The Struggle for a New County
Citizens in the Wenatchee Valley argue that traveling across the Cascades to reach their county seats is an unreasonable burden for local governance.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The Wenatchee river divides Kittitas from Okanogan county. The people south of that river are compelled to travel from fifty to eighty miles and cross mountains 6,000 feet high to reach Ellensburg, their county seat; those north of the river must attend to county business in Conconully, 150 to 180 miles distant, paying carriage over the Columbia river twice, and travel sixty miles through Douglas county. Kittitas county is as large as the state of Connecticut, and Okanogan county could carve out a new county and have something to spare. The natural consequence is petty jealousy. The county seat folks think we want too much; our people say we get too little. We get the poorest kind of local government and the highest kind of taxes. The time spent traveling back and forth to the county seat—each trip of a juror, witness, election courier, sheriff, school superintendent, etc.—costs the county from $12 to $30 for mileage alone, and there is nothing left for roads, bridges, schools and legitimate expenses. More than half the disorder at Wenatchee during the past summer would have been prevented by a county seat and jail within reach. The people in this valley are unanimous in favor of organizing a county out of portions of Kittitas and Douglas. The Board of Trade here has appointed a committee to take the matter in hand.
“The county seat folks think we want too much; our people say we get too little.”
This 1893 report captures the administrative frustration of the frontier, where geographic isolation effectively denied citizens basic local services. It resonates with contemporary regional debates about the centralization of government services and the disconnect between remote communities and distant urban-centric authorities.
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