The Caravan to Othello
A motorcade of 100 White Bluffs residents descends on a neighboring town for a basketball game and dance, showcasing the era's emerging automobile culture.
Twenty-five cars carrying approximately 100 people from this valley made up a caravan that journeyed to Othello last Saturday afternoon. While Othello had no organized reception committee, every resident there put himself out to make the visitors feel welcome. The White Bluffs band, despite Fred English’s efforts to keep them together, played several selections on the street, at the high school basketball game, and at the dance in the Pastime Theatre. The local basketball shooters defeated the Othello team with a score of 31 to 15. The Othello folks reported that the crowd at the dance was the largest in the history of their town, and the visitors found the townspeople keenly interested in the completion of a good highway linking the two communities.
“They’d had a good time and he tells it in rhyme in the following classical pome: 'Last Saturday night the town was deserted; there was hardly a light, as all had departed.'”
This story highlights a time when the mere act of driving between towns in Eastern Washington was a major civic event. Today, highway infrastructure is taken for granted, but this 'caravan' captures the optimism of early 20th-century regional boosterism and the social power of the automobile.
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