WALLA WALLA -- First came the Cayuse, the Yakamas and the Nez Perce, then Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, and then the Presbyterians.
The farmers with their wheat and peas and sweet onions were next, then came three colleges and a state prison.
But you ought to see Walla Walla now. It has caught more than lightning in a bottle.
It's the wine.
Safe to say, though, that if it's Three-Buck-Chuck that lights your wick, the closest Trader Joe's is four hours west.
This is the good stuff, and it has turned a fairly well-off but colorless downtown into a bustling minitropolis where Macy's remains the anchor of a vibrant shopping district, and where a suburban mall is the place in trouble.
An industry that became "official" only in 1984 with two wineries had all of six by 1990 but today can boast of 80 as productive members of the Walla Walla Wine Alliance.
Moreover, in a city with more downtown churches than taverns, visitors are able to test the "nose" of a cabernet sauvignon or argue over the "finish" of a fine Gewurztraminer in no fewer than 20 special winery tasting rooms, most in a cluster around East Main Street and South Second Avenue.
If you're bashful and wonder where to begin, Myles J. Anderson has a suggestion:
"Just find a parking spot and start walking," he said.
If you're truly ambitious and have learned to spit and not swallow, you might want to start with the Woodward Canyon Winery or L'Ecole No. 41, or both, on the highway into town.
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Gordy Holt / Seattle P-I
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A dog's life can mean a lot of people watching for these canines awaiting their owner's return in downtown Walla Walla.
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Anderson is a former student counselor now in charge of the 5-year-old Institute for Enology and Viticulture at Walla Walla Community College. The first of its kind in the nation, the institute offers a two-year associate-in-arts degree in winemaking and boasts its own winery and vineyard.
Anderson and a partner, Gordy Venneri, whose Italian heritage figures in all of this, are among the handful of first-wave winemakers who, back in the early 1990s, came upon an idea to do something more with their hobby than just talk about it.
"It just kept getting bigger and bigger," Venneri said, "until one of our partners suggested he put a tasting room in a house he was building and that we start selling the stuff."
About the sangiovese Anderson and Venneri now produce at their own Walla Walla Vintners facility east of town, they say on their Web site, it "has a classic leather-saddle nose along with a fruity midpalate and a finish of black olive and caponata (that's a Sicilian dish of tomatoes and eggplant) with capers."
The trouble is, they go on to recommend sipping it "with a black truffle pizza topped with pecorino Romano shavings," and for a visitor from Seattle, that's exactly what they don't serve at Papa Murphy's.
But this is history.
What of the future?
R.W. Apple Jr., epicurean voice of The New York Times, put it this way after his Walla Walla visit just one year ago.
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Gordy Holt / Seattle P-I
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These waves of grain aren't yet amber, but they're working on it in the undulating wheat fields of Walla Walla County.
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Walla Walla, he said, "reminded me of St. Helena in the Napa Valley 35 years ago, when that town was just emerging as a wine capital, before it was overrun by Silicon Valley zillionaires and tourists on excursions from San Francisco."
Walla Walla, he said, "seems safe from that fate; the nearest big city, Spokane, 125 miles away, is short of both tourists and zillionaires."
Yeah ... but from the zillionaires in Portland and Seattle? Even at $3.29 a gallon for the gas to get here -- if they drive and don't fly -- what are the odds against $150 quarts of Walla Walla red?
Is enough yet enough?
Myles Anderson put it this way: "When you have a Starbucks in the middle of town, like ours on Main Street, you know you've made it."
"What's happened here in Walla Walla is hard for a native like me to believe," Venneri said. "We were doing OK with the peas, the onions and the penitentiary. There was the vets hospital. And two private hospitals. We had Whitman College, Walla Walla College and Walla Walla Community College.
"But at night we rolled up the sidewalks."
Not anymore.
The restaurants of this era stay open past 8 and come with names like 26 Brix, where, for $80, you can find a lobe of Hudson Valley foie gras for just $80.
An Angus filet at The Marc Restaurant in the town's big hotel, the Marcus Whitman, is moderately priced by Seattle standards at $29, and you may want the seared duck for $21.
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Gordy Holt / Seattle P-I
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Main Street is still Walla Walla's main street, a place where Macy's is helping to advance a downtown retail renaissance that was triggered by wine tasting and a new appreciation for the 19th-century architecture of this 144-year-old city.
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Entrees at The Whitehouse-Crawford top out at $29, too, and you'll find three lamb chops for $28 at the Backstage Bistro. On a Friday night you may run into local jazz pianist Doug Scarborough. Shove a few bucks into his wineglass. He's worth it.
