisture with remarkable natural economy. Throughout this region the soil is of extraordinary depth and there seems to be no limit to its productiveness. There is a cut forty feet deep through a hill near Walla Walla, in which the same fertile soil goes down to the very bottom. It is of lighter color when first opened to the light, but with exposure turns darker and after a year or two of cultivation possesses the same friability and productiveness as the top soil. Wells have been bored in the Eureka Flat region where over a hundred feet of soil have been pierced without the drills even touching rock. In such soils the process of sub-soiling can go on almost indefinitely with continuous preservation and renewal of productiveness.

The climate of the region covered in this work has the general character of that of the Inland Empire as a whole. As compared with the portions of Oregon and Washington west of the Cascade Mountains, the climate of our section is drier and has the seasons more distinctly marked, hotter in summer and colder in winter. The average yearly temperature is, however, higher than that of the sea-coast, and much higher than that of the Atlantic states of the same latitude. The average of Walla Walla is about that of Virginia, though in the latitude of Wisconsin and Maine. On account of lower altitude the climate of the greater part of this section, especially the portions on the large rivers, all the way from Asotin to Wallula, is warmer than that of the parts of the state north of Snake River. The weather reports of Walla Walla ordinarily run from four to eight degrees higher than those of Spokane. The spring season opens from two to four weeks earlier than at Spokane or Colfax and the difference is even greater compared with Pullman.

Perhaps no part of the Inland Empire, unless it be the Horse Heaven and Rattlesnake Mountain section of Benton County, is so peculiarly the native home of that most dramatic atmospheric phenomenon, the Chinook wind. Scarcely can anything more interesting be imagined than that warm winter wind. No wonder that the native red man, with his superstitious awe of Nature's tokens of love or wrath, idealized this heavenly visitant, opening the gates of summer in midwinter chill and gloom and wooing the flowers from their dark abodes even while the heavy snows still crown the mountain peaks and pile the timbered flanks of the hills with their frozen burdens. A long wintry period, two or three or four weeks in January or February, may have sent the great blocks of ice down the big rivers, there may be a foot of snow upon the plains and much more in the mountains and the breath of the north may wrap all Nature in chill and gloom, when suddenly some afternoon the frozen fog will lift, a blue-black band will be visible along the southern horizon, the white tops of the mountains will begin to be streaked with dark lines, there seems to thrill through the atmosphere a certain rustle of expectancy, night drops with a rising temperature, during the night the snow begins to slip from the trees and slide off the roofs, and with the morning, rushing and roaring, here comes the blessed Chinook, fragrant with the bloom of the south, turning the snow and ice into singing streams, calling the robins from their winter retreats, and bidding the buttercups push from their heads the crust of winter and open their golden petals to greet the sun. The Klickitat myth is to the effect that there were originally two sets of brothers, one of the Walla Wallas from the north, the other the Chinooks from the south. The fathers of the two lived with their respective sons upon the shore of the Columbia near the present Umatilla. The Walla Walla were the cold wind brothers, coming down the river from the north, freezing the streams and whirling the dust in vast clouds. At one time they challenged the Chinook brothers to a wrestling match and threw them all and killed them. The chilly brothers had it all their own way for a long time after that, and they made the lives of the poor old father and mother of the vanquished Chinooks a burden. No sooner would the old man go out in his canoe to fish than the implacable Walla Walla brothers would blow with their icy breath, crusting the water with ice and compelling the old man to hurry half frozen to the shore. But a deliverer was at hand, for one of the fallen Chinooks had left a son. His mother had taken him to the lower river, and there he had grown up with only the one thought of avenging his father and uncles. When he had become grown and so strong that he could pull up huge fir trees and toss them around like straws, he felt that his time had come. Going up the river he slept one night near the stream now called the Satus, and a curious depression in the hills can be seen there now which the Indians say was his sleeping place. After his night's rest he went on to the home of his grandparents. He found them in a most deplorable state, half-starved and half-frozen. Young Chinook washed the grime and filth from the old folks and from it came all the trout now found in this region. Then transforming himself into a little creature he crawled into the stern of his grandfather's boat and bade the old man put forth for fish. At once the hateful Walla Wallas swept down from the north to blow on the old man, but for some mysterious reason could never reach him. Striving desperately in vain they saw the explanation when suddenly Chinook rose to giant size and challenged them to wrestle. The God Speelyi now appeared to judge the combat. One after another the cold wind brothers were thrown. Chinook, more merciful than they had been, did not kill them. But Speelyi declared that they should henceforth lose their power and could blow only at very rare intervals and that Chinook should be the lord of the land. However, Speelyi decreed that he should blow on the mountain peaks first as a token that he was coming.

The meteorologists tell us that the Chinook wind is not, properly speaking, an ocean wind, though when there is a Chinook in the interior there is a warm wind with rain on the coast. They say that the Chinook is due to dynamic heating or atmospheric friction. When there is a low barometer on the coast and a high over Nevada and Utah, as is very common in winter, the high pressure will descend upon the low and raise the temperature at a regular rate of about seven degrees to a thousand feet of descent. This accounts for the fact that the Chinook strikes the mountains sooner than the valleys. During the prevalence of a Chinook, as shown by the weather reports, the thermometer will usually be higher at Walla Walla than at Portland or Astoria. It has been as high as seventy degrees in January during a big Chinook. As can be imagined, snow will vanish like a dream under a wind of such temperature, or even one at fifty degrees or fifty-five degrees, which is more common.

