410 West Second Place
The Oregon Territory, consisting of present-day Oregon, Washington, Idaho and parts of Montana and Wyoming, was incorporated on August 14, 1848. It consisted of four districts, or counties: Clackamas, Champoeg, Yamhill and Twality. Twality included the northwest corner of present-day Oregon and the Olympic Peninsula and Washington Coast. Yamhill included present-day Oregon west of the Willamette River to the coast. The rest of the territory was divided between Clackamas and Champoeg, with Clackamas consisting if the northern portion, with all of present-day Washington, northern Oregon, northern Idaho and part of Montana, with Champoeg consisting of the rest of Oregon, southern Idaho, a little of Montana and Wyoming. The counties were further divided by 1849, by which time Clackamas County occupied the northern part of present-day Oregon east of the Willamette and all of the northern part of the territory east of the Columbia, including all of present-day eastern Washington and northern Idaho. The rest of the territory east of the Willamette, including present-day eastern Oregon, southern Idaho and part of Wyoming, was divided in horizontal strips between Champoeg, now called Marion County, and Linn County. In 1851, Lane County had been created and also had part of eastern Oregon. The northern part of the Oregon Territory was separated to become the Washington Territory on March 2, 1853. In 1854, the parts of Clackamas, Marion, Linn and Lane counties east of the crest of the Cascades to the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains were reorganized into a single 130,000 square mile county called Wasco County. It is the largest U.S. county ever created, included all of what is now eastern Oregon and parts of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming and part of Yellowstone National Park. The Dalles, with a population of only a few hundred people at the time, was the only community in the entire county significant enough to appear on maps, and thus became the county seat. When Oregon became a state on February 14, 1859, and the eastern border with what is now Idaho was formed, Wasco County shrunk somewhat, but was still a large county, including over half of the state. Beginning in 1862, other counties began being formed out of Wasco County, and eventually 17 additional counties were created out of what was once all Wasco County. Wasco County has been its current size since 1908 when Hood River County was formed.
First Wasco County Courthouse on June 10, 2009
In 1859, The Dalles had a population of about 600 people. Until that time, court proceedings had been held in local saloons and the guard house at Fort Dalles served as a jail. A $2,500 bond was passed to construct a courthouse that would include a jail, sheriff's office and courtroom. The courthouse was completed April 8, 1859 under the supervision of Judge Orlando Humason, the first county judge and chairman of the Board of Commissioners. It was originally located at 3rd and Court, where The Dalles City Hall is today. The first floor has a sheriff's office and three jail cells, and the second floor had a courtroom and clerk's office and was originally accessible only by the outside staircase. Public meetings and church services were also held in the courtroom.
When a new courthouse opened in 1882, the old courthouse became The Dalles City Hall, and was used as such until 1909. It was temporarily moved to the site of the Elks Temple while the new City Hall was built, and was then purchased by Matt Schoren who moved it east down Third Street next to his blacksmith shop (on the site of the current Columbia River Bank, near the Civic Auditorium) and used it as a boarding house. In 1961, Brady's Grocery Store, across the street from the building, acquired the property for parking. A group of concerned citizens had the building moved to city property on West Second Street (near the unfinished Lewis & Clark Monument) for use as a museum that was never funded. The building remained there, deteriorating, for 12 years, until the City Council declared it a nuisance and an eyesore and hired a bulldozer to demolish it. Alf Wernmark, a shoemaker who came to The Dalles from Denmark and brother of a state senator, saved the courthouse by standing in front of the bulldozer and waiting it out. Wernmark and other citizens convinced the city council to give them time to move and restore the courthouse with their own funding. In October 1975, the Chamber of Commerce granted a 20 year lease for the courthouse to occupy property to the west of the Chamber of Commerce building on West 2nd Street next to Mill Creek, and it was moved there by Ellett Construction Company. $30,000 was raised and the courthouse was restored on the new site and dedicated by Senator Mark Hatfield on July 4, 1977. When the lease on the original site ended, and the site flooded in the winter of 1996, the building was moved to its current site on West Second Place, under a 50 year lease with Wasco County. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on March 18, 1998. It is one of only two courthouses still standing from the days of the Oregon Territory.
Historical Photo:
First Wasco County Courthouse, June 4, 1978 (UO)
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