The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

In the Times edition on May 13, 2010, I wrote about my experience playing the piano for patients at Booker Annex, many of whom are dementia patients. A March 9, 2012, edition of the Union-Bulletin featured a story on its health and fitness page that...

This week's column quotes from Bill Gulick's "Chief Joseph Country" I visited the site of the Lewis and Clark encampment with the steel silhouette sculptures featuring 80 artistically detailed silhouettes depicting a typical campsite of the Corps of...

Excerpts are from "Chief Joseph Country Land of the Nez Perce" by Bill Gulick, 1985 Quoting the plaque on the Lewis and Clark Trail State Park on Highway 12: "In early May of 1806, Lewis and Clark passed through here on their return from the Pacific...

Below is an excerpt from"Chief Joseph Country, Land of the Nez Perce" by Bill Gulick, 1985. "Inside the Lewis and Clark State Park, there is a plaque that states: In early May of 1806, Lewis and Clark passed through here on their return from the...

I always get a feeling of Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies Smiling At Me" when I see the beautiful Blue Mountains, spotting them as I drive back and forth to Walla Walla. This feeling is felt many times by many people over the years. Many people tell me...

Elvira Laidlaw, co-author of Wait's Mill, told about the early 1900s worship at the new Little Brown Church on the corner of Main and Fifth streets (the First Presbyterian Church). This church was built in 1887. Before that time (1869), the citizens...

"Nor were the women of less fortitude than their men, while they did remain at home in their cabins, their work was hard; carried great responsibilities and suffered many terrifying moments from the Indians who were all about and delighted in frighte... Full story

As improbable as it may seem, the local Symphony Society is the oldest orchestral organization west of the Mississippi that has continued without a break from the year it began in 1907. Over the years, local Dayton and Waitsburg members of the Walla...

Clark's Family Makes It Right C aptain Clark's Des cendants Make Amends To Tribe After completing their journey west and spending a wet and wretched winter at the mouth of the Columbia River in 1806, William Clark and Meriweather Lewis prepared to... Full story

First Phone System Installed Here In 1903 I t was 1877 that Alexander Graham Bell's invention was first installed as a commercial venture. The first successful demonstrations device was in Havana Cuba in 1849! In Waitsburg, the first telephone was... Full story

Paved Or Unpaved, Area Roads Have Always Been A Joy To Explore I was going through some old Waitsburg Times, dated March 13, 1885, in a letter to the editor: "Last Saturday, it was so delightfully pleasant to "take a drive --- We, accompanied by Mrs....

Looking back on the 1950s when barbecue grills were being introduced into American culture, the craze didn't hit Waitsburg as quickly as it did other places. People were busy with harvest and they didn't want to be bothered at that time of year. I...

Recently I had the opportunity to look through some interesting travel books about the state of Washington. Among them, I found "Exploring Washington's Past," written by Ruth Kirk and Carmela Alexander. Kirk and Alexander's book gives an excellent ba...

I was reading about life "being simple" in Dayton in 1902 from a booklet printed in 2002 celebrating Grace Episcopal Church's centennial. "Only 14 percent of the homes in the entire country had a bathtub," it read. I noticed there was no mention of...

My husband's grandfather, Dr. Rufus Butler, was a "horse and buggy doctor" in Waitsburg for 30 years. According to an article in the Waitsburg Times in 1950 memorial­izing him, he was one of the last settlers to recall log cabins, Indians,...

Last month my daughter, Bubs Cerma, and I stopped at Dunham Cellars located at the Walla Walla Municipal Airport. I mentioned to the young man who showed us around that I used to dance there during World War II. I found out later that I hadn't...

When I was a child, I was fas­cinated with the beautiful bluebirds in the area where I lived in the "Old" Kettle Falls, Wash., north of Spokane. The western and moun­tain bluebirds were plentiful there in the spring and sum­mer. The mountain sp...