A few general statistics as to the average records at Walla Walla may be of interest. The average annual temperature as shown by official records during thirty-one years is fifty-three degrees. The average for January is thirty-three degrees; for July and August, seventy-four degrees. The lowest ever recorded was seventeen degrees below zero, and the highest was 113 degrees. The average rainfall is 17.4 inches. The average date of the last killing frost of spring is March 30th, and the first of autumn is November 7th. The average number of clear or mainly clear days is 262, of cloudy is 103. The prevailing wind is always from the south, and the highest velocity ever recorded was sixty-five miles per hour. There is an average of eight thunder showers in a year. The other parts of the four counties included in this history have essentially the same climate as Walla Walla. There is, however, a regular decrease of temperature and an increase of rainfall from the west to east. Recent records of the Weather Observer at Walla Walla, giving a comparison of various stations, show extraordinary differences in rainfall according to elevation and proximity to the mountains. Thus, the average precipitation, including melted snow, for some years past, has been at Kennewick, 6.46 inches; at Lowden, 11.18; at Eureka, 14.35; at Walla Walla, 17.37; at Milton, 19.50; at Dayton, 22.14; and at the "intake," only fourteen miles from Walla Walla, but at an elevation of twenty-five hundred feet (Walla Walla being nine hundred and twenty), and at the entrance to the mountains, it was, in 1916, 47.93. The natural rainfall is sufficient for all the staple grains and fruits in all parts except the areas in the west and north bordering the Columbia and Snake rivers. In those semi-arid tracts irrigation is necessary, and the same means of artificial moisture is practiced for a succession of vegetables and small fruits and alfalfa in considerable parts of the other valley lands. One of the interesting and important features of Walla Walla is the fine system of spouting artesian wells. There are now over thirty of these wells in the Walla Walla Valley, the largest having a flow of twenty-five hundred gallons per minute, sufficient to irrigate a half section of land. Owing to the immense snowfall on the Blue Mountains, ranging from ten to fifty or sixty feet during the season, a large part of the slopes and valleys below seems to be sub-irrigated and also to be underlaid by a great sheet of water. Hence it seems reasonable to expect that artesian water will be found in other places. In general it may be said that the climate of the sections considered in this work is eminently conducive to health, wealth, and comfort. It is a happy medium between the extreme dryness of the Great Plateau and the extreme humidity of Western Washington; as also between the rather muggy and enervating climate of the South and the biting cold of winter and prostrating heat of summer of the belt of northern states east of the Rocky Mountains. If we may judge by a comparison of the native races, as well as by the "bunch-grass" horses and cattle, the "bunch-grass" boys and girls will be on the road to becoming superior specimens of humanity. Thus far there is too much of a mixture of the human stock to make scientific comparisons.

Old Walla Walla County shares with other parts of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and British Columbia, the distinction of joint ownership of one of the sublimest systems of waterways on the globe. This system consists of the Columbia and its tributaries. The Columbia itself washes the western verge of Walla Walla County for a distance of only about sixteen miles. Yet, in this short distance the great stream sustains its reputation as belonging in the front rank of scenic rivers. Although the region around the junction of the blue, majestic Columbia and the turbid and impetuous Snake is regarded as a desert in its native condition, yet on one of the bright, still days of spring or autumn views of such grandeur looking either up or down can be obtained that no appreciative observer would ever say "desert." The azure and gold and russet and purple that play upon the mountains and islands looking up river, or upon the Wallula Gateway looking down, with the mile-wide majesty of the river in the midst, must be seen to be understood. No words of description can do justice to those scenes.

