Fort Walla Walla Days

Join us for Fort Walla Walla Days June 11 & 12, 2016 10 am - 5 pm Saturday and Sunday. This is our first big outdoor event of the season! Join us for a family-oriented, two-day event commemorating Walla Walla Valley regional heritage with historic reenactors, live demonstrations, music, dancing, children’s pioneer games, and more. There will be dozens of historic reenactors, including fur traders and trappers, cowboys, explorers and pioneers, rangers, and solders, occupying encampments around the Museum grounds. The tents, tepees, and wagons will feature artifacts, trade goods, or displays from the time period represented by the reenactor. There will even be a 19th-century chuck wagon on display! Visitors are invited to meet and interact with the interpreters and their displays to see what life was like in the past. Also scheduled to appear are the Buffalo Soldiers of Seattle, reenactors who portray the African-American soldiers in the 10th Cavalry. Having the Buffalo Soldiers represented is significant for the community because despite their presence for a period at Fort Walla Walla, there are very few artifacts left from their time here. These reenactors are perennial favorites due to their fine horsemanship and annual cemetery tribute to fallen soldiers, and the group is celebrating the sesquicentennial of the start of the Buffalo Soldiers’ units in 1866. Taking place over the course of this weekend will be blacksmithing and harness-making demonstrations in the Pioneer Village, with the Museum’s Living History Company offering interpretive tours of the buildings. Local authors Bob Carson, Dan Clark, and Bob Freeman will be stopping by the Museum Store to sign copies of their books. There will be booths for the Sons of Union Veterans, Kirkman House Museum, and others, and in the afternoon the Museum will host pioneer games for the kids, including hoop and stick races, sack races, marbles, and “graces,” a game that involves tossing a ribbon-wrapped ring with a pair of sticks. The Grand Hall will feature special exhibits for the event. Docents will be manning a table of ceramic pieces from the Museum's comparative ceramics collection. They will be discussing vessel characteristics and how these assist in identifying and dating ceramic pieces. In honor of the Buffalo Soldiers of Seattle and the participation of the 10th Cavalry reenactors, who are celebrating the sesquicentennial of the formation of the original Buffalo Soldiers units in 1866, there will be a special exhibit of swords and sabers from U.S. military history, from the Revolutionary War to World War I. This special collection is on loan for this weekend only, so be sure to stop by and take a look! Also scheduled are special Living History performances on each day. Saturday’s performance will feature the charismatic William McBean, an 1840s fur trapper and manager of the Hudson’s Bay Company Fort near Wallula. On Sunday, join E.B. and Maria Whitman for some old-time dancing. Food will be available to purchase from The Red Hot Coffee Pot and Dickey's Barbecue Pit?. Fort Walla Walla Days is included with the price of Museum admission, and Museum members get in free--one of the many perks of membership! Admission prices and information on how to become a Museum member can be found here. It's bound to be a good time, and the perfect way for attendees of all ages to celebrate and appreciate our shared local history. We look forward to seeing you here at the Old Fort! Fort Walla Walla Days is sponsored by Banner Bank, Best Western Plus Walla Walla Suites Inn, Columbia REA, Marcus Whitman Hotel & Conference Center, Pacific Power, and Walla Walla Electric.