The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

WAI T SBURG - On an early spring weekend five years ago, the Tour of Walla Walla made its usual no-stop route through Waitsburg.

Just as the racers were starting up the grueling Middle Waitsburg Road through the fields south of town, a thunder and lightening storm of biblical dimensions descended on them and tour organizers quickly realized they better cancel the event for the rest of the day lest riders get hurt.

So, out of the blue, hundreds of cyclists were stranded in the little town of Waitsburg. Much to their delight, local residents scrambled to give them the best kind of welcome any traveler in these parts can hope for: shelter from the storm.

On the spur of the moment, Waitsburger took the bikers into their homes and even fed them while they waited out the weather and moved on the following day.

"The bikers were very, very impressed," said Steve Rapp, Tour of Walla Walla race director. "They were glowing, saying they'd remember this race because of that."

Little did they know this Waitsburg hospitality is nothing new.

Caring for travelers is a local tradition that goes back to first pioneer family that settled here.

Christie Willard Hubbard, whose father homesteaded the land from the Touchet River up the current city water storage tank, recalls how he care of those who arrived in the Waitsburg area from far away.

"On the south side of the (mill) race, father had about five acres of ground which he made into a camping ground and night after night, that ground was covered with travelers," she wrote in a 1938 letter. "In that way we got to know many who settled the Palouse country."

Waitsburger are also well known for helping each other in difficult situations, such as the 1964 and 1996 floods, house fires and other community or individual disasters that leave their victims "stranded."

It seems that in those moments, all discord goes out the windows and Waitsburgers are ready to help each other survive or, the case of travelers, take care of them while they're here.

So taken were the Tour of Walla Walla organizers by Waitsburg's hospitality that they made the town an increasingly important part of the weekend race. Nowadays, you could almost call it the "Tour of Waitsburg" since homestays for the weekend have become a tradition both riders and host family look forward to each year.

It should be no different during Cycle Oregon, except the scale of the tour will be bigger.