The Growing Pains of Yakima
Civic leaders push for a permanent, fire-safe courthouse to replace the aging, cramped wooden structure that no longer serves a booming frontier city.
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 Board of Trade of our city appointed a committee to memorialize our county fathers to take the necessary steps towards constructing a suitable county courthouse and hall of records. The wooden structure on Second street in this city, which now offers an excuse for county buildings, in old sage brush times answered the purpose. Then we lived in log cabins and were, per force of necessity, satisfied with our surroundings. Now, being enveloped by beautiful mansions and stately houses of commerce and trade, our old court house is as much out of place as the cowhide boots of the miner in the boudoir of a society belle. Yakima county is growing and is fast filling up with a thrifty population. Our public records, evidencing transactions and titles running up into the millions, must be preserved. Their present receptacle is inconvenient, circumscribed and absolutely unsafe because of fire. Our county officers are not fittingly provided with offices. Our court room is like a great barren hay loft and has no jury rooms or waiting apartments for witnesses.
“Our old court house is as much out of place as the cowhide boots of the miner in the boudoir of a society belle.”
The struggle for a 'suitable' seat of government is a familiar refrain in Yakima's history. Just as 1889 leaders grappled with the transition from frontier boomtown to established city, modern Yakima continues to wrestle with the infrastructure demands of a rapidly growing regional hub.
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