Invitation to Historic Paths Sign Dedication Ceremony, Sunday, August 23, 2pm at Wallula
You are invited to the dedication ceremony for an interpretive sign honoring the many historic trails at Wallula Junction. The ceremony will be at at 2 pm on Sunday, August 23 at Wallula Park at the intersection of Highways 12 and 730.
The depression on either side of North Shore Road shown in the photo on the Walla Walla 2020 website at ww2020.net/history-websites marks a historically important route that has been used by many peoples. The pathway was established thousands of years ago by the region’s tribes as part of a vast trail network. The Walla Walla People had a large village nearby, Walúula, which was a center for gathering and trade. From this area trails extended to Celilo Falls, the Blue Mountains, the Clearwater, and beyond.
The crossing of the trail’s ruts on North Shore Road is 1.5 miles from the site where the North West Company built Fort Nez Percés in 1818. From their gardens and farm located up the Walla Walla River, and later after the Hudson’s Bay Company acquired the Fort in 1822, the road was used by HBC to freight stock and produce.
In addition, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman used this trail to acquire supplies from Fort Nez Percés after establishing their Mission at Waiilaptu twenty-five miles to the east in 1836. During the 1840s it was also part of the Oregon Trail on which pioneers from the east traveled this road from the mission to the fort. From there they proceeded to the Willamette Valley of Oregon overland on the south side of the Columbia River, or by floating down it on rafts and boats.
In 1853 the Longmire and Biles Wagon Train coming from the east used this route to Wallula. But when they reached the Columbia River they turned northwest, and their wagons were the first to reach the Puget Sound area through Naches Pass. Their route, along with improvements by Lieutenant Richard Arnold in 1854, was the foundation for the Military Road from Fort Walla Walla to Fort Steilacoom and the Naches Pass Trail.
The U.S. military’s Mullan Road also followed this route. Built between 1858 and 1860 by the U.S. Army, it ran from the new US Army fort in the town of Walla Walla to the army’s Fort Benton in Montana on the Missouri River. In order to connect the Missouri and the Columbia, Mullan also included the route from Wallula up the Walla Walla Valley to the new Fort Walla Walla, which completed the first engineered wagon road in the Northwest, and helped realize President Thomas Jefferson’s dream of a Northwest Passage linking the continent from east to west.
Speakers at the ceremony will include area historian Sam Pambrun, whose ancestors Pierre and Andrew Pambrun were each in charge of Fort Nez Percés, and Dan Clark, coordinator of the Walla Walla 2020 Historic Sites and Markers Project that placed the sign in cooperation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Oregon-California Trails Association, OCTA. Following the talks, there will be a ribbon-cutting at the sign location on North Shore Road.
More information on these early-day paths and other historic trails in this area may be found online at www.ww2020.net and www.octa-trails.org.
