G. Thomas Edwards

Town Boosterism on Oregon's Mining Frontier

James Vansyckle and Wallula, Columbia Riverport, 1860–1870

During the early settlement of the Pacific Northwest, land speculators dreamed of the wealth they could reap in the region. In the 1840s and 1850s, speculation in the Oregon Territory focused along the Willamette River and on farmlands bordering Willamette Valley waterways. Town-boosters hoped to sell platted land and transform their barren property into a commercial center. Although "many towns had no more than a paper existence," geographer William Loy explained, "each group of town promoters had faith, courage, and even confidence that its particular venture would outstrip all the rest."¹ By the early 1860s, the mining rush in eastern Oregon, Idaho, and Montana drew speculators' attention to the needs of distant mining camps and towns. While Willamette Valley promoters had sought to gain from the nearby agricultural frontier, later speculators wanted to establish steamboat landings on the Columbia River in order to draw wealth from a vast interior mining frontier. These later town-builders understood that some profits would result from selling town lots; but providing goods and services to miners, teamsters, muleskinners, merchants, tradesmen, and others would earn much greater income.

Perhaps the most successful Columbia River port speculator in the 1860s was an experienced businessman from California's mining frontier, James Milton Vansyckle. As the major promoter of Wallula, a town located on the site of the Hudson's Bay Company's Fort Walla Walla along the eastern bank of the Columbia River, Vansyckle became a prominent Walla Walla County resident. He had enjoyed a promising career in California and Oregon before moving to the bleak Washington Territory site. Born in 1822 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Vansyckle took his wife, Susanna, and children to California in the early 1850s. In September 1853, he became the Stockton agent for Wells Fargo, a young, fast-growing company dependent upon skilled managers. Vansyckle managed the company's bank and oversaw the transportation of gold dust from California's southern mines. In that instant city, he learned about speculative real estate and observed steamboats from San Francisco carrying miners and mining supplies and freight wagons and pack mules hauling loads to interior mining camps and towns. Widely respected in Stockton, "Milt" Vansyckle, as he was known, served as chief engineer of the volunteer fire department and, in 1855, as mayor. Two years later, Wells Fargo promoted him to the position of superintendent in Sacramento, requiring him to travel to scattered agencies. He also served briefly as superintendent in the company's San Francisco office.

Travelers in the 1860s thought Wallula's Front Street showed Vansyckle's impressive ability to build a vital port in a hostile environment. Other emerging Oregon towns had similar appearances. In the 1840s, for example, Portland's downtown looked much like Wallula does in this photograph.

OHS neg., CN 016015

In 1858, Vansyckle's employer appointed him to head its Portland office, a significant post that he would hold until July 1859. Soon the aspiring newcomer was elected to the city council, was chosen as the fire department's chief engineer, and served as a delegate to the state Democratic convention, where he supported Senator Joe Lane against Salem editor Asahel Bush in a struggle for mastery of the party. A Democratic editor in Portland hailed Vansyckle and his allies for defeating "dangerous and treacherous Republicans," while the Oregonian, a voice for the Republican Party, included him among the "small men in California" who grew "wonderfully large in Oregon in a brief period."² Vansyckle eventually lost his position with Wells Fargo, according to one critic, "on account of dabbling in politics, to the injury of the company's business."³ With a partner he then briefly operated Portland's Metropolis Hotel.⁴

Vansyckle soon saw the potential of the upper Columbia. In the spring of 1859, he and other Portland profit-seekers must have read that Lt. John Mullan was directing soldiers building a road between Fort Benton on the Missouri River in what is now Montana and Walla Walla, Washington Territory. Travelers who reached Walla Walla via the new road would then proceed along a branch of the Oregon Trail to the Columbia River. Obviously a river port would be built on the Columbia to serve the anticipated heavy traffic. Rumors about potential gold mines provided another reason for investing in the upper river. In the late 1850s, historian Alvin Josephy explains, "a new El Dorado seemed to lie in the Nez Perce country."⁵ Believing that gold would be found on these and other lands, Vansyckle also knew that a river port would accommodate miners rushing eastward as well as farm families laboring westward on the rugged Mullan Road.

In late 1859, Vansyckle moved to the site of Fort Walla Walla, which the Hudson's Bay Company had abandoned by treaty, and filed a land claim with the federal government. The site was "surrounded by a sandy and sage brush plain" and set beneath "bluffs along the river high, wild, rugged and romantic-looking in the extreme."⁶ Vansyckle moved his family — including four children ranging in age from fifteen years to five months — into an adobe building that had been a part of the old fort and built a log hotel that he operated with his wife. Rooms that offered "clean beds and no bugs" could be rented for a dollar a night, while meals cost seventy-five cents and provided "every delicacy the market affords."⁷ The ambitious speculator, who called himself a trader in the 1860 census, was also a merchant and an agent for Tracy's Express, a business established not long after the Oregon Steam Navigation Company (OSN) commenced service to the old fort site.⁸

This map of the Pacific Northwest in the 1860s shows Portland's profitable hinterland, including The Dalles, Wallula, Walla Walla, and mining camps and towns in Idaho and Montana.

Map by Dean Shapiro

Vansyckle was politically active and popular among his contemporaries, many of whom considered him to be ambitious and shrewd. In California, he had also positioned himself to profit from the great mining rush of the 1850s, and his experiences in Stockton and Sacramento shaped his thinking about Wallula. Both fast-growing California river ports linked San Francisco with distant mining regions and enriched town founders and other boosters. As Stockton supplied California's mines to the south, Wallula could do the same for mines to the east. Besides his solid understanding of western transportation needs, Vansyckle would have understood the historic importance of Fort Walla Walla, which was older than Fort Vancouver and had dominated the vast interior fur trade. To Vansyckle's way of thinking, Wallula's gateway location could make it as influential in mining as the fort had been in fur trading.

