Walla Walla’s history starts in 1806 when the Lewis and Clark expedition encountered the Walawalałáma (Walla Walla people) near the mouth of Walla Walla River. Other inhabitants of the valley included the Liksiyu (Cayuse), Imatalamłáma (Umatilla), and Niimíipu (Nez Perce) indigenous peoples. In 1818, Fort Walla Walla (originally Fort Nez Percés), a fur trading outpost run by Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), was established and operated as an important stopping point in Oregon Country. Abandoned in 1855, it is now underwater behind the McNary Dam.
On October 16, 1836, after news of a Nez Perce expedition to learn about Christianity and a deal was brokered between the Cayuse people for the use of the Waiilatpu region,Calvinist missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman established the Whitman Mission. A deep distrust of the settlers was cultivated between the Cayuse and the settlers as the Whitmans struggled to convert the natives, failed to fulfill promises, and shifted their focus to whites passing through along the Oregon Trail. In 1847, following a deadly measles outbreak, and reports of the Whitmans poisoning the Cayuse, the Whitmans were warned to leave the area because of the Cayuse custom of killing medicine men whose patients died. They refused to leave, and were killed by the Cayuse, along with 12 others. The site was later designated as Whitman National Monument, a National Historic Site.
Catholic missionaries also arrived in the 1840s, and the Catholic ceremonies resonated with the tribe. On July 24, 1846 Pope Pius IX established the Diocese of Walla Walla. Augustin-Magloire Blanchet was appointed the first Bishop of Walla Walla, but fled shortly after the Whitman massacre. The Diocese of Walla Walla is now a titular see held by Witold Mroziewski, an auxiliary bishop of Brooklyn, New York.
In 1855, the Walla Walla Treaty Council was held at Waiilatpu between the Washington Territorial Assembly and the tribal leaders of the surrounding area. Despite the indigenous people citing Tamanwit (natural law), the following year the natives agreed to surrender millions of acres of land for a native reservation and $150,000. The Umatilla Indian Reservation’s boundaries eventually shrunk to less than 200,000 of acreage.
The Walla Walla treaty remained unratified for four years, during which time the conflict between the natives and settlers was increasing due to frontiersmen encroaching on the promised reservation and the Walla Walla and Umatilla peoples’ refusal to move to the Umatilla Indian Reservation. The United States Army established a presence in a series of military forts beginning in 1856. A community named “Steptoeville” grew around Fort Walla Walla, named for Lieutenant Colonel Edward Steptoe, and later his name was bestowed upon Steptoe, Washington. The fort has since been restored with a museum about the early settlers’ lives.
Growth in the region was limited due to a ban on immigration to the area due to the constant warring with the natives from the Department of the Pacific’s General John Ellis Wool, who was sympathetic to the natives. In 1858, the department was split, leaving Washington territory under the command of General William S. Harney, who lifted the ban on October 31, 1858. Thousands of pioneers swarmed to the area, creating a burgeoning farming and mining community.
On March 15, 1859, Walla Walla county held its first county commission and election in the community’s first church, St. Patrick’s Church, which still serves as the city’s parrish. Following the ratification of the Walla Walla treaty, the commission voted to name the settlement Walla Walla, on November 17, 1859 and the military carried out the forced displacement of the remaining natives, under the threat of hanging.
On December 20, 1859, the first educational charter was granted to Whitman Seminary, a high school, which opened on October 15, 1866. In 1882, the institution’s name was changed to Whitman College, and the legislature issued a new educational charter as a four-year private college.
The Mullan Road, the first wagon road to cross the Rocky Mountains into the Pacific Northwest, tied Walla Walla to more mining opportunities, and after gold was discovered in 1860, the area became the outfitting point for the Oro Fino, Idaho mines. The nearest part of the road followed the modern approximate path from Spokane to Walla Walla via Interstate 90, U.S. Route 195, and U.S. Route 12. The population swelled due to the gold rush, resulting in an unsuccessful proposal to Congress to split Walla Walla from Washington into its own territory.
Walla Walla was incorporated on January 11, 1862. The first election was held on April 1, 1862, and Judge Elias Bean Whitman, Marcus Whitman’s cousin, was elected as the city’s first mayor. The population exploded over the following decade to 300% its size, making it the largest city in the territory, slating it to be the capital until cities surpassed it again, after it was bypassed by the transcontinental rail lines in the 1880’s.
