of seven thousand inhabitants, besides a board of trade and a business worth eleven million dollars annually. The land-office for this district is located here. So is the State penitentiary.
The flour industry of the city and county amounts to two hundred and seventy thousand barrels annually; the oldest miller in East Washington being Mr. H. P. Isaacs, who erected in 1862 a mill, which has been twice rebuilt to keep pace with the improvements which he found desirable. The very best of roller flour is manufactured here, which finds a market in Liverpool and San Francisco.
Walla Walla, besides its grain and flour trade, jobs one million dollars' worth of general merchandise throughout the valley. One firm, H. Dusenberry & Co., which has been here since 1858, furnishes a number of establishments in outlying towns, and has connections with San Francisco. No, Walla Walla is not a new town, nor has it ever been said of it that it is a marvel of rapid growth; but I think I like it all the better that its growth is natural and hardy. Whatever u moss" it has upon it now will fall off with a few more years' increase.
The drives about the city are excellent. The chief point of attraction to visitors is the garrison, just outside of the city limits. The post was established, as I have said, in 1856, by Colonel Steptoe, at a point now within the present corporation, but removed in the following year to the slight eminence which it now occupies, and improvements were then begun. I have been informed that the first wheat sown in the Walla Walla Yalley was sown in this year by the troops at the fort, under the direction of Quartermaster-General E. G. Kirkham. If we except the grain grown by the mission superintendent in the '40's, this is probably true. Both gentlemen took it for granted that only the bottom-lands were fit for agriculture, devoting the valley in general to stock-raising, and. it was some years before it was found that the uplands were prime wheat lands.
The post was abandoned in 1866, and re-occupied in 1873, since which date there has been a strong force kept here, and it is a handsome and comfortable place of residence for the officers and soldiers here stationed. It cuts no little figure, besides, in the trade of the town, there being expended by the military each year about four hundred thousand dollars.