Along with a partner, Seth.W. Tatem, Vansyckle platted Wallula in 1862, even though his title to the land would not be cleared until 1865. For several months these promoters offered forty blocks of lots at prices ranging from one hundred to fifteen hundred dollars and assured prospective buyers that the port, supplied by foodstuffs and grains from the productive Touchet and Walla Walla valleys, would successfully compete with landlocked Walla Walla as the supply center for interior mining camps.

Promoter Vansyckle hoped to sell lots as plotted on this map of Wallula in 1862.

Courtesy Whitman College and Northwest Archives, Walla Walla, Washington

Vansyckle monopolized Wallula lots and sought good prices for them. He assured potential buyers that a proposed shortcut would pass through the port to Lewiston, Idaho, bypassing Walla Walla. Believers purchased lots, preferring those fronting the Columbia over those on the side streets, named for western army officers. Teamsters hauled lumber from Walla Walla to the river port, and by August 1862 Wallula had "lost the appearance of a desert sand bank and assumed the more useful and becoming position of the head of practicable navigation."⁹ As the first inhabitants moved from makeshift tents to wooden structures, visitors saw Vansyckle's business activities as a sign of his increasing prosperity.

The new town attracted crowded Columbia River steamers, excited gold-seekers, Chinese miners, Mexican muleskinners, and busy wagon and pack-mule traffic. A variety of men, speaking of sluices, long toms, rockers, pans, and pay gravel, passed through the river port, many of them veterans of the California mines. An observer described them as ranging "from the man who preaches 'Christ and him Crucified,' to the villain who ... would cut your throat for two bits."¹⁰

Working from memory in April 1915, Charles F. Cummings drew this map of Wallula as it had been developed by 1870.

Courtesy Whitman College and Northwest Archives, Walla Walla, Washington

Vansyckle watched the development of various means of communication that reminded him of his years in California.¹¹ Steamboats from Portland generally took three days and two nights to reach Wallula. River obstructions, especially the Umatilla Rapids, led captains to tie up their vessels at night rather than attempt to travel the treacherous waters in the dark. At Wallula, many prospectors took stagecoaches to Walla Walla, while others preferred to ride a saddle train, in which the train masters provided horses and provisions. Teamsters and muleskinners picked up loads at the river port and transported them to interior mining towns and camps.

Knowing and practicing the occupations that made money, Vansyckle profited from the mining rush. He was a merchant; a hotel owner; an operator of a hay yard, stabling saddle horses for a dollar a night; and an OSN agent, for which he received one hundred dollars a month. Vansyckle prospered as he added and subtracted from this list of occupations. In June 1862, an observer noted that Vansyckle and his partner were "coining money. They are both clever dogs, and everybody is pleased to see them prosper. . . . Sites are being sold, and an effort made to build up a town."¹² A few months later, another writer noted the presence of a lively mining trade, estimating that 175 wagons hauled goods on the road between Wallula, Walla Walla, and Lewiston.¹³ Vansyckle had predicted and profited from this heavy traffic. Recognizing the importance of the transshipment point, even the powerful OSN purchased Wallula property, paying thirteen thousand dollars for a hotel and a warehouse.¹⁴

Yet Wallula, unlike Stockton, failed to attain regional dominance, surprising those who maintained that the river port would succeed. The boasted shortcut from the river to Lewiston attracted few travelers because it was sandier than the established route through Walla Walla. Walla Wallans ridiculed Wallulans' pretensions and easily overcame their challenge. The interior town had clear advantages, including its proximity to a much larger and richer hinterland, and it benefited from the efforts of several energetic entrepreneurs, especially Dr. Dorsey Baker. Walla Walla was located in a rich agricultural valley, while Wallula was located in a barren region with scant farmland available for settlement or trade. Still, the economic interests of the two towns soon intertwined, and Wallula became Walla Walla's vital port even though the smaller town failed to grow much beyond a hundred permanent residents.

Miners, animals, and merchandise came from Portland through The Dalles and, after river and portage travel of around 240 miles, landed at Wallula. Passengers and freight, especially boxes, bags, crates, and sacks, then proceeded along a sandy and dusty 32-mile road to Walla Walla, a transportation hub that supplied prospectors with housing, animals, food, whisky, tools, clothing, boots, and entertainment. Then the impatient men hurried to distant mining camps. Teamsters and muleskinners became extremely important to the rapidly growing economy of both Walla Walla and Wallula. Scores of miners wintered in Walla Walla, and the town, led by energetic and profit-seeking merchants, prospered and became the leading mining center in the interior Pacific Northwest.¹⁵

Sharing a measure of this prosperity, the owners of the Luna House, which replaced Vansyckle's crude hotel, and Wallula's warehouses, stores, and express offices profited. In the mid-1860s, Vansyckle, ever the opportunist, shared ownership of the Bank Exchange Saloon. During the landing's prosperity in 1865, a business directory listed only sixteen adult male residents, among them tradesmen, packers, a blacksmith, a lawyer, and a schoolteacher. Near the small depot, hundreds of oxen, horses, cattle, and mules grazed on rich and abundant natural bunch grass. Travelers reported that Vansyckle saluted steamboats by firing "his old nine-pounder" and hoisting the Stars and Stripes.¹⁶

During 1866 and 1867, Vansyckle wrote about Wallula in the Walla Walla Statesman, a Democratic newspaper. Adopting the pen name "Cumtux," he reported on the busy port's activities and offered his thoughts on politics, economics, and society.¹⁷ Although he was busy operating a warehouse, store, and ferry service, Vansyckle took time to write public letters. Wallula, unlike Umatilla, lacked a newspaper to puff its advantages, and Vansyckle enjoyed writing. He utilized the Walla Walla newspaper because it was Democratic and had the largest regional circulation on the mining frontier.¹⁸

Vansyckle's advertisement in the Portland Daily Advertiser in November 1860 listed only a few of his business operations.

