Walla Walla Residents Demand Relief From Muddy Streets
An editorial calls for a city street-cleaning department and paved or graveled roads to address months of muddy, impassable streets.
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.
Since the middle of November, the streets of Walla Walla have been in an execrable condition. The crosswalks are covered with slimy mud, making high-water pants and short skirts a necessity and neat footwear an impossibility. Today we have a little snow to hide the mud, but in a day or two this will melt, and the streets will be in worse condition than ever. It is said it is useless to clean the streets while they are muddy, but after they are dry, no one will complain. The city should have a well-organized street-cleaning department. All business streets should be paved and all others should have a thick covering of crushed rock. The present condition of the streets is a disgrace to a heathen village and, in the otherwise beautiful city of Walla Walla, it is an unspeakable abomination.
Early 20th-century Walla Walla struggled with the basic infrastructure of a growing town, mirroring modern debates over road maintenance and the funding of public works. While we no longer face the same 'slimy mud' crisis, the tension between urban beautification and the city budget remains a perennial civic theme.
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