The Last Hurrah for Walla Walla’s Volunteer Firemen
An era of local firefighting comes to a close as the city ships off the historic hand engines and hook-and-ladder trucks that defined the volunteer department for decades.
The story, cleaned up
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By Wednesday evening, every vestige of the old fire apparatus used by the volunteer fire department will have disappeared from this city. Today, the old hand engine, the antiquated hook-and-ladder truck, and two hose carts were brought from the corporation shed to the city hall to be prepared for shipment. The hand engine and one hose cart go to Portland as partial payment for a new steam engine, while the hook-and-ladder truck and remaining cart have been sold to the city of Ritzville. Many old volunteer firemen gathered at the engine house this morning to reminisce about the days when they 'ran with the machine.' The hand engine arrived in Walla Walla in 1876 and was long operated by the Tiger Engine Company. In 1888, a new generation of men, including future Spokane mayor L. Frank Boyd, forced their way into the department, and for years, they manually pulled the heavy machine through the mud to reach fires.
“Many stories of how the boys used to 'run with the machine' were told and many of the big fires that occurred in their days as firemen were related.”
The transition from volunteer-run, manually operated equipment to municipal steam-powered engines marks the professionalization of city services at the turn of the century. It echoes contemporary debates about how Walla Walla balances the preservation of its volunteer-legacy heritage with the infrastructure needs of a rapidly modernizing city.
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