OHS Research Library

In his columns, Cumtux described extreme weather conditions that seasonally terminated river traffic and occasionally slowed road traffic. Like all other early Walla Walla Valley residents, civilian or military, he recalled the hard winter of 1861–1862 as a period when he placed his animals in sheds and fed willows and his own hay bedding to his horses and mules. Other severe winters followed. With the Columbia choked with ice in January 1864, a few prospectors necessarily walked most of the way from Portland to Wallula. In early February 1866, Cumtux reported that the severe cold weather iced the Columbia, Walla Walla, and Snake rivers and in the Columbia's main channel timber and ice passed Wallula as fast as a racehorse. Men walked their animals across the Walla Walla River, and others ventured out onto the Columbia to cut ice to obtain water for their animals. Ice banks six feet deep lined the river.¹⁹ Finally, on February 24, 1866, a steamer from Celilo docked at Wallula, and residents hailed the resumption of river traffic after forty-one days of bitter weather. During the milder winter of 1866–1867, the Columbia was free from snow and ice and Christmas celebrants complained that they could not sleigh or skate. Cumtux maintained tradition, however, by playing the role of Santa Claus to keep up "the sweet delusion."²⁰

Heavy rain, lack of wind, or extreme heat could also limit trade. In May 1866, Cumtux complained about increased rain and in June about a significant decrease of river wind. The promoter explained that during his first years in Wallula, White's Line of sailboats could travel fully loaded from the Deschutes River to Wallula in two days; in 1865 and 1866, however, the windless trip took about two weeks. On what he called a "Fry-day" in August 1866 the thermometer soared to 112 degrees. During this summer heat, he reported, neither "man nor beast could work during the middle of the day without danger to life."²¹

Because Wallula lived on commerce, Cumtux described both river and trail activity. Steamboats generally churned up the river from late March to late December, and teamsters and muleskinners struggled along the desolate trails as long as they had loads and could traverse the mountains. Cumtux explained the transportation system:

Trains come into the town, camp around the warehouse, turn their animals out and let them run until their cargo is ready. The same with ox teamsters; good feed from a half mile to any distance around Wallula. Hence it is that packers and teamsters will freight for less from Wallula than any other point on the Columbia River to Idaho and Montana Territories.²²

Pack trains made up of twenty-five to one hundred horses, six-mule teams, and six-yoke ox teams took loads on the town's extensive beach. The occasional lack of horses temporarily slowed the movement of nails, dry goods, boots, shoes, weapons, food, whisky, tools, and other commodities. Saddle trains originating at the Columbia transported eager prospectors to mountain camps. Two competing stagecoach lines operating Concord coaches ran from Wallula to Walla Walla. An observer hailed the "knight of the whip" who could drive the thirty-two-mile distance in six hours.²³ Express riders also carried mail, dispatches, and gold among communities and gold camps.

In 1865, according to a historian, "100 pack trains averaging 50 animals per train with each animal loaded with about 300 pounds carried 750 tons of freight from the Columbia River to Montana."²⁴ Cumtux reported even greater port activity in 1866. A San Francisco visitor observed that his metropolis profited from trade with remote Wallula. San Francisco merchants, seeking to get goods into Montana before the cold season, competed to find space on ships bound for Portland. "So great has been the rush to get goods aboard the Oregon steamers for Montana and Idaho territories that drays have been compelled to take their stand at the piers at 12 o'clock at night — everyone being anxious to get in ahead. The scene presented something like the sight in Portland during the Salmon River excitement."²⁵

At Wallula, the upper river's busiest transshipment point, several steamboats unloaded passengers, animals, and freight. Travelers and freight headed southeast for Boise Basin through tiny La Grande or took the noted Mullan Road northeast to Bear Gulch, Blackfoot City, Helena, and other places. Adding to the river port's activity, in August 1866 cattlemen who had departed from Maryville, California, and were heading for Carriboo, British Columbia, drove 650 animals through the town and swam them at the Snake River's mouth without losing one.²⁶

During the heavy traffic of August 1866, generals Henry Halleck, Frederick Steele, and Rufus Ingalls traveled to Wallula to inspect the government's facilities and the supply lines to interior forts. They knew that the government hired transportation from Wallula to Fort Colville and Fort Boise. These interior posts, like Fort Walla Walla, depended upon the Wallula landing. When the generals discovered that the large army warehouse, measuring forty by seventy-five feet, could not accommodate military supplies, they arranged to store goods in the quartermaster's stable and in a rented warehouse. Apparently the inspectors agreed with Cumtux about the superiority of existing trade routes and learned that Snake River steamboats bound for Lewiston, carrying goods for Idaho and Montana, had to depart Wallula before the low water of fall prevented travel. In September, Cumtux reported that the Columbia River was dropping and "showing its teeth," but as late as November a daily steamer ran to Wallula.²⁷ Thus he discounted stories that Idaho and Montana markets had been lost to distant competitors.²⁸

Ever the promoter, Cumtux nevertheless admitted the depot's needs. To accommodate numerous travelers, he argued, Wallula should have a livery stable with a corral and a hay and grain merchant. The hay could come from the Yakima Valley, and freighters who came to Wallula without a load could bring grain from Walla Walla. The promoter explained that many saddled and bridled horses arrived on steamboats and needed feed before a long and rugged mountain climb. Furthermore, a livery-stable owner could buy pack and riding horses from returning miners, pasture these animals, and sell them in the spring when they were in great demand.²⁹ Cumtux also proposed that miners wintering at Wallula take their horses to a ranch on the other side of the Columbia that provided adequate feed. Perhaps he recommended these grasslands because he operated a ferry, charging fifty cents for each animal transported.

In December 1866, Cumtux reported that Wallula's businessmen were "considerably exercised about roads and new routes leading to Montana. Indians and white men have thrown themselves into the breach — or rather into the sage brush — and all have found good wagon roads."³⁰ The promoter, however, discounted all new routes, insisting that the 618-mile-long Mullan Road was the most direct one to Helena and other Rocky Mountain mining markets. Outsiders disagreed and sought new routes that would weaken Wallula's grip on trade to both Idaho and Montana. From 1863 through 1867, Cumtux often denounced emerging river ports that threatened his various investments. At the same time, he did not discount established ports such as The Dalles. Some prospectors outfitted there and journeyed overland to various Idaho mines via Walla Walla. This and other interior routes followed sections of the Oregon Trail, bypassing Wallula.

