August 26

Today we saw our first apple orchards, potatoes and onions from Pendleton, Oregon to Walla Walla, Washington. We did laundry and I was working on my cathedral window quilt when a man stopped to tell me about his grandmother who used to quilt. He said he got quilts, pillows and other things for Christmas and still has all the quilts.

We started out at an Interpretive Center in College Place, WA, a "suburb" of Walla Walla, WA.

Here are pouches that were used to carry gold dust that was mined near Walla Walla.

 This was a water wagon which was used to carry water to the steam threshing machines. The equipment in the Museum in College Place, near Walla Walla had much equipment that we have never seen. They farm in a much different way than in Indiana. Very interesting.

 This was a 33-mule team pulling a machine that cut, threshed and bagged wheat. The header on the machine was 12' which is far larger than anything used in Indiana at that time. Again, we had never seen anything that used the 33-mule team. Only in the Borax ads and commercials have I seen them.

This is the interior of a sheep herder's wagon. They would stay out with the sheep. A lot of sheep were raised around here.

Poor Pop is in jail again. This time it is the Washington Territorial Prison in 1886. The prison cells looked a lot like the ones at Alcatraz in San Francisco which opened in 1903.








This is the cook's wagon that was used to take to the fields when they were threshing wheat. It is amazing that enough food for 50 or so men could be cooked, from scratch, in this. I can't imagine how hot it must have been inside it. At home when I was 6 or 7, I would go with my mother to my grandparent's farm when the threshing crew was there. Mom and several of the neighbor women would help cook for the crew. The women would go from house to house with their husbands and help cook at each farm while the men helped thresh. I got to ride in a pony cart with an older boy to take water out to the men in glass jugs. I remember one time that some how a jug got broken and the boy got into trouble for it.

This was called a push header that was used near Walla Walla. The horses were behind the header but harnessed so they pulled on the harness but "pushed" because they were behind it. The wagons behind it are really different too. They followed the cutter and the wheat was piled into them then the wagon would go to the thresher.





We went to the Whitman Mission. Marcus and Narcissa Whitman started a mission for the Indians then it also became a stopping point for weary emigrants. On one wagon train both the mother and father of 7 small children were killed. Others looked after them until they got to the Whitman Mission where they left the children. The Whitman's then adopted them. The mission was located in the grassy area with a very small grist mill by the pond. He made canals so he could irrigate crops.