In September 1867, Father Louis Napoleon St. Onge, a Diocesan priest, and Brother John Baptist Boulet re-established the Saint Joseph Mission at Ahtanum. Initially services were held in the small log cabin, which also served as their home.In spring 1868 they began rebuilding the Mission, assisted by the Yakima people. (Kamiakin had been exiled from Yakima lands in 1855.) The Mission was completed in 1870 and Bishop Blanchet dedicated it on July 15, 1872. Jesuit priest Father Joseph Caruana arrived in 1870 and Father Urban Grassi (also a Jesuit) in 1871.
On January 3, 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant’s (1822-1885) Indian Peace Policy put Indian Affairