Joseph

Below the Wallowas

Joseph stands at the base of the Wallowa Mountains, at the southern edge of the three valleys of the Wallowa River, a mile north of Wallowa Lake.¹ The Oregon Encyclopedia calls it the cultural and tourism center of northeastern Oregon and says its nickname, Little Switzerland of America, may have begun with Alpenfest, first held in 1975.¹

The Valley of the Winding Waters

The ground under the town lay at the heart of the homeland of the Nimiipuu, or Nez Perce, and members of the Wallowa band lived along the shores of the lake.¹ An 1855 treaty deeded the lake and the country around it to the Nez Perce as a reservation, but after gold was found in 1863 the United States government moved to renegotiate.¹ The Wallowa band refused to sign, and pressure from resettlers and the government boiled over into the Nez Perce War, which ended in 1877 with the younger Chief Joseph, Heinmot Tooyalakekt, captured on his way to asylum in Canada, after which the Wallowa Lake country was opened to resettlement.¹ Except for two brief visits, the younger Joseph was never allowed back to the Wallowas.⁴

The name Joseph entered the United States Post Office Directory in 1879, after postal authorities turned down Silver Lake and Lake City because those names were already taken.¹ The Oregon Encyclopedia says the name honors either Tuekakas, known as Old Joseph, or his son Heinmot Tooyalakekt; the state guide gave it to both father and son, who ruled the Valley-of-the-Winding Waters until 1872.^1,3 The same guide put the grave of Old Chief Joseph, marked by a stone shaft, on a knoll between the highway and the north end of the lake.³

Matthew Johnson’s Store

Matthew Johnson, the first postmaster and the man who suggested the name, kept a small store to supply the settlers coming in.¹ Joseph became a supply center for farmers and stockmen moving into the mountain valleys, and by 1881 it had a large mercantile store, a flourishing mill, and a schoolhouse.¹ The town’s first newspaper, The Chieftain, began printing in 1883 and moved to Enterprise in 1893.¹ Joseph was platted in 1883 and incorporated in 1887, with E.J. Forsythe as mayor, and the First Bank of Joseph and a Presbyterian church followed.¹ The council authorized a waterworks in 1888, and an electric light plant started up in 1900.¹

The Branch Line and the Planing Mill

Stage lines to Elgin and to Lewiston, Idaho, were the town’s first links to the outside, until the Oregon-Washington Railroad and Navigation Company built a branch line in from La Grande in 1908.¹ With the rails came timber, which became the main product of the region.¹ The first major mill was the Joseph Planing Mill on the banks of the Wallowa River, owned and run by A.M. Hall & Son.¹ Joseph had 237 residents in 1900, a number that tripled over the next ten years.¹ In 1940 the Federal Writers’ Project guide listed Joseph at 4,400 feet with 504 people and called it an outfitting point.³

Bucking Stock and Bronze

Harley Tucker, born on a ranch near Joseph in 1908, was a stock contractor in town when he started a rodeo, first held in 1946 on top of Wallowa Lake’s east moraine.^5,6 The rodeo outgrew the moraine and moved to what is now the Harley Tucker Memorial Arena, just off Main Street.⁶ Glenn Anderson, who moved to Joseph in the mid-1970s and built a home up Hurricane Creek, founded and ran the Valley Bronze foundry.⁷ Artist David Manuel came from Walla Walla in 1980 to be nearer the land Chief Joseph had claimed as home.⁸ Farming, livestock, and timber still hold, now alongside bronze foundries and businesses that serve visitors.¹ A main street project finished in 2001 refitted the downtown, and in 2020 the town counted its highest population, 1,154.¹ Historian Alvin Josephy kept a ranch outside town for many years, and the Josephy Library, built on his book collection, now serves as a regional arts and culture center.¹