An inspection of the map will show that Snake River touches a much larger rim than the greater stream. For it borders each one of the four counties, for a total distance of about a hundred and fifty miles. For this entire space Snake River is swift and turbid, having an average fall of about three feet to the mile. Nevertheless, it is navigable the whole distance during six or eight months in the year. The immense volume of these two big rivers is not generally understood by strangers. The Columbia is less than half as long as the Mississippi, yet it is but slightly inferior in volume to the "Father of Waters," and far surpasses any other river in the United States. Its maximum flood stage at Celilo in the flood of 1894, the greatest on record, was estimated at one million six hundred thousand second feet, while the maximum of the Snake, just above its mouth, was about four hundred thousand. We shall have occasion later to speak of the steamer traffic upon these rivers and the improvements, past and prospective, by the Federal Government. Suffice it to say here that as that phase of early history was among the most important, so it is plain that the future will bring on a new era of water-borne traffic, and that with it will come a new era of production. Nearly all the tributaries of the two big rivers flow from the snow banks and the canons of the Blue Mountains. Though conveying in the aggregate during the flood season an immense volume, the tributaries are too swift for navigation. They supply abundant water for irrigation where needed, and each is a superb trout stream. The largest, the Grande Ronde, is in truth an Oregon river, for its main supplies come from the Grande Ronde and Wallowa valleys, but it crosses the corner of Asotin County and enters Snake River within that scenic country. The Grande Ronde is a powerful stream and for varied scenes of wild grandeur and gentle beauty, it is not easily matched. The Wallowa Basin (the "Far Wayleway" of Longfellow's Evangeline) is sometimes called the Switzerland of the Inland Empire. Of the historic interest of that region which thus finds its exit through one of the counties of Old Walla Walla, we shall speak again. The next affluent of the Snake River below the Grande Ronde is Asotin Creek, a small stream and yet one of the busiest and most useful for it is the source of the water supply of that fair and productive region around Clarkston and extending thence to Asotin City. Some distance below Clarkston is the Alpowa, also a historic stream. Yet another stage and about half way between the Grande Ronde and the mouth of Snake River we find one of the most charming in appearance as well as most attractive to the fishermen of all the Blue Mountain streams, the Tucanon. This also is invested with historic interest, as we shall see later. Below the mouth of the Tucanon the previously lofty, almost mountainous, shores of Snake River rapidly drop away and the vast expanse of arid plain stretches away toward the crests of the Blue Mountains. No more tributaries of the Snake River enter, and with another stage that most interesting point in the history of this turbulent and historic river is reached—its mouth, and its individuality is lost in the mighty sweep of the Columbia. A few miles below the junction the most historic and in some respects most beautiful of the small tributaries of the Columbia streams in through the verdant meadow and overhanging willows, the Walla Walla. The events which have made the place of entrance, as well as many other places on the course of this stream famous in the history of the Northwest, will become manifest as our story proceeds.

In the great semicircle of one hundred and fifty miles in which Snake River borders our four counties, there are frequent profound canons through which the snow-crested mountains from which the streams issue can be seen. The observer who has made that long journey and reaches the open prairie at the mouth of the Snake will behold with wonder and delight the distant chain, all in one splendid picture, of which he had before seen broken glimpses through the rifted canon walls or up the sources of the foaming creeks. But whether in broken glimpses or in their grand unity, the Blue Mountains possess a unique charm and individuality. While not so bold and aiguillated as the Cascades, and while there are no peaks standing in lonely sublimity to compel the vision of the traveller, like Mount "Takhoma" or Mount Adams or Mount Hood, the Blue Mountains are not inferior in many of the features of mountain charm to their greater brothers. The marvelous coloring is perhaps the most distinctive of these features. While most mountains are blue, these are blue blue. They are all shades of blue, according to the hour and the month and the season—blue, indigo, ultramarine, violet, purple, amethyst, lapis lazuli, everything that one can think of to denote variations of blueness. "Blue Mountain" is a real name. The French voyageurs of the fur-traders were the first to note the characteristic blue, and according to Ross Cox, began at once to say, "Les Montagnes Bleues." Another characteristic feature of these mountains is the fact that they do not so much constitute a range or chain, like the long, narrow, regular Cascade Range, as a huge mass with prongs radiating from something like a central axis which might be considered the great granite and limestone knot of peaks about Wallowa Lake, of which Eagle Cap is the loftiest, over nine thousand feet in elevation. On account of this ganglionic structure there are many radiating canons from the long ridges and plateaus to the lower levels. The views from the open ridges and rounded summits down these canons constitute a scenic gallery of contours and colorings which may challenge comparison with even the views of the loftier and bolder Cascades.

The value of the Blue Mountains in condensing the moisture of the atmosphere and dropping it upon the plains below in rain and snow can hardly be conceived unless we reflect that without this vast reservoir of salvation to all growing things the Inland Empire would be a desert. Nor could it even be irrigated, for in the absence of the Blue Mountains there would be no available streams for distribution. Wonderful indeed is it to consider how the ardent sun of the Pacific lifts the inconceivable masses of invisible vapor from the ocean and the west wind carries them inland. The coast mountains constitute the first condenser of that vapor, and almost constant rain during half the year with a predominance of clouds and fogs at all times prevails along the ocean margin of Oregon and Washington. The Cascade Range lifts its stupendous domes and sentinel-like cliffs to catch the vapor that still sweeps inland and to feed the greedy rootlets of their interminable forests and to clothe the heights with perpetual snow and ice. But those vast demands fail to exhaust the limitless resources of the sky, and there are yet remaining infinite treasures of moisture floating eastward. And so the next great suppliant for the vital nourishment of all life stands with uplifted, appealing hands, our wide-extended and clustered uplift of the Blues. Nor do they appeal in vain, as the fertile prairies and benches with their millions of bushels of grain and their far-reaching cattle ranges and their orchard valleys and their countless springs can testify.

Whether from the standpoint of the forester or the farmer or the stockman or the gardener or the orchardist or the fisherman or the artist or the poet, the Blue Mountains constitute one of the great vital working facts, the very framework of the life of Old Walla Walla County. We shall discover that they are not simply a picture gallery, but that the history of this region is fairly set within this stately frame.

With these necessarily hurried and fragmentary glances at the physical scene of the story, we shall be prepared to bring the human characters upon the stage.