The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

When you follow the Touchet River along Bolles Road west of Waitsburg, you'll spot a tall pine towering above the other trees along the banks.

It may be one of the few reminders of the first people who traveled this valley between the Snake and Columbia rivers. According to legend, Native American traders planted the pines because the species' height made them visible from great distances thus marking their trail.

Celebrated explorers Lewis Clark were the first white men to document the area on their way to the Pacific in the early 1800s, and half a century later, pioneers began to settle the confluence of the Coppei and Touchet rivers where Waitsburg eventually flourished.

The first settlers came in the 1850s after seeing the fertile lands on their way to the freshly discovered gold fields of Idaho. They quickly realized the potential in the area for some other kind of gold: fields of wheat that could be grown with just enough of the rain that falls in the rolling bunch grass hills west of the Blue Mountains.

One such a settler was Dennis "Doc" Willard who brought his family up to the Pacific Northwest from the gold mines of California. In 1859, he claimed 160 acres of land where the city reservoir can be seen now and planted an orchard near the river below it.

By 1864, Willard was freighting supplies to the Idaho mines, and on his way there he met a man in Lewis­ton, Sylvester M. Wait, who wanted to site a flour mill in the region.

"Mr. Wait was looking for a location to build a mill, and father told Mr. Wait that if he would come to Waitsburg (not called that at the time) and build that he, father, would give him the mill site," Willard's daughter Christie Willard Hubbard wrote in 1938. There were other settlers at the time. In 1861, Ander­son Cox founded the town of Coppei five miles upstream, but by 1865 the Wait's mill was constructed and operat­ing, so Anderson and his fel­low settlers moved upstream. In 1868, the people voted to call their town "Waitsburg," and the Post OfficeDepart­ment accepted the name. For nearly a century, the Wait's mill functioned as the economic engine for the community, which quickly had its first hotel and saloon and, later, a thriving down­town

where residents and travelers could buy anything from meat to the latest fash­ions. Its early start makes Waitsburg one of the oldest towns in Washington state and, some might argue, one of the rarest. The town's motto "One Of a Kind" stems from the fact that it is the only community in the state that is still set up under Washing­ton's territorial charter. As such, Waitsburg has its own taxing authority, and the word "term limit" has a special meaning here. Elec­tions aren't every four years or even every two years. Ev­History ery single year, Waitsburgers elect their mayor and council members. Despite its openness to travelers that dates back to the Idaho gold rush days, Waitsburg is hardly transient. Old pioneer family names that grace the head stones in the cemetery can just as easily be found in the current phone book. There you'll find the Zugers, Hubbards, Stone­ciphers, Abbeys, Morrows, Smiths, Conovers, Brooms and Smiths just to name a few. Each year, one of the founding families is honored during the Pioneer Fall Festi­val at the Bruce Mansion on Main Street. This year, it will be the Zugers. Not everyone who lives in town has deep roots here. Nowadays, Waitsburg's economy is diverse. It still relies to a large degree on the Touchet Valley's wheat-growing community, whose members often gather for coffee at the Waitsburg Hard­ware Mercantile or the Waitsburg grocery store in the morning. But the town also draws on wages earned from jobs in nearby Walla Walla and from the wind farms in Columbia and Garfield counties. The school district, one of the best in the state, is also a large employer.

In the past decade, en­trepreneurs from the Seattle area have moved to town, opening a gourmet restau­rant, an eclectic bar and an art gallery. This has prompted some to observe that Waits­burg is experiencing a bit of a renaissance that was written up this year in Food Wine magazine and a nationally syndicated travel article by the Seattle Times. And more's in store for Main Street. A boutique hotel is in the works for the Loun­dagin building next to the post office, the Plaza theatre is in the final stages of recon­struction, well-known Walla Walla winemaker Charles Smith wants to open a bar and wine-tasting room next to the hardware store, and a coffee shop is planned for the building next to the Times, which is currently under renovation. City boosters hope the historic town center will con­tinue to draw visitors with its turn-of-the-century charm and growing number of ac­tive storefronts.