During the 1860’s, the city established its first businesses and community gathering spaces, a number of which served as the first in Pacific Northwest. The city’s first newspaper was one of the first between Missouri and the Cascades, the Washington Statesman, was founded in 1861. The first bank, Baker Boyer Bank, was the first in the state, was founded in 1869 by one of the city’s first council members,Dorsey Syng Baker and his brother-in-law John Franklin Boyer, and as of March 2022, still served as the oldest bank in state. The Pioneer Meat Market, run by partners John Dooley and William Kirkman, was opened during this time and remained there until they sold it to Christopher Ennis in 1882 and founded the Walla Walla Dressed Meat Company.
One of the first brick buildings in the city was also Walla Walla’s first store, Schwabacher Brothers Store on Main street, which served as the city’s grocer, builder supply, and clothes shop. Sigmond Schwabacher, one of the brothers, also served in the city’s council. The city’s first book store was opened in 1864, and an academic community formed around the city’s book collection as the Calliopean Society and later incorporated as the Walla Walla Library Association. The city also had one of the region’s first breweries, Emil Meyer’s City Brewery, that also served as a bakery. Downtown also hosted a post office, several hotels, restaurants, a bathhouse and shaving saloon, a liquor store, a drugstore, and several manufactories.
During the gold rush, large populations of Chinese settlers arrived in the city from Portland, Oregon, creating a neighborhood referred to as “Chinatown”. The Chinese settlers mainly worked in commerce, mining, and railroad contracts. After Mullan was unable to lobby the state to make Walla Walla a major railroad stop, and a fire in Chinatown destroyed most of the neighborhood, the immigrants left to find work elsewhere, including Eng Ah King, who was informally known as the “mayor of Chinatown” for revitalizing Seattle’s Chinatown.
In 1886, while Washington was lobbying for statehood, local business man Levi Ankeny donated 160 acres of land to the city to serve as the site of a new prison. Legislators approved the site, and in 1887, the state began transferring prisoners to the Washington Territorial Prison from Saatco Prison, a privately-owned facility that was shut down in 1888 because of its poor living conditions. The first inmate was a local, William Murphy, who was serving an 18-year sentence for manslaughter. There have been many prison escapes attempted in the prison’s history. In 1887, the prison took in its first woman inmate, and had to improvise accommodations until a separate facility was built nearby. When Washington became a state in 1889, the facility officially became the Washington State Penitentiary, but inmates nicknamed it “The Hill”, “The Joint”, “The Walls”, and “The Pen”.
As the gold rush died out, the city developed into an agricultural center referred to as the “cradle of Pacific Northwest history”, and the “garden city”, a popular source for onions, apples, peas, and wine grapes.
Italian settlers from Lonate Pozzolo and Calabria regions formed the core of the gardening industry, and settled in neighborhoods known as “Blalock” and the “South Ninth”. One of the main contributions of the Italians to Walla Walla commerce was their vineyards, and soon after, wine tasting rooms, the first two opening in the 1880’s by Frank Orselli and Pasquale Saturno. The Italian Walla Walla population was also responsible for growing Washington State’s official vegetable, the Walla Walla sweet onion.
It was the technique of dryland farming, though, that made Walla Walla the region’s breadbasket known for its wheat exports. The cultivating of grains brought hundreds of Seventh-day Adventists (SDA) to the city, building Walla Walla College and the Walla Walla Sanitarium. The SDA population was followed by hundreds of Volga Germans, whose Old Lutheran and Mennonite religions were connected to SDA in Prussia. The immigrants had relied on dryland farming of wheat crops in Volgograd, Russia. The neighborhood built around the Russian-German immigrants is known as “Germantown” or “Russische Ecke (Russian Corner)” to locals, referring to the creek that runs through it as “Little Volga”. The area around Walla Walla College eventually incorporated as its own city, College Place, Washington.
German immigrants also grew hops and the city was home to several breweries. By the 1890s, wine, beer, liquor, and tobacco taxes accounted for 90% of the city’s revenue, but the alcohol industries died out with Prohibition in the United States.