So, for a town once cherished for its college-preparatory jobs in the pea harvest, the changes have been dramatic, mostly so along Main Street. That's where you'll find the cladding left by 1950s siding salesmen stripped away to reveal the warm-and-cozy details of century-old brick.
Just up the block from Macy's, Kendra Bennett, next door to Starbucks, says the traffic has increased through her own Coffee Perk where you can ask for a double-tall, extra-hot latte easy on the sweetening, and, way out here in wheat country, actually get it.
Seattle transplant Craig Richards and Walla Walla native Teresa Morasch are enjoying this renaissance in the old JCPenney's building, elegantly redone for their pricey Walla Walla Clothing Co.
As Richards watered his potted arborvitae 'Pyramidalis' out front, he was careful of his slacks, his shirt and his tie while noting the slow but steady change in local attitudes.
"You can't underestimate the wineries," he said.
With all this activity attracting world notice, the action has begun to send real estate prices toward the numbers seen on Queen Anne Hill. Along the thickly treed avenues of the Whitman College neighborhoods, for example, be prepared for $500,000 price tags should any turn up for sale.
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Gordy Holt / Seattle P-I
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In the rolling hills of wheat just north of Walla Walla, Seattleites Brody LaRock and Lindsey Smith seal their vows with a kiss.
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The real estate bargains today -- at least through next weekend -- are in the tiny farm towns of Waitsburg and Prescott 20 miles north. While as yet there is little to see but the rolling hills that mark The Palouse, you may get the chance to watch a wedding unfold at the edge of a wheat field or in Waitsburg to test the year-old menu of the Whoopemup Hollow Cafe, which is where you really get the sense that times are changing:
You need reservations because the place is packed.
IF YOU GO
Wine may have become the be-all for Walla Walla these days, but don't forget:
* Your bikes -- Pick up a Walla Walla Valley Bicycle Route Map at almost any hotel or motel. Pick from six routes that, from the city center, range out into the wheat fields, up along Mill Creek toward the Blue Mountains, and tour the neighborhoods of Whitman College.
* Fort Walla Walla Museum -- 755 Myra Road; www.fortwallawallamuseum.org [1]
* Whitman Mission National Historic Site -- Just off U.S. Route 12 seven miles west of Walla Walla; goto.seattlepi.com/r187 [2]
* Pioneer Park -- Alder and Division streets east of Whitman College. A 58-acre, 105-year-old civic jaw-dropper designed by John C. Olmsted during one of his swings west. (John and his brother, Frederick, provided the basic plan for today's Seattle park system.) There are century-old London plane trees, among the largest in the Northwest and part of the city's Heritage Tree Program, and a 1910-vintage bandstand/gazebo where "The Stars and Stripes Forever" can be heard every July 4th.
* Farmers market -- On summer Saturdays make a point to stop at the farmers market in Crawford Park, Main between Third and Fourth streets. (You will have missed the stirring music of Chilean guitarist Cesar Medel, but he's worth following -- www.cesarmedel.com [3]; you can catch him Saturday at the farmers market in Kingston, and next Thursday at the farmers market in Snohomish.)
* If you probe into The Palouse as far as Waitsburg, check out the Whoopemup Hollow Cafe -- 120 Main St. Reservations, no kidding, they're required: 509-337-9000.
* Looking ahead to next year's Walla Walla Hot Air Balloon Stampede: Set aside May 11-13. SEATTLE DRIVERS TAKE NOTE
Eastern Washington is where Westsiders, who may have forgotten, reacquaint themselves with the reason why the word "freeway" was adopted to describe six-lane thoroughfares with limited access and massive, sprawling interchanges.
You build them in the desert where there aren't many cars.
Throughout the Puget Sound basin there are six-lane thoroughfares with limited access but they ceased to be (or never were) freeways decades ago.
In the desert of south central Washington, however, even the home-bound, getaway "rush hour" of a late Friday afternoon is a breeze that Seattle drivers will experience in all three dimensions. While traversing the six-lane, I-182 cutoff over the Yakima and Columbia rivers between Richland and Pasco, the Western Washington driver will encounter barely more than a dozen other drivers at any one time.
Even the shoulders are wide enough for a couple of Hummers, parked side-by-side in tribute to the cunning and craftsmanship of Eastern Washington legislators in the annual scramble for state highway money.
P-I reporter Gordy Holt can be reached at 206-448-8356 or gordyholt@seattlepi.com.
Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company