Cumtux expressed far more concern about a new and closer competitor than The Dalles. In the spring of 1863, Umatilla had emerged as a river port, providing a hotel, stores, saloons, and other wooden structures similar to those in Wallula. This ragged town, looking much like Wallula, grew bigger than its upriver competitor as it captured much of the Boise Basin trade. Walla Walla and Wallula promoters penned and voiced denunciations of the Oregon depot in the same way that they did Lewiston, a recent Idaho rival. In 1865, a sharp-eyed traveler named C. Aubrey Angelo also judged that Wallula was "the main terminus of steam navigation to those bound for Idaho.... Good stages, with steady drivers await your arrival, and convey you over a good road to Walla Walla."³¹ Angelo also emphasized that Wallula's nearby grazing and farming lands gave it an advantage over Umatilla.

But shippers in 1866 had not read Angelo's assessment. An angry Cumtux wrote that mistaken San Francisco shippers had sent tons of freight to Umatilla, not Wallula. He surmised that these Californians shipped to his Oregon competitor as "the proper point to land goods for transportation to the Idaho and Montana mining regions [because] they had supposed that Umatilla was higher up the river than Wallula." He also reported that freight jammed the rival town's warehouses because teamsters objected to Umatilla's "inaccessibility and expense." Because teamsters going to Umatilla needed to take animal feed and to utilize expensive corrals, the place was known, Cumtux charged, as "corral town."³² In 1867, Cumtux, who ridiculed Umatilla as "U-ma-tickel-me" or "sand town," protested that the editor of its Columbia Press exaggerated the amount of freight dispatched to the Oregon port. "All the freight for Fort Boise," he argued, "and a large portion of private freight is landed at Wallula, and [so were] nearly all the goods for western Montana"³³

The establishment in 1866 of two new ports upriver from Wallula temporarily created even more concern than the earlier rivalry with Lewiston and Umatilla. Seeking to bypass existing depots and to open a faster and more lucrative route to Montana, the powerful OSN utilized Ringold, about twelve miles north of the Yakima River, and especially White Bluffs, sited about sixty-five miles above Wallula. By 1863, the OSN had crushed its competitors to control transportation on the Columbia. It had constructed a six-mile railroad portage at The Dalles and a fourteen-mile rail line from The Dalles to a site beyond Celilo Falls. Creating a new interior route seemed necessary because of the Mullan Road's poor condition — much of it was only a trail, and only muleskinners, not oxen teamsters, could traverse the mountainous sections. The OSN realized that steamboats and wagons were superior to mule trains in reaching the profitable Montana mining markets. Thus, in 1866 the company scheduled a few steamboats to White Bluffs. From there, passengers took a saddle train and freight journeyed by a two-hundred-mile wagon road to Lake Pend Oreille.³⁴ Through a subsidiary company, the OSN placed the Mary Moody on this large lake and after that another steamer that ran fifty-six miles to Thompson Falls. From this point travelers faced still more wagon and steamer travel to the mouth of the Jocko River and then again by wagon to the Helena mining camps. While the Portland company sought to get others to invest in this new river, land, and lake route, it continued to ship Montana-bound travelers and goods through Wallula.

Threatened by the aggressive company's utilization of a rival route, Umatilla, Wallula, and Walla Walla residents struck back. A chorus of journalists, businessmen, and teamsters denounced both White Bluffs and Ringold, emphasizing the difficulties that teamsters would experience on sandy trails leading eastward from the new sites. Cumtux visited the new river ports and ridiculed both competitors, joking that the few Ringold inhabitants moved all their possessions to a sailboat during a spring freshet and that the remote place should receive the territorial penitentiary. A stagecoach driver joked that only a retired monk seeking solitude would appreciate White Bluffs.³⁵ Cumtux charged that an unidentified proprietor of one of the new landings had "observed that all large streams run past large cities, and as the Columbia River runs past his door, he concluded that his town is a large city." The Wallulan and others rejoiced over stories about the handful of settlers in Ringold and White Bluffs denouncing each other. Opposed to the OSN's efforts to establish these landings, a Walla Wallan hoped that the company "may learn that while it is easy to run steamboats, it's difficult to 'steamboat' the people."³⁶

Because the company's Portland investors influenced the Republican Party, Cumtux feared that the monopoly might persuade the federal government to build a wagon road eastward from White Bluffs. If such a road were built, vessels would bypass Wallula and steam upriver carrying five hundred tons of freight per week to White Bluffs.³⁷ "Humbug is the order of the day," Cumtux grumbled about the possibility that the Republican Congress might appropriate funds for the road, even as he reassured readers that most freight passed through his landing, not White Bluffs.³⁸

The OSN's Tenino passed river impediments as it traveled the Columbia from the Deschutes River to Wallula. In the summer the steamer could reach Lewiston.

OHS neg., OrHi 9029

What Cumtux did not know was that OSN leaders were actually pushing much bolder transportation schemes in early 1866, including one that encouraged the Northern Pacific to buy the OSN and start construction eastward from some point on the Columbia. George L. Currey, a former territorial governor of Oregon who was living in New York, informed OSN leaders that he had recommended to Northern Pacific officials in Boston that their company should build eastward from Wallula. Simeon Reed, the OSN's vice president, and J.C. Ainsworth, an incorporator, encouraged the Northern Pacific to buy the OSN and immediately start building from either Wallula or White Bluffs.³⁹

Cumtux would have been thrilled to know that significant leaders considered making his town a railroad terminus, for he had been promoting such an effort for years. He had often stressed the need to improve the vital but "disgraceful" wagon road from his town to Walla Walla, and in early 1862 he was an incorporator of the Walla Walla Railroad Company, which sought to build this link. For years the Wallulan spoke enthusiastically at community rallies and wrote passionately about this particular railroad and others in general. "The iron horse," Cumtux asserted, "is not only an animal of speed, but it is sower of men, the planter of towns and cities, a builder of farm houses and churches and school houses; makes rich, prosperous and happy communities; and develops the resources of the whole country for miles around on both sides of the track."⁴⁰

