Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Mullen leans on her car, Hanako, in front of the Palouse River Valley north of Endicott.
Marty Mullen of Pullman wheels her Subaru wagon down a gravel road into the Palouse River Canyon.
“I just love this road,” she says as she looks over from behind the steering wheel.
Beginning in 2006, Mullen set out with her Subaru, which she has named Hanako (Japanese for flower child) to drive down every road in the county.
As she reaches the bottom of the Grove Road grade, the gravel road turns into a literal goat path.
Wary of pressing too far onto private property, Mullen stops to ask a farmer who is patching his fence if it is okay for her to proceed.
“Well, that’s all county road right there,” he replies, pointing down a road which is barely indistinguishable from a typical Whitman County wheat field.
A flip through Mullen’s stained, note-covered Whitman County road atlas shows this road, the Grove Road, connects Endicott and Lancaster. That the road goes into the muddy waters of the Palouse River says maybe the atlas has a degree of fiction.
But Mullen knows this road dead ends at the river, as she knows every other dead end, hairpin curve and rocky ridge in Whitman County.
Through her project, Mullen covered every one of the more than 2,250 miles of the 669 county, state and federal roads in Whitman County.
“I love this county,” she said. “Everywhere you go there’s an odd piece of art or a hike to some beautiful view.”
She said she set out to cover all the county’s roads as part of her life-long love of back roads and what can be found on the less-traveled routes.
Mullen saw much of the main road system covering the county as a caseworker for the Department of Social and Health Services in the early 1970s. She discounted those roads from this mission, though.
The attraction to the Grove Road’s dead end is an antique footbridge that appears to be bought off surplus from the set of an Indiana Jones movie.
Two foot bridges cross the river in the area, and Mullen knows the stories of both of them.
She has chronicled those stories, and many, many more, in a book she plans to release later this year.
“The best part about this project has been getting to talk to the people of Whitman County,” she said. “Everyone has been so gracious in sharing their photos, souvenirs and mementos – all with a perfect stranger.”
The book spotlights her favorite drives – and the many unique sights along those jaunts – and suggested routes and times of year for seeing the best of Whitman County.
She credited those once-strangers for clueing her into the history of some of the area’s most remote yet beautiful and historic places - places like the Grove Road foot bridge, Glenn Miller’s bell collection, the old grain conveyors down the Snake River grade and the ever-evolving palette of crops growing in lush Palouse topsoil.
“Well, there’s probably nobody in the county that knows more about our roads than Marty,” said Mark Storey, county public works director.
Storey said since county road employees work in three districts, only the sign supervisor, who only sees roads with signs, and the bridge crew, who only see roads with bridges, work on roads throughout the county.
Her collection of Whitman County roads was completed last summer, when she took a spin down the short Druffel Road at the Port of Wilma.
She later celebrated the finish with a group of friends, and her trusty companion dogs, who have helped her along the way. The celebrants popped the cork on a champagne bottle and handed out dog biscuits at the “End of County Road” sign on Manning Road, one of her favorites.
“That loop has it all,” she said. “You can go from pavement, up a gravel road and then on to a good old rocky, grassy farm access road before you come back to Green Hollow.”
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