If a house acquires historic significance, it is usually because of the people who have lived in it. On that basis, but with no claim to fame on our part, my wife Pepper and I own what might be the most historic home in Wallowa County.

To some of Joseph’s old-timers, our home is known as the McCully Mansion, because its original owners 100 years ago were Frank and Martha McCully. Frank McCully is appropriately known as the Father of Wallowa County and the Father of the City of Joseph.

He was born in Salem in 1859, first visited Union County in 1872, and returned with cattle in his first business venture in 1874 at the ripe old age of 15. He attended Willamette University, and he worked as a rancher for several summers in the Wallowa Valley before he settled here in 1880.

At the time, this area was still part of Union County. McCully was soon elected as a state representative and immediately wrote successful legislation, which separated this region from the rest of Union County, thereby establishing Wallowa County.

McCully homesteaded 160 acres and borrowed money from his father, who was a banker in Salem, so that he could open a general store. His land and that store marked the birth of the town of Joseph.

McCully gradually developed and operated one business after another, including the flour mill, bank, water works, electric company and phone lines. He ran the stagecoach service and the mail delivery from Joseph to Imnaha, brought the Union Pacific railroad to the county and was the first owner, publisher and editor of the Chieftain.

Besides being the first state legislator from Wallowa County, he also served as the first mayor of Joseph. McCully built Joseph on his own acreage, and he planned and laid out the streets himself.

The McCully Mansion might be the most historic home in Joseph, but it is not the oldest. McCully’s first home was a modest house that he built on this land in the early 1880s, but he later moved it off the property and built a second, much larger house that burned in 1914.

McCully hired an architect from San Francisco to design this house, the construction of which began in 1915 and was completed in 1918. McCully asked George Dawson, a local mill owner, to select the best lumber for the house, and the quality still shows a hundred years later. George’s son Malcolm told me that in those days, framers made $2.50 a day and finish carpenters earned $3.50, and they were worth every penny.

In 1938, with Frank McCully in failing health due to cancer, George Dawson and his wife, Minnie, bought this home. McCully died early in 1939, and George Dawson, who also served as mayor of Joseph, passed away in 1954. George’s widow Minnie ran the local kindergarten from a small room in the basement, which now serves as a bedroom for my wife and me.

A few years after Minnie’s death in 1978, Malcolm Dawson and his wife, Jean, purchased the house from Malcolm’s older siblings. Malcolm devoted tremendous care and attention to restoring the house to its original grandeur. And like Frank McCully and Malcolm’s father, Malcolm was also elected as mayor of Joseph.

Many locals still call our home the Mayor’s House, although probably even more refer to it simply as the Dawson house, because it was owned by their family for 67 years until my wife, Pepper, and I bought it in 2005.

I sometimes wonder whether Frank McCully, who was a staunch Republican and the chair of the local party here for many years, would roll over in his grave at the thought that his grand old home is now owned by an independent maverick (my wife) and the former chair of the Democratic Party of Wallowa County (myself).

But I tend to think that McCully represented a tolerant, progressive version of the Republican Party in the tradition of Teddy Roosevelt, so I think he would have gotten along just fine with us. Besides his many business enterprises, McCully’s farsightedness can also be seen in his enlightened respect for the Nez Perce and Chief Joseph, as was evidenced by his choice of Indian names for Wallowa County, the City of Joseph, and the Chieftain, and by the fact that he and his wife, Martha, are buried in the Nez Perce cemetery at Wallowa Lake.

Likewise, Malcolm Dawson, that gracious gentleman who passed away two years ago just a week shy of his 94th birthday, was a progressive Republican who helped establish the Wallowa Valley Arts Council and who brought public radio to the county. I would often let Malcolm know that he was my favorite Republican in Wallowa County, and he appreciated the compliment and knew it was heartfelt.

In what is now a home known to many visitors as Belle Pepper’s Bed & Breakfast, it is our honor to live within the history of the McCully Mansion, the Mayor’s House, and the Dawson home.

John McColgan and his wife, Pepper, own and operate Belle Pepper’s Bed & Breakfast in Joseph.