The proponents of a local railroad also believed that the Northern Pacific, charted in 1864, would build through the Walla Walla Valley. Cumtux and others not only wanted Northern Pacific rail service in order to improve existing trade with Portland but also desired a new trade with Seattle that would follow railroad construction. One enthusiast predicted that the iron horse would travel from the "dry and arid plains" and "bathe his brow in the placid waters of Puget Sound."⁴¹ Although it would be years before the iron horse made such a journey, Cumtux lived long enough to see the Walla Walla and Columbia River Railroad Company build a narrow-gauge line from Wallula toward Walla Walla.⁴²

In 1867, Cumtux convinced himself that OSN would not expand its operations from White Bluffs, but he worried about the decline of river traffic and OSN's role in the loss of business. Like many other businessmen, he knew the company had crushed river competition and enjoyed a profitable monopoly. It navigated the Columbia from its mouth to White Bluffs, a distance of about 400 miles, and the Snake from its mouth to its junction with the Clearwater, a distance of about 150 miles.

Despite its regional power and profits, in the mid-1860s OSN was competing with businesses in St. Louis, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco to supply interior mines. "Even as it battled San Francisco for control of transportation to the Idaho mines," historian Carlos Schwantes explained, "the Oregon Steam Navigation Company challenged Saint Louis for command of the Montana mining camp trade."⁴³ Henry Failing and other Portland merchants urged OSN to build the shortcut from White Bluffs into Montana, for the new route would ensure continuing profits. The leaders of OSN believed that the Columbia was superior to the Missouri as a trade route because of its seasonal low water. In February 1866, the Oregonian agreed, instructing Californians that shipping on the Columbia would secure them "the rapidly growing trade of Montana."⁴⁴ Others disagreed, including Hazard Stevens — the son of Washington Territory's first governor — who served briefly as Wallula's OSN agent in 1866. Calling Wallula a "dirty and very dull village" in an unattractive environment, Stevens incorrectly advised that one steamer could "easily do all the [Montana] freighting" from the town.⁴⁵ Meanwhile, Montanans correctly warned those engaged in the river's commerce that St. Louis and Salt Lake City undersold Portland. Columbia River traffic with Montana peaked in 1866, according to historian Arthur Throckmorton, and soon the "Missouri River route destroyed Portland's hope for the Montana trade."⁴⁶

Cumtux resigned his OSN agency in 1862, and by 1867 he had become a critic of the monopoly, arguing that its high rates rather than competition from St. Louis best explained the decline of the profitable trade route. Like many others in eastern Washington and Idaho, the writer attacked the Portland company: "It is a notorious fact, that nowhere in the world, all things considered, are charges by steamboats so high as on the Columbia river, and I know of no place in the world where prices could be reduced to so good advantage, not only to meet the wants of all, but to the benefit of the steamboat owners themselves." Cumtux complained that shipping freight from Portland to Wallula, a distance of approximately 240 miles, cost thirty-five dollars per ton, yet freight shipped from San Francisco to Portland traveled 750 miles at the rate of only five dollars per ton. The critic fumed that St. Louis merchants could ship goods 2,500 miles to Fort Benton for only seventeen dollars per ton and pay in greenbacks rather than specie, which merchants in San Francisco and Portland required. Cumtux understood that Salt Lake City, like St. Louis, was attempting "to compete with the great national highway, the Columbia River route."⁴⁷ To his way of thinking, the OSN harmed Portland and aided its St. Louis rivals through its shortsightedness and greed. Cumtux realized that it would be impossible to break the steamboat monopoly and saw no need to do so. He simply advocated a more reasonable rate structure.

Many others who were suffering after the OSN cut steamboat service to the upper river in 1867 joined the critical chorus. On April 13, 1867, The Dalles Mountaineer, concerned about the town's economic decline, emphasized that cheaper freight rates on the California overland route to Montana diminished Columbia River trade. By 1869, Portlanders, including OSN leaders, acknowledged that other western cities controlled Montana's markets.

The authority on the OSN, historian Dorothy Johansen, identified the complaints of the company's critics: "Few people had affection for the OSN, primarily because it occupied a monopoly position," and the company "was blamed for the high prices miners had to pay for flour, bacon, beans, and whiskey."⁴⁸ She explained, however, that the OSN had faced high operating costs. Cargoes had to be handled ten times between Portland and Wallula, for example, and there was no convenient wood supply for steamer engines east of The Dalles. Cumtux and others dependent on OSN's service would have discounted such explanations and pointed to the wealth accumulated by its stockholders.

While Cumtux hammered the monopoly's unreasonable upriver rates, he expressed great satisfaction with its downriver charges. In 1867, these transportation costs were important to Walla Walla Valley residents involved in a major change in trade. As profitable sales to distant miners declined, Walla Wallans increased their earnings from sales to local farmers and from the shipment of wheat, flour, oats, barley, and vegetables to downriver markets. Local farming, not distant mining, now meant economic growth. Townspeople became far more concerned about steamboat charges, especially for exporting wheat and flour, than about freight fees for importing mining goods.

