Tiny town of Palouse opens gateway to rolling hills' past

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Tiny town of Palouse opens gateway to rolling hills' past

By MELISSA O'NEIL
Herald staff writer

PALOUSE - The whole town is likely to turn out at Saturday's Palouse Day celebration.

It'll be hard not to - the fire bell will ring to round up the 1,000 residents for the 6 a.m. breakfast.

This year's annual affair also marks the town's continued recovery from a February flood in which four feet of water raged down Main Street and wreaked havoc with businesses and historic sites.

Among those was the Boomerang Newspaper & Printing Museum, which earned mention in the book, Washington Off the Beaten Path. Parts of the museum repaired since the flood will be open during the celebration.

The museum features hot-metal presses, photographs, books, magazines and newspapers from around Eastern Washington. Stacked against the front window, for example, are boxes with labels such as The Cashmere Valley Record, January 1945 through December 1955.

Saturday's events include a parade, flea market, bike race, basketball, volleyball and a classic car show.

Registration for the 23H-mile bike ride is 8-9 a.m. at Bagatt Motors in downtown Palouse, and the race starts at 9:30 a.m.

All the events are along Main Street. For more information on the race or other activities, call 509-878-1735.

The three antique stores should be open, and the one restaurant also hopes to be doing business by then. The grocery store opened a few weeks ago, and the Palouse Cabouse Tavern is open daily.

The Palouse area is a beautiful agricultural region, with rolling hills and waves of grain. Crops include wheat, barley and lentils.

Palouse as a town was a busy place in the late 1800s, when it supplied gold miners and loggers across the border in Idaho.

"When payday came it was whoop and holler on Main Street as the loggers ended months of isolation," according to Exploring Washington's Past, a Road Guide to History.

The situation changed in about 1904. That's when the Potlatch Lumber Co. decided to build its new mill in Idaho instead of Washington.

"The Palouse mill cut lumber to build its rival mill and town, then, outmoded and inefficient, was itself closed. The town gently declined from its days of a booming and varied economy into simply a modest agricultural center for local farmers," authors Ruth Kirk and Carmela Alexander wrote.

Now the town of Palouse is a quaint side trip to satisfy lovers of antiques and historic brick buildings, perhaps as they head to a Washington State University football game. Part of Main Street is on the National Register of Historic Places, and renovation work has started on the St. Elmo Hotel.

Hotel owners Bob and Jackie Strack are trying to replace the brick building's balcony, featured in photos taken in 1890, and might turn the three-story inn into a bed and breakfast. Meanwhile, the first floor holds St. Elmo's Antiques, owned by Jackie Strack and Sue Akin.

There are several ways to get to Palouse.

Essentially, you drive to Colfax and turn northeast, instead of turning south to Pullman.

One way is drive north on Highway 395, then get on Highway 26 east to Colfax. At Colfax, turn north onto Highway 272. It's 17 miles to Palouse.

It's about 140 miles from the Tri-Cities and, with the two-lane highways through the rolling hills, takes about 2 1/2 hours.

And it's an easy trip between Palouse and Pullman - about 15 miles south on Highway 27.

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