We awoke in Walla Walla at the beginning of our first full day. We couldn’t check-in at our accommodations in Pendleton, Oregon until mid-afternoon and the drive would only take about an hour. So we needed to find something we could do locally and we got another chance to explore Walla Walla in a little more detail. The last time, back in 2012, we visited the city’s best known historic site, Fort Walla Walla, and I didn’t feel like we needed to do that again. I’m not big on repeats. We had to discover what else was going on over there.
Whitman Mission
From an historical perspective I guess the second most popular slot went to the Whitman Mission National Historic Site that sat just west of Walla Walla amidst vineyards and wineries (map). I’m always happy to visit a National Park Service property.
It was noteworthy in a somewhat conflicted context. Undoubtedly the 1836 arrival of Dr. Marcus Whitman and crew represented a turning point, the beginning of a large influx of settlers of European ancestry migrating along the Oregon Trail. People of the Cayuse nation welcomed the newcomers at first, but Whitman struggled to connect with the Cayuse culturally.
He didn’t offer much in the way of education and the local Cayuse weren’t particularly interested in Christian proselytizing. Subsequent newcomers continued to flood the west and they also brought infectious diseases like measles that killed indigenous children disproportionately. So in 1847 the Cayuse finally had enough and they slaughtered Whitman along with eleven of his fellow missionaries. Their deaths quickly became a rallying cry for U.S. expansionists.
Now the site of this former mission has a visitor center, the stone outlines of various Whitman Mission buildings, a mass grave, and a huge monumental obelisk set atop a hill. Also, Eastern Washington includes things like Whitman County and Whitman College in honor of Dr. Whitman. But his legacy hasn’t aged well and it trends less sympathetically in the modern era.
Frenchtown
Frenchtown (map) was another pioneer settlement located near present day Walla Walla. It was actually founded before the Whitman Mission, with the first settlers arriving by 1823. That was less than two decades after the Lewis and Clark expedition traversed the area! However, it’s not a National Park Service property so it’s considerably less known and little remains.
Here’s a big difference though: these settlers were French Canadian and Métis of mixed European and indigenous ancestries, who then intermarried with local tribes. In very general terms, French expatriates tended to treat indigenous people better than the English (something I learned at Fort Michilimackinac in Michigan a couple years ago). It still wasn’t great, but better.
As a result, this group successfully escaped the grisly fate of the nearby Whitman Mission. They remained in “le village des Canadiens” until the U.S. government expelled them in 1855 as relationships with local native populations deteriorated. Even so, many didn’t go far. Their distinctly French surnames survive in Walla Walla to the this day.
Quirk Brewing
We concluded our stay in Walla Walla with lunch at Quirk Brewing. It sits out by the airport within a cluster of businesses, a veritable community of alcohol purveyors: breweries, wineries and distilleries, plus several unrelated general business.
We split our typical beer flight between us as we dined. I love the convenience of food trucks parked at breweries. This one offered Mexican specialties, and interestingly it seemed to be anchored at this spot permanently. It became the brewery’s de facto kitchen although apparently under separate ownership, so the two intertwined in a beneficial symbioses. It seemed to work just fine and I enjoyed both businesses. So a big thumbs-up for this trend.
Then we drove to Pendleton, Oregon, nicely fed and ready for another adventure an hour down the road.
Umatilla River
We settled-in at an Airbnb on the north side of Pendleton, in a particularly hilly neighborhood on the upward slop of a mesa. The Umatilla River ran along the southern edge and beyond that downtown Pendleton filled the flat river valley. Just about everything important was within walking distance; it’s a pretty compact place. Fewer than 20,000 people live there, and a good percentage of them occupy Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution. Given that, I’ll bet the population of Pendleton skews male.
The Inland Northwest is rather arid so there aren’t a lot of rivers. But where rivers exist there are also settlements, and Pendleton is a prime example (map). The Umatilla might not be considered a river in wetter places (it’s more like a stream) but out here it’s a river and it flows serenely through town and onward towards the Columbia River.
Packet Pickup
The first race was scheduled for the next morning on a paved path along the Umatilla River. This was also walking distance so we did just that, crossing the Bedford footbridge (map) (photo) along the way. Then we checked-in for the upcoming races and picked up our packets, and we were all set. Now we only needed to reappear at 6:30 the next morning for the first race.
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