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Growing Ambition

This week HistoryLink notes several cities celebrating incorporation anniversaries, beginning with the state’s two largest, Seattle (shown above ca. 1872) and Spokane. Seattle’s first town charter was granted in 1865, but then voided in a political backlash. The Washington Territorial Legislature reincorporated the city on December 2, 1869, this time for good. Spokane got its start on November 29, 1881, as Spokane Falls.  A few months earlier, the tiny community was the seat of Spokane County, but armed citizens from Cheney had wrested away the title when they swiped the county records and its auditor. Fortunately for Spokane Falls residents, the city became an important railroad terminus, and voters made it the county seat again in 1886.

No sooner did Yakima City incorporate on December 1, 1883, than its residents learned that the Northern Pacific Railway would not stop in their town, but at a new townsite it had platted about five miles to the northwest. So they uprooted 100 buildings and moved them to where the depot would be. The new community, at first called North Yakima, later became simply Yakima, and what was left of Yakima City became Union Gap.

Over in Pacific County, Ilwaco incorporated on December 2, 1890, and became well known as an excellent fishing location, as well as a great place to grow cranberries. As the Columbia River’s gateway to the sea, the city is home to the Port of Ilwaco, as well as the U.S. Coast Guard’s National Motor Lifeboat School.

In 1949 developers eyed logged-over land about 12 miles north of Seattle, just over the Snohomish County line, and began filling it with 640-square-foot cinder-block houses priced at $4,999 and aimed at World War II veterans with young families. Five years later, on November 29, 1954, the quickly growing community incorporated as Mountlake Terrace.

And finally there’s Lacey, which was settled in the 1840s but didn’t incorporate until December 5, 1966. The transition didn’t go smoothly. After the election, some residents fought for annexation to nearby Olympia, while others sought to revert to unincorporated Thurston County. In the end, it all got sorted out in the courts, hopefully to everyone’s satisfaction.

Out on a Mission

In 1836, Dr. Marcus Whitman — a Presbyterian minister and physician — established a mission at Waiilatpu on the Walla Walla River after traveling cross-country with his wife, Narcissa. Whitman’s goal was to convert Cayuse Indians to Christianity and to teach them how to farm.

The far-flung Cayuse were master horsemen and evinced little interest in becoming settled farmers or adopting a new religion. Missionary reinforcements were sent from back East, including Elkanah and Mary Walker, who settled among the Spokane Indians and created a mission at Tshimikain. Meanwhile, the Whitman Mission became an important rest stop on the Oregon Trail.

The Cayuse resented the increasing number of emigrants passing through their land, but the breaking point came during a measles epidemic in 1847. Whitman tried to help cure the Indians, but they lacked immunity to the virus. More than half the tribe died, while almost all of Whitman’s white patients recovered. Believing that Whitman had infected them, some Cayuse retaliated on November 29, 1847, killing 13 white settlers and missionaries, including the Whitmans. Public outrage over the attack led to a war of retaliation against the Cayuse and spurred the creation of Oregon Territory.

NEWS THEN, HISTORY NOW

Valley Irrigation

On December 4, 1889, Walter Granger and a group of Minnesota investors organized the Yakima Land and Canal Company, which in turn created the Sunnyside Project, the valley’s first commercial irrigation venture. And on December 2, 1905, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior approved the first U.S. Reclamation Service project in Washington, the Okanogan Irrigation Project.

Champagne Celebration

On December 5, 1933, America’s experiment with Prohibition officially ended with Utah’s ratification of the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. (Washington voters had repealed the state’s ban on alcohol a year earlier). Imposed statewide after 1915,  four years before the national ban, the experiment in social engineering led to increased crime, conspiracy, and corruption, which influenced the successful  efforts to repeal it.

Building Habitation

On December 2, 1939, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt approved funding for Yesler Terrace, located on Seattle’s First Hill. The project — overseen by the Seattle Housing Authority — was completed shortly after the nation entered World War II, at which point the SHA focused on providing housing for defense-industry workers and military families.