Cumtux hailed the increase in wheat and flour shipments, reporting "from thirty-five to forty teams arriving every day loaded with flour and grain from the Walla Walla Valley."⁴⁹ Excited by the changing trade patterns, Cumtux wrote the OSN about the surplus of wheat and flour cramming Wallula's warehouses. Vice President Simeon Reed responded, coming to the port and explaining to residents his company's policies regarding the shipment of the ever-increasing amount of farm produce hauled from the Walla Walla Valley. Fully aware that shipping agricultural products had become more profitable than sending goods to the mining region, the Portland entrepreneur admitted that steamers — each with the capacity to carry sixty tons of wheat and flour when fully loaded — could not transport farm commodities as fast as they accumulated in Wallula. He assured Cumtux, however, that the company would not set high warehouse fees for this glut of produce. Reed also explained that OSN had reduced its downriver charges from $17.50 per ton to only $6 per ton for freight shipped from Wallula to Portland, exactly the same price a Willamette River steamship company charged for transporting farm goods from Albany to Portland.⁵⁰ In other words, Walla Walla Valley farmers had about the same transportation costs as those in the Willamette Valley and could compete with Oregon growers for Portland, San Francisco, and international markets. In 1868, a Portland observer must have summarized the thoughts of many residents when he wrote about the changing trade pattern: "The boat from the Cascades brings almost every day, now, a large freight of flour and wheat from Walla Walla.... The man who two years ago should have predicted this flow of produce down the Columbia river would have been pronounced a visionary and a fool."⁵¹ Because of this profitable commerce, the OSN scheduled five weekly departures from Wallula and only two from Umatilla. Claiming that "without the farming interest which surrounds it, Walla Walla would have been finished long ago," Cumtux praised the changing market. "The tide is now rapidly changing in our favor. The Wallamette Valley has shipped her last flour, bacon, butter, lard and apples to the Walla Walla Valley, and next season we can supply them with apples, melons and peaches. You are no longer on the frontier," the promoter assured farmers, "but in the heart of a rich agricultural region."⁵²

By 1867, Cumtux was devoting more attention to politics. He had long been active in politics, having participated in the city governments of Stockton and Portland and won elections in 1865 and 1867 to the Washington Territorial Council as a Democrat. He liked to joke that he left the bacon and beans of Wallula for the clams and oysters of Olympia. Like many Walla Wallans in 1866, he favored Oregon's annexation of Washington Territory to the Snake River, arguing that statehood was preferable to "territorial vassalage."⁵³ Cumtux emphasized, as did other interior businessmen, that Wallula shared trade with Portland, not Seattle and Olympia.

He only generalized about local politics but stressed controversial national politics. During the Civil War, Cumtux apparently was a pro-war Democrat supporting the Union. After the war, he joined thousands of other members of his party in heatedly denouncing Radical Republicans in Congress, arguing that they were vindictive and that their support for education and training for free blacks and their refusal to seat Southern congressional delegations threatened the Union. Cumtux charged that the Radical Republicans actually operated a Rump Congress because they would not seat Southern Democrats. To his way of thinking, the "radical disunion party, was fast leading us to ruin, [and] must be destroyed."⁵⁴ Radical Republicans, he accused, were "vampires sucking our very vitals," while leading the nation into bankruptcy. Cumtux was especially critical of Congressman Thaddeus Stevens for planning his burial in a cemetery that interned African Americans and of Oregon senator George H. Williams for switching from the Democratic Party and selling "himself, body, soul, and breeches to the Radicals." Furthermore, he was concerned that the Radical Republicans sought "to colonize Negroes, Chinamen, and Kanakas in the territories" that had been settled by hard-working pioneers.⁵⁵

Cumtux knew that whites on the mining frontier shared his hostility toward Indians, Chinese, and African Americans and feared eastern political proposals — real or rumored — that would grant civil rights to minorities.⁵⁶ The writer argued that the consequences of the Civil War should not alter frontier sociey and that minority groups should not prosper in Wallula. They sould be subordinate or depart. Cumtux's negative sentiments support a scholar's recent generalization that during the gold rush "people of color bore the brunt of xenophobia."⁵⁷ Cumtux's political sentiments reflected Democratic Party leaders' fears that Republicans reconstructing Southern society would negatively impact Western society by extending social recognition and civil rights to minorities.

Like many other territorial Democrats, Cumtux opposed African American political participation in the South or settlement in the West. Responding to a traveler's criticism that a black man operated a gambling house in Wallula, he assured his readers that Wallulans had compelled the "'Civil Rights Brethren of African descent" to leave, an action that made everything "lovely."⁵⁸

Visitors' Views of Wallula

Capt. John Mullan described the town the same year it was platted:

Reaching the Columbia at Wallula one is pleased with the commercial character which this point is fast assuming. Freight strewn along the levee for half a mile — stores erected, commission houses plying their vocations, and everything giving an earnest of a prosperous future. This site has doubtless many advantages as a commercial point; but so long as men shall desire pleasant homes, — where the eye is as desirous of drinking in draughts of pleasure and beauty as the pocket is of accumulating wealth, — where mills, farms, gardens, and pleasant enclosures can be had, — where the products of the fields are garnered with a short transportation to a ready market — just so long will Walla Walla and not Wallula be the chief emporium and point of business for the interior, and for supplying the more immediate demands of the Walla Walla Valley. That Wallula will always be a point where commission houses, a few stores, and one or more hotels will always be supported, no one can doubt; but looking toward a large and growing city with all the pleasant appurtenances that make life happy, I can not but conceive that its growth must become circumscribed within the above limits. (Walla Walla Statesman, November 29, 1862, as reprinted in the Oregon Historical Quarterly 4:3 [September 1903])

The historian Frances Fuller Victor described the town as she experienced it in 1870, having arrived on the steamer from Umatilla at night:

Historically, Wallula ... is interesting. Here ... are again repeated those harmonies of grandeur with grace in the lofty bluffs overhanging the river, which have before won remark. But the gravel-bed called Wallula is totally lacking in any local charms. A hotel it does not boast; but a sort of boarding house, with beds for way bound travelers like myself.... Little hillocks of sand were piled up in the corners of the wash stand, and a sand beach was found in the bottom of the basin. The pillows betrayed a clear grit when I dashed my weary head against them, and retaliated by throwing dust in my eyes. The breakfast also was well seasoned with sand — a by no means useless condiment when the indigestible nature of hotel breakfasts generally is taken into account. But what could one expect in Wallula? (Oregonian, June 22, 1870)

Modern travelers, like those of the 1860s, comment about the stark, treeless landscape of Wallula gap.

