Frenchtown

Frenchtown. . Fur traders began coming to this area after the 1804-06 Lewis and Clark Expedition. In 1818, the Canadian Northwest Company established Fort Nez Perce, the first trading post in this area, near the confluence of the Walla Walla and Columbia rivers with the permission of Walla Walla leader Tamatappam. In 1821, the post became the Hudson's Bay Company when the two fur companies merged. Later it was known as Fort Walla Walla, different from the more recent military fort at the town of Walla Walla. The early Hudson's Bay Company employees with their wives, most from local tribes, began to build cabins and establish frams in this valley in 1823-1824. , Frenchtown was a collection of French-Canadian log cabins scattered among Indian camps, beginning west of present-day Lowden and extending almost to today's Walla Walla. It could be said that Frenchtown's Main Street was the Walla Walla River. , In 1836, when American missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman established their mission two miles east of here, there were already around a dozens of French-Canadian families occupying log cabins and farms in the area. One of these early settlers. Louis Tellier, was hired by the Whitmans as a millwright. By 1847 there were over 50 Metis, or mixed blood, families living along the Walla Walla River and nearby Mill Creek, Pine Creek, Dry Creek, and Mud Creek. , During the Yakama War in 1855, nearly all Frenchtown residents were forced to leave, but some returned along with other French and Métis families at the war's end, including an 1859 influx motivated by mining prospects in Idaho. In 1863, a Catholic chapel that was burned during the war was rebuilt and moved here, and a new cemetery was established along the river. Around 1870, a log schoolhouse was built nearby, and in 1876 the Saint Rose of Lima Mission and the final cemetery was established here in the heart of historic Frenchtown.