Fort Walla Walla Museum

Just inside the entrance of the Fort Walla Walla Museum is a display on poster boards of key buildings in the city “Then, and Now.” I always enjoy these kinds of photos. I liked this one especially, because the night before I was intrigued by a beautiful building in town, and snapped the photo above. “What is that building?” I asked my brother, Ian. He did not know. My question was fully answered at the museum.

It’s the old Liberty Theatre, and is now used as retail space. What a pretty building.

Anyway, the museum. Ian was able to join us at the Fort Walla Walla museum that he and Karen had not been able to visit yet. I highly suspect this one would be a richer experience in warmer months. Located on the actual grounds of the 19th century military fort, part of the museum includes 17 buildings from its heyday. We spotted the collection of original buildings called Pioneer Village, but were too cold to investigate.

Inside the main building are some interesting exhibits that did not seem entirely relevant to the area or the fort. There was an entire room of “old stuff,” like the fashion exhibit with hats, dresses and gowns from the 1920s and 1930s, as well as consumer items, postcards and advertisements from the same time period. No particular reference to the area was provided, so it lacked context. Our favourite really old thing was this marvelous antique cash register in the gift shop. I’m pretty sure it had nothing to do with the Fort, but it was neat. Can’t believe I didn’t get a photo.

There is a small medical section that is quite interesting, and relevant to the area, as the hospital, nursing school, and sanitarium are part of Walla Walla history. This one had several uniforms worn by nurses and student nurses and nun nurses (all women in those days).

In fact, there were lots of clothes in the museum. Lots of uniforms, which we were fascinated with, because the soldier bodies that wore them must have been so slight. Not only shorter than us, but a thin build. We also liked seeing the old flags with different numbers of stars. For those unfamiliar, the US flag changes every time we officially add a new state. There weren’t always 50 states, and for example, the flags above represent when we had 31 states, and then 32 states. The big Garrison Flag with Pedro is when we had 38 states.

In the Lloyd family exhibit, we find a huge collection of Indian items that were not looted, but gifted. It’s so rare and I appreciate this greatly. The Lloyd family became very close to the Palouse tribe (pah loose), and they shared items with each other for years out of friendship and respect. The items here were donated by the family estate.

There are multiple outbuildings. In January, it can be described as Ian did to Karen later, “Each building colder than the one before! The last building didn’t even have a door.” Like I mentioned at the beginning, we may have enjoyed the stop more on a warmer day.

Ian was describing the outdoor exhibit halls. We left the main museum and walked outside to a series of separate warehouse-style storage buildings that held an enormous quantity of more cool old stuff. We couldn’t always place the displays in a context that seemed important to the site, but the stuff was still interesting.

Between each building we had to walk outside in the sharply cold air and brisk wind. Inside, each building was indeed colder than the one before. The last few exhibit halls had no heat on. And the very last one had a door wide open.

The entrance fee was $10 apiece, and I think that is fair for such a large museum. I think it could benefit at some point in the future by having someone come and rearrange it all to tell a story for all this stuff that pulls it together. Because of the name of the museum, I came expecting to learn about the history of this particular fort, and realized eventually that it might just be more of a general history museum, with the fort as one part of it. The gift shop was even more unhelpful in guiding me toward the unifying theme I was looking for, selling things that had even less to do with the fort, such as a series of childrens activity books with topics ranging from Harry Potter to World War II to the Trail of Tears, local onion mustards and chutneys, and modern ceramic pottery. They did sell wooden toy military swords, which I thought was spot on.

That evening – my birthday – we all went out again for another great meal. I got to turn 54 years old in the company of my dear Pedro and my awesome brother Ian and sister-in-law Karen. We did eventually get warm again, and we stuffed ourselves too full, and I had an outstanding dirty gin martini. So, you know, it was perfect. ❤