Courtesy Marianne Keddington-Lang, photographer

Like fellow Westerners, he argued that most annuities given to Native Americans were wasteful and opposed a proposal to give citizenship to Indians and allow them to elect a delegate to Congress. As the U.S. government waged military campaigns against Indians in Montana, Oregon, and Idaho in 1866 and 1867, Cumtux accused federal leaders of following an inconsistent policy by both fighting and feeding Indians.

Cumtux also aimed at the Chinese, the largest minority in Wallula and the interior it served. He reported that a boat carrying six Chinese down the Columbia had capsized, drowning two men who were carrying the group's gold dust. Cumtux expressed little sympathy for the drowned miners, calling them "Civil Rights brethren of the Celestial persuasion," and ridiculed the survivors for wearing pants manufactured from flour sacks with brands such as "Family" or "McMinnville." At the same time, he boasted that Wallulans had generously furnished clothing and boots to the survivors.⁵⁹

In November 1866, a large number of Chinese came upriver to Wallula and climbed aboard stages and wagons bound for interior points. Cumtux joked that the steamer carrying so many Chinese to Wallula seemed to be engaged in the "Cooly trade."⁶⁰ Others who had worked bars on the Columbia and Snake rivers came downriver seeking winter quarters in Wallula — and many of them patronized Cumtux's various businesses. Up to 150 Chinese had previously wintered in the port, but in late 1866 even more sought scarce housing.

Cumtux repeated Irish jokes but praised another minority, the French Canadians who had settled in the Walla Walla Valley. He emphasized that since their arrival in the 1850s these farmers had suffered through Indian wars and property litigation. Yet, he assured readers that they "all in fair circumstances, have enough to eat, drink, and to wear; pay their taxes regularly, and seem to enjoy life as highly, and as good citizens as any part of our community."⁶¹

After 1867, Cumtux penned only a few letters, and in these he discussed social issues, not national politics. He no longer promoted Wallula and rarely wrote about trade with miners. Cumtux recognized the painful fact that all the Columbia River ports were in sharp decline. In 1869, a traveler noted that The Dalles and Umatilla had "passed under the rod of affliction," and the vacant buildings at Umatilla indicated that the depot seemed "to be waiting for the undertaker's hearse and the funeral rites that are to consign her to oblivion." As early as 1866, recognizing that none of the Columbia River ports were located near farmland or standing timber, a traveler remarked that "no town on the Columbia river will ever amount to anything more than a shipping point, and a point of embarkation and debarkation for travelers to and from the interior."⁶² The same assessment could be made of Wallula. In the late 1860s, many of its residents departed, leaving abandoned buildings to the wind, sand, and dust. Ranchers peeled boards from abandoned buildings and hauled them to scattered sites.

In 1870, suffering from financial difficulties, Vansyckle sold his Wallula interest to the OSN and moved his family to Walla Walla. Although he had always lived on noted rivers — the Ohio, San Joaquin, Sacramento, Willamette, and Columbia — he now lived on shallow Mill Creek, and in the 1870 census he listed himself as a carpenter. Upon his death in 1875, his obituary writers praised him as a shrewd and generous businessman: "A man of great energy and unusual business qualifications, he made several fortunes, but liberal to a fault he scattered his money lavishly and died comparatively poor."⁶³

Historian David Johnson's characterization of mining frontiersmen in Nevada — "persistent restlessness, ambition, and dissatisfaction with things as they are" — aptly describes Vansyckle.⁶⁴ Although he was another of those characters who failed to achieve grand ambitions, a large group that rarely attracts the interest of regional historians, surely Vansyckle's sense of civic responsibility, his ambition for the economic growth of the region, and his skill as a writer drew the attention and admiration of his contemporaries, many of whom shared his values. As the writer Cumtux, he spoke for other frontier settlers, especially promoters and Democrats. His well-written and comprehensive letters provide us with an unusual record of a Columbia River port. His views on black suffrage reflected views commonly held by white settlers in the region, and his career provides significant details about the Pacific Northwest's economic development, including frontier speculation and the emergence of a commercial highway linking Portland with the Walla Walla Valley and the interior mines and later with the wheat trade.⁶⁵

Wallula fared no better than its major founder. In 1953, water behind McNary Dam covered its site and residents moved to higher ground noted for its sage, blowing sand, and numerous jackrabbits.

Notes

^1. William G. Loy, Atlas of Oregon (Eugene: University of Oregon, 1976), 42.

^2. Sketches of Vansyckle's California career are in Robert D. Livingston, "Stockton: Gateway to the Southern Mines," Western Express 42:4 (October 1992): 16. See also Portland Weekly Times (Oregon), April 9, 1859; Portland Weekly Oregonian, May 7, 1859.

^3.Oregonian, May 19, 1859.

^4.Salem Statesman (Ore.), October 4, 1859.

^5. Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest (Boston: Hougton Mifflin, 1997), 391.

^6. Thomas Teakle Collection, vol. 22, p. 161, Whitman College Library, Walla Walla, Washington.

^7.Walla Walla Statesman (Wash.), October 25, 1862.

^8. Historian Dorothy O. Johansen stated that investors formed the OSN "just in time to profit from the gold rush to Idaho." Empire of the Columbia: A History of the Pacific Northwest (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 279.

^9.Walla Walla Statesman, August 30, 1862.

^10.Olympia Overland Express, June 22, 1862, quoted in Dennis Baird, et. al., eds., The Nez Perce Nation Divided (Moscow: University of Idaho Press, 2002), 192.

^11.Walla Walla Union, August 27, 1881.

^12.Oregonian, June 17, 1862. See also J.S. Holladay, Rush for Riches: Gold Fever and the Making of California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 136–8.

^13.Oregonian, September 24, 1862.

^14. J.C. Ainsworth to stockholders, October 1863, Frank Gill Collection, Research Library, Oregon Historical Society, Portland [hereafter Gill Collection].

^15. See G. Thomas Edwards, "Walla Walla, Gateway to the Pacific Northwest Interior," Montana, the Magazine of Western History 40:3 (Summer 1990): 28–43.

