The Maze of the Snake River Hills

The Walla Walla county commissioners will soon have a vast amount of road matters to occupy their attention if they decide to take up the proposition of straightening out the tangled county roads between Walla Walla and the Snake River. Commissioner McCaw and Surveyor Loehr spent several days last week on the flat looking over many thoroughfares that had been closed up, and they reported the result of their investigation to the board this week. 'We found some very rough roads near the Snake River,' said Surveyor Loehr, 'and it will take a great deal of work to get them in good shape. Judging from some of them, the surveyors in early days did not pay much attention to the practicability of building roads in the Snake River hills. From the surveys on file in my office, it looks as though whenever anyone petitioned for a new road, it was granted without taking into consideration whether it could be constructed along the route surveyed.' One road in question is the Copeland road, which runs from Clyde to the Snake River. This road is only 11.5 miles long and it passes through some of the largest hills on the flat. When it reaches within two miles of the river, it runs up against a bluff fully thirty feet in height. The surveyors found that a great many of the roads had been fenced up by recent settlers and new routes were being traveled that had never been officially declared county roads. Many of them were several miles from the original survey, and in some instances, entire roads were closed up.