A. J. Cain’s meerschaum pipe, featuring a wolf, cottage, and brick texturing. Along the bottom is inscribed the year, “1860.”

This specimen is perhaps the finest piece of smoking paraphernalia you’ve ever laid eyes on. The material is meerschaum, a rare mineral found almost exclusively in a valley in western Turkey.[1] Fresh out of the ground, meerschaum is a bright white and very malleable. Gradually it turns a rich brown when exposed to tobacco smoke. The pipe still has a rich smell. Whoever owned this pipe was an avid smoker of sophisticated taste. The story of its owner, Andrew J. Cain, will be our topic for this two-part entry on the early history of Walla Walla.

The pipe can be linked to Cain on the basis of a single note of unknown origin, attached with a bit of string. It reads:

“A. J. Cain, the original owner of this pipe, built his homestead cabin in the Walla Walla valley in 1859 . . .  Considerable noteworthy history was created by Cain, due to his activities while living in the valley.”

This glimpse of Cain was far too tantalizing to pass up. What could be meant by “considerable noteworthy history?”  Little is written of Cain, but we have just enough information to piece together his biography. His is a story which traces the development of the Walla Walla Valley at the time.

Cain ‘homesteaded’ and was, apparently, an early Walla Walla pioneer. You’d be wrong, though, if you were thinking of the buckskin, outdoors, roughing-it sort of pioneer. A. J. Cain was a pioneer of the law, one of Walla Walla’s earliest legal professionals. Cain began his career in the Walla Walla Valley at Fort Walla Walla in 1858, where he was employed as a quartermaster’s clerk. There he helped to prepare the treaty which ended the Yakima War. Shortly after, in 1859 or 1860, Cain moved to Walla Walla and began a legal practice.

When Cain moved to Walla Walla, the Fort was still the most prominent feature of the region. W.D. Lyman, quoting another historian in his History of Walla Walla County, writes:

“‘Had the military post been abandoned in 1860 but few whites would have remained east of the Cascades, and the stock-raising would have been the only inducement for anyone to remain there.'”

This was the town that Cain moved to, a local center of mild agricultural expectations. I have little record of Cain’s life before this time. Early in life he was a steamboat clerk. It’s possible that he was a general in the U.S. Army, but when and where remains unkown. Without more information, it’s impossible to know his intentions at the time. But Cain, probably in his middle-age, might have expected a quiet career. But Walla Walla would soon change, along with Cain’s fortunes.

At public school in Kansas, I learned to associate the term “gold rush” with California. I never learned, for example, of a multi-million dollar gold extraction industry in western Idaho. But, beginning with an ad-hoc foray into Nez Perce territory,[2] the discovery of gold in this region would dramatically alter the trajectory of our little town under the Blues.

In the summer of 1860, a group of miners from California put together an expedition upon hearing the tale of an immense diamond near modern Orofino, ID. The miners would never find their precious stone, but the gold they found while panning in the river was more than enough to send them shouting back to Walla Walla. By the following summer of 1861, Walla Walla––the only incorporated town in the remote area––was the chief outfitter for a horde of miners destined for Idaho. By the end of 1862, at least $7 million in gold dust had been collected from the region. And the rush was just beginning.

A map of the first gold discovery at camp Orofino relative to Walla Walla. Miners traveling East had a long way to go from Walla Walla, the nearest incorporated town at the time.

Walla Walla saw rapid growth in this period. The number of people passing through at any given time was enough to swell its effective population, even if the number of permanent residents increased modestly. Demand overshot supply. During this time, it seems, Cain became a wealthy businessman. In 1861, he invested in the region’s first railroad from Walla Walla to Wallula. This venture would prove immensely profitable. In 1863, he established what became known as “Cain’s Addition” to the city limits: With a partner, Cain filed a patent on 160 acres of land northeast of downtown Walla Walla. The addition’s eight buildings doubled in the next year and grew rapidly thenceforth. These and other transactions described by newspapers suggest that Cain was a very wealthy man.

Cain’s addition the area within the box, Whitman campus to the right. Some students  live within Cain’s addition today.

Cain’s pipe is an apt representation of Walla Walla in this time. In less than half a decade, Walla Walla developed from a quiet hamlet to a bustling center of commerce. As a luxury item in a frontier town, this pipe is a rare incongruity and sign of the times. And Cain, caught up in the middle of it all, was able to capitalize. But the economic boom was, in the opinion of some citizens, not entirely for the better. Next time, I’ll discuss Walla Walla’s political climate in which Cain––a figure with a mixed reputation––played an increasingly prominent role.