^16.Portland Weekly Times, March 29, 1862.

^17.Cumtux is a variation of Kumtux, a Chinook jargon word meaning to know or understand. George Gibbs, A Dictionary of the Chinook Jargon (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1863), 11. Standard histories of the Walla Walla Valley do not contain a detailed account of Wallula's history, which D.W. Meinig concluded was brief but of "lasting fame." D.W. Meinig, The Great Columbia Plain: A Historical Geography, 1805–1910 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968), 44.

^18.Walla Walla Statesman, December 21, 1866.

^19. Ibid., February 9, 23, 1866.

^20. Ibid., December 28, 1866.

^21. Ibid., August 24, 1866.

^22. Ibid., October 12, 1866.

^23. Ibid., June 1, 1866.

^24. Arthur L. Throckmorton, Oregon Argonauts: Merchant Adventurers on the Western Frontier (Portland: Oregon Historical Society, 1961), 269.

^25.Walla Walla Statesman, August 24, 1866.

^26. Ibid., August 17, 1866. Cattle dealers had been driving herds along this long and arduous route since 1860.

^27. Ibid., September 28, 1866.

^28. Ibid., November 9, 1866.

^29. Ibid., September 14, 1866.

^30. Ibid., December 21, 1866.

^31. C. Aubrey Angelo, Sketches of Travel in Oregon and Idaho (1866; reprint, Fairfield, Wash.: Ye Galleon Press, 1988), 38.

^32.Walla Walla Statesman, October 12, 1866. On September 1, 1865, the editor of The Dalles Mountaineer charged that merchandise piled up on Umatilla's beach because there were too few teams to transport it into the interior. Furthermore, he insisted that The Dalles provided the best route to Boise and other points.

^33.Walla Walla Statesman, March 1, 1867.

^34. Ibid., June 1, 1866. See also Otis W. Freeman, "Early Wagon Roads in the Inland Empire," Pacific Northwest Quarterly 45:4 (October 1954): 125–30.

^35.Walla Walla Statesman, July 20, 1866.

^36. Ibid., May 18, 1866.

^37. Cumtux feared that OSN Vice President Simeon Reed was visiting the East Coast seeking political support for a wagon road. Reed was actually trying to convince Northern Pacific officials to construct a rail line from White Bluffs to Lake Pend Oreille. E. Kimbark MacColl, Merchants, Money & Power (Portland, Ore.: Georgian Press, 1988), 132.

^38.Walla Walla Statesman, September 7, 1866.

^39. J.C. Ainsworth to Governor G.L. Currey, January 23, 1866, Gill Collection.

^40.Walla Walla Statesman, May 8, 1868.

^41. Ibid., December 25, 1869.

^42. In the early 1880s, the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company and the Northern Pacific would utilize Wallula as a transfer point.

^43. Carlos Arnaldo Schwantes, Long Day's Journey: The Steamboat and Stagecoach Era in the Northern West (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999), 172. A prominent leader of OSN, John C. Ainsworth, explained that in 1867 the Central Pacific Railroad provided competitors an opportunity to supply the Boise Basin. Ainsworth explained that "the most profitable part of our river business was cut off. Our business fell by more than one half." John C. Ainsworth, "Reminiscences, 1892," J.C. Ainsworth Papers, Mss 504, Oregon Historical Society Research Library, Portland.

^44.Oregonian, February 3, 1866.

^45. Hazard Stevens Diary, March 1 and May 1, 1866, Suzzallo Library, University of Washington, Seattle.

^46. Throckmorton, Oregon Argonauts, 274.

^47.Walla Walla Statesman, March 29, 1867.

^48. Johansen, Empire of the Columbia, 280–1. In 1862, the Oregonian had supported the Columbia Transportation Company's efforts to challenge the OSN. "We are decidedly in favor of competition," the editor explained, "and would be much pleased to see a permanent and powerful line established immediately." But he warned that the rival must have "a long purse and an iron will" to compete with the powerful company. Weekly Oregonian, November 15, 1862.

^49.Walla Walla Statesman, November 22, 1867.

^50. Ibid., November 22, 1867.

^51.Oregonian, April 3, 1868.

^52.Walla Walla Statesman, November 22, 1867.

^53. Ibid., June 8, 1866.

^54. Ibid., September 20, 1867.

^55.Umatilla Columbia Press, September 7, 1867. See also the Democratic state platform in the Walla Walla Statesman, May 3, 1867.

^56. Eric Foner states, "On the West Coast, Democrats added anti-Chinese appeals, arguing that the Republican doctrine of 'universal equality for all races, in all things' would lead to an 'Asiatic' influx and control of the state by an alliance of 'the Mongolian and Indian and African.'" Reconstruction, 1863–1877 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 313–14.

^57. Shirley Ann Wilson Moore, "'We Feel the Want of Protection': The Politics of Law and Race in California, 1848–1878," California History, 82:3/4 (2003): 108. In mid-March, Congress passed the 1866 Civil Rights Act, which extended citizenship to African American men. Cumtux and other Democrats feared citizenship would be extended to Chinese and Indians as well. President Andrew Johnson vetoed the bill but Congress overrode the veto in early May 1866.

^58.Walla Walla Statesman, August 8, 1866. See also diary of J.M. Vansyckle, February 22, 1862, Eastern Washington Historical Society, Spokane.

^59.Walla Walla Statesman September 21, 1866.

^60. Ibid., November 9, 1866.

^61. Ibid., January 29, 1869.

^62. Ibid., May 18, 1866, November 13, 1869.

^63.Walla Walla Union, March 6, 1875; Oregonian, March 9, 1875.

^64. David A. Johnson, Founding the Far West: California, Oregon, and Nevada, 1840–1890 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 348.

^65. Eugene H. Berwanger, in The West and Reconstruction (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981), 207, writes "The fear of black suffrage apparently was more prevalent in Oregon than in other western states." This was also true of southeastern Washington.

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