Pioneer Ritzville

              PIONEER RITZVILLE
While we are taking a brief journey into the past, let us look hack beyond "PIONEER RITZVILLE." Let us picture the primitive backdrop of rippling native bunchgrass, stretching as a vast ocean from horizen to horizen. Now, let us super-impose bands of wild horses— thousands of them; rabbits, squirrels and other rodents by the hundreds of thousands, coyotes and wild game, and birds on the wing to maintain a balance in nature, and tribes of Indians living off the land and off the clear, unspoiled streams, lakes and springs. Let us remember that less than 100 years ago, the very earth we tread every day, and our productive fields, served as the playground, the hunting ground and the battleground of the Nez Perce, the lakimae, the Omatillas, the Walla Wallas, the Cayuses, the Snakes, the Lapwaie, and the Okanogans. No ribbons of concrete, then, — just random highways well known to the tribes and well suited to their way of life. In July they gathered duck eggs from the Moses Lake potholes—in autumn some pitched their wigwams in Washtucna valley to spend the winter grazing their ponies while the squaws fished for salmon and sturgeon in the Snake and Palouse.
Then came the settlers — from the Fast they came — from the Virginias- New York, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Tennessee, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota and the Dakotas, and other states. from Scotland they came — from"Schleswig Holstein, from Germany and from Russia. Most of them had wheat on their minds —)and cattle ~, for most of them were farmers where they came from. They did not seek^'the easy life--surely they knew that hard, back-breaking work", danger taad privation would' be their life-—yet they were drawn here by a need within theriseives to conquer physical frontiers, to prove themselves, and to find their opportunities in their own way. They lived in tents, wagons, and hastily constructed shacks; hauled water eight miles from Sheep Springs. Violent dust storms, severe droughts, rapid early spring thaws, hordes of squirrels and jackrabbits were real hazards to wheat crops, range .land and cattle, and occasionally the threat of an Indian raid sent the settlers gathering up their families and fleeing toward the fort at Walla Walla. Often settlers were brought to their knees by crop and cattle losses—most of them stayed to struggle on and to try again. The women lent their support to their struggling husbands, help.lng clear sagebrush, breaking ground and growing gardens, carry¬ ing water, raising families—sometimes teaching their children at home—helping in the fields; often up at 2:00 A.M. to prepare breakfast by 4j00; and in womanly fashion making homey their humble cabins which would one day be replaced with fine farm homes complete with rural electrification and all modern comforts. Did they ever think of being liber¬ ated? I doubt iti
Into this setting'in 1878 came Philip Ritz. The Journal Times history gives no insight into the character of the man, but the HISTORY OF THE BIG BEND relates that, "Philip Ritz was the pioneer settler in the northern part of Adams County, having located just south of where the town of Ritzvilla now stands, in the spring of 1878. Old timers say that Ritz took up land here and secured all he could lay his hands on, but did practically nothing to improve the land which he obtained—in fact he was against immi¬ gration to the country, stating the-land was barren and unproductive. He never did any¬ thing to advance the interests of the county or Ritzville."
Our town today might be located one mile east of where it is, and might even be known by a different name—had some of its early settlers been able to agree on two press¬ ing ussues. Both arose about 1887, only, seven years after the first handful of permanent residents had arrived in the area. These colonists had settled just south of the land staked off by Philip Ritz along the Ndrthern Pacific railway, which built through Adams County in 1881. With its depot, the N.P. had erected a water tank. It was located across the present Railroad Ave. from the Journal Times building. This tank was the only source of water in town, and all the settlers made use of it. When the supply ran short and
drastic orders were Issued that no more water be taken from the tank except for railroad
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