Other inhabitants of the valley included the Liksiyu (Cayuse), Imatalamłáma (Umatilla), and Niimíipu (Nez Perce) indigenous peoples.

[8] In 1818, Fort Walla Walla (originally Fort Nez Percés), a fur trading outpost run by Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), was established and operated as an important stopping point in Oregon Country.

[27][28] The United States Army established a presence in a series of military forts beginning in 1856.

[27][31] In 1858, the department was split, leaving Washington territory under the command of General William S. Harney, who lifted the ban on October 31, 1858.

[27][31] Thousands of pioneers swarmed to the area, creating a burgeoning farming and mining community.

[37][38] On December 20, 1859, the first educational charter was granted to Whitman Seminary, a high school, which opened on October 15, 1866.

[39] The Mullan Road, the first wagon road to cross the Rocky Mountains into the Pacific Northwest, tied Walla Walla to more mining opportunities, and after gold was discovered in 1860, the area became the outfitting point for the Oro Fino, Idaho mines.

[47][43][48] During the 1860s, the city established its first businesses and community gathering spaces, a number of which served as the first in Pacific Northwest.

[65] Downtown also hosted a post office, several hotels, restaurants, a bathhouse and shaving saloon, a liquor store, a drugstore, and several manufactories.

[65][66] During the gold rush, large populations of Chinese settlers arrived in the city from Portland, Oregon, creating a neighborhood referred to as "Chinatown".

[70][71] In 1886, while Washington was lobbying for statehood, local business man Levi Ankeny donated 160 acres of land to the city to serve as the site of a new prison.

[8] Italian settlers from Lonate Pozzolo and Calabria regions formed the core of the gardening industry, and settled in neighborhoods known as "Blalock" and the "South Ninth".

[85] The neighborhood built around the Russian-German immigrants is known as "Germantown" or "Russische Ecke (Russian Corner)" to locals, referring to the creek that runs through it as "Little Volga".

[88][64] By the 1890s, wine, beer, liquor, and tobacco taxes accounted for 90% of the city's revenue,[66] but the alcohol industries died out with Prohibition in the United States.

[93][94][95] Bon-Macy's parent company, Federated Department Stores, rebranded all of its subsidiaries to Macy's, which operated in the Liberty building until 2020.

[96][97] In 1927, the Real Estate Improvement Company of Seattle invested $300,000 toward the construction of the Marcus Whitman Hotel.

Community volunteers jury-rigged makeshift levees to divert water from buildings during the cleanup which cost roughly $100,000.

The United States Army Corps of Engineers built the Mill Creek Dam and Bennington Lake in response to the disaster.

Workers went on strike for better wages in September 1949, and Kelly had two employees arrested for speaking to the Tri-City Herald.

Church was one of four juice companies in the region to be charged with violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 for price-fixing grapes.

[116] The first hops farms since prohibition were planted in 2018,[90][117] and in 2019, Washington State Department of Corrections announced a plan to bring a vineyard and hopyard to Washington State Penitentiary, along with agricultural science education to prepare inmates for careers in the field.

The program would offer inmates state-wide minimum wages, a practice only legally enforced by state law at private institutions.

[127] The slogan was coined by Al Jolson, who had visited the city in the early 1900s in The Keylor Grand Theater.

The city lies in the rain shadow of the Cascade Mountains, so annual precipitation is fairly low.

Following the wine boom, the town has developed several fine dining establishments and luxury hotels.

Although most of the early recognition went to the wines made from Merlot and Cabernet, Syrah is fast becoming a star varietal in this appellation.

On average these happen once every six or seven years; the penultimate occurrence (in 2004) destroyed about 75% of the wine grape crop in the valley.

In 2014, the penitentiary underwent an extensive expansion project to increase the prison capacity to 2,500 violent offenders and double the staff size.

In only their second season the Sweets played in the WCL Championship game, ultimately losing to the Corvallis Knights.

The Sweets lost their North Division playoff series to the Wenatchee Applesox that year.