As the city became dependent on its wheat production, merchants in the town financed a railroad to Wallula, Washington, to connect Walla Walla to the Columbia river, completed in 1875.
In 1911, Walla Walla adopted a mayor–council government referred to as a “commission” form of government. In 1954, after Sunnyside, Washington adopted another form of government, council–manager government, voted down a change to council-manager, but on November 4, 1959, the city’s residents voted to adopt the government form.
Walla Walla’s second movie theater, American Theater, opened in 1917 showing The Law of Compensation, a Selznick Pictures film starring Norma Talmadge. The theater later was sold and renamed to Liberty, and eventually became a department store around the 1930s. In 1990, became Walla Walla’s first privately renovated building as a Bon-Macy’s. Bon-Macy’s parent-company, Federated Department Stores, rebranded all of its subsidiaries to Macy’s, which operated in the Liberty building until 2020.
In 1927, the Real Estate Improvement Company of Seattle invested $300,000 toward the construction of the Marcus Whitman Hotel. The 174-room hotel was designed by Sherwood D. Ford and opened in 1928. It fell into disrepair in the 1960s, until it was restored in 1999 and re-opened in 2001. As of March 2022, the hotel was still open.
Mill Creek overflowed into Walla Walla and College Place on March 31, 1931, causing $1 million in damages. Community volunteers jury-rigged makeshift levees to divert water from buildings during the cleanup which cost roughly $100,000. The United States Army Corps of Engineers built the Mill Creek Dam and Bennington Lake in response to the disaster. The dam and lake were instrumental in preventing damage from flooding in 1964, 1996, and 2020.
During the Great Depression, a Canadian import duty cut off the main market for Walla Walla’s fresh agriculture. John Grant Kelly, who owned the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin at the time, opened the area’s first cannery, Walla Walla Canning Company. In 1939, Walla Walla produced roughly $5 million of the country’s $30 million canned green pea industry, and TIME magazine referred to Kelly as the “Father of Peas”. Kelly also owned Church Grape Juice Company, a concord grape farm in Kennewick, Washington. Workers went on strike for better wages in September 1949, and Kelly had two employees arrested for speaking to the Tri-City Herald. Church was one of four juice companies in the region to be charged with violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 for price-fixing grapes. Welch’s bought Church from Kelly in 1952.
In 1936, Walla Walla and surrounding areas were struck by the magnitude 6.1 State Line earthquake. Residents reported hearing a moderate rumbling immediately before the shock. There was significant damage in the area, and aftershocks were felt for several months following.
in the 1970s and 1980s, Leonetti Cellar, Woodward Canyon, L’Ecole 41, Waterbrook Winery and Seven Hills Winery pioneered a resurgence of Walla Walla’s viticulture.
In 1997, Gary Johnson founded the first brewery in Walla Walla since prohibition, Mill Creek Brewpub.
In 2001 Walla Walla was a Great American Main Street Award winner for the transformation and preservation of its once dilapidated main street. In July 2011, USA Today selected Walla Walla as the friendliest small city in the United States. Walla Walla was also named Friendliest Small Town in America the same year as part of Rand McNally’s annual Best of the Road contest. In 2012 and 2013 Walla Walla was a runner-up in the best food category for the Best of the Road. Downtown Walla Walla was awarded a Great Places in America Great Neighborhood designation in 2012 by the American Planning Association.
In the 2010s, Walla Walla’s brewery industry experienced a revival. The first hops farms since prohibition were planted in 2018, and in 2019, Washington State Department of Corrections announced a plan to bring a vineyard and hopyard to Washington State Penitentiary, along with agricultural science education to prepare inmates for careers in the field. The program would offer inmates state-wide minimum wages, a practice only legally enforced by state law at private institutions. The city hosted its first beer festival in February 2020.
In 2017, and annually, Walla Walla’s mayor signed a proclamation making the third Saturday of September “Adam West Day”, to honor the late actor who was born and raised in the city. In 2020, the event was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the organizers announced that the city approved the erection of a statue in West’s honor and a GoFundMe fundraiser to cover the costs of the statue. The statue will be placed in Menlo Park on Alvarado Terrace, part of Historic Downtown Walla Walla.
