Fort Walla Walla Museum…

Sort of sticking close to home lately, because it’s a chore to deal with the ignorance around me regarding face masks and far to many other hot button issues. This area is a hot bed of aggressive conservatism: racism in its many forms, anti-vac’ers, flat earther’s, evangelical style religion, everything bad you can think of, the majority in this area embrace. So it wears on me after a while and I tend to stay home. Occasionally, I’ll just get a need to bug out and will jump in the car and drive up to Walla Walla (8 miles away and we locals call it Walla2 or just W2), or I’ll drive around the M-F area. So that’s what happened a while ago when I ventured out and headed north to Walla2.

I drove up to the Fort Walla2 museum and sure enough, it was open. I’ve passed it plenty of times when heading to downtown Walla2 but I was always on my way somewhere so didn’t stop. This time, I made it a point to make it a destination. Arrived around 11 AM on a day after a nice rain shower that cleared the air and had brought out the fresh late spring smell of the nearby farm country.

This area has a rich history as the Indians of the area have lived here for at least 5,000 years, moving up from the south as the Ice Age waned and the periodic massive floods from broken ice dams abated. There were very likely settlers here long before 5,000 years ago but the massive floods this valley experienced would have scoured the landscape clean of much of the evidence.

When the Whitman mission was established…with permission of the local Indians, it preceded the Oregon Trail…which eventually moved north and meandered right next to the mission. Indians massacred the missionaries because the Whitman’s didn’t hold up their part of the agreement and provide gifts every year to the tribe, AND because they were suspected of bringing diseases to the area. The settlement was abandoned after the massacre and stayed empty for many years. It’s a rich and complex history but suffice to say, Fort Walla Walla was installed because of the outrage of the eastern US population of the massacre. Remember that this area was basically a foreign country to much of the US back then. The massacre sort of galvanized the movement to annex the western portion of the continent and subdue the savages. Whipped into a frenzy by religious fanatics because it was ‘missionaries’ that were massacred, never mind that the local Native Americans (NAs) were living by their own codes, sort of sealed the fate of all Native Americans in the following years. This fort wasn’t established until 11 years AFTER the massacre and was a show of force in the region right along the Oregon trail and became both a way point and protection for settlers heading for the Willamette valley in Oregon, which was a much more popular destination at the time due to it’s access to two large rivers, deep water and potential ports, the ocean, and relatively peaceful NAs who had been dealing with Europeans since Lewis & Clark, followed by trappers and the fur trade. It was in 1824 that Fort Vancouver at the junction of the Willamette and Columbia rivers had been established so settlers wanted to go there rather then rough it in the Walla Walla Valley area.

The military presence here took advantage of their strength, supply lines, and modern weaponry to brutalize the locals into submission, and of course the earlier outbreaks of smallpox helped reduce the tribes strength. Not to excuse the Indians of the massacre but there were some substantial reasons for it, some based on misunderstandings that Whitman could have cleared up long before. And the smallpox outbreaks. He’s not in the least responsible for his own murder of course, but he could have handled things much better prior to the massacre.

So the Fort (est. 1858) was after the mission (massacre – 1847, est. 1836), and I’ll post something about the mission later but right now, it’s a visit to Fort Walla Walla. Masks are required in the buildings, and tourists start out in the main lobby, then visit 4 other large venues with antiques and stuff. This first part is of the main section of the museum. Usually I get a picture of the front doorway but not this time. Just inside the doors and down a short hallway is a store where I bought my ticket, presented the ticket to the gal at the entrance booth and then entered the museum proper.

After a quick walk by of those displays but only a couple of the several that are there, opened the door onto a breezeway that takes visitors to building two…which is filled with old farm equipment.

I wanted to show a picture of the inside of the cook wagon but the museum curators put or left the screen on the screen door which is locked on the only access to the interior so any picture I tried to take wouldn’t come out. There are a set of steps to reach the door, and that’s the only way to peer inside. All the other windows are too high to reach and access to them is blocked. It is really an interesting wagon too. Had lots of neat old timey stuff in it. Ovens and stoves and cook wear. Even had an ice box I guess. Women were hired to cook and they had a plaque just inside the door that let you know how brutal the work would have been with the oven operating from 3 am until late at night feeding the crews, at long work hours and low pay too. But, it was only during harvest so it would only have been active for short spurts every year. I wonder if back then young single women jumped at the chance to do that job in order meet lots of men in a hurry. Remember that you were considered an old maid if you weren’t married by the time you were 30.  And considered a spinster at 40.

This combine for harvesting wheat was interesting. Back in the day they would have been very expensive but the farmer that owned this one had several more. And had something like 300 donkey? I don’t recall what the sign said for sure.

Then you just wander from building to building filled with displays of life way back when…

And that was the extent of the antiques they had inside. Those 5 buildings form a half moon arc that sort of surrounds the old Parade Grounds of the fort…of which there is not anything left I guess. There are some old farm implements displayed on the parade grounds but they’re not of much interest. After visiting the 5th building, there’s a trail that heads down the 50 feet or so to the Pioneer Village.

I didn’t find much info about the village. Most of the buildings came from other areas nearby. Also down there is the old Fort cemetery. This building sort of looks like a fort, but it wasn’t part of the original Fort Walla2.

This is the old train station for a now completely erased town which used to be nearby. Babcock RR station. Due west I believe. One of those towns that bloomed when there was work nearby and quickly died when the jobs left.

So it’s really not a Fort museum unfortunately. Interesting but not a fort. Just built on the land that was originally a fort. And if I recall correctly, was a favored place for a yearly native encampment so the fort placement was a thumb of the nose at natives by the oh so mature US government.

An old jail on display because of the thick walls and it’s historical import I guess. It’s the Prescott Jail which is a small town near here, 19 miles due north.

Toner school. Doesn’t ring a bell with me.

And then a bunch of pioneer cabins moved here for display and restoration.

So that’s the end of the tour of Fort Walla Walla. A bit disappointing if you’d expected a reproduction of the fort. I know I sort of did but I grew up here and must have come here once or twice over the many years of my youth spent in the area. Perhaps. And then I visited the Fort’s graveyard before the trudge up the hill back to the main museum. Old old gravestones. But they look modern. Wonder if they are reproductions. Wonder if they are actual graves or just a representation. Really old graveyards used to use wood because stone masons weren’t around that much in the early days as many other trades were more highly valued. FYI, most of these gravestones were of soldiers. It was pretty tough on the frontier being a soldier so this could easily have been the graveyard for the fort. BUT, graveyards back then were often situated on hills, not in a flood area like this one. And there was plenty of land up on the hill overlooking his area so I think it’s just a fake graveyard. (I’ll try to find out).

And then the hike back up the hill to the Entrance Hall. Looking back at the Blockhouse.

An old windmill…

And then used the back door of the main hall to enter and check out the other antiques I bypassed when I first came in. These coaches were used in this area for a while. Much more comfortable then a buckboard for long trips between small towns in the area. And with all the excellent land for wheat farming, there are or were a lot of them.

And then there’s this display room with all these women’s dresses I’d bypassed the first time through the main building. I have a friend who just loves this old clothing so I snapped a few shots for her.

And that was the end for me. I’d pretty much seen everything at that Fort so it was time to head home. Had a good time but they didn’t have any ice cream I wanted in the shop.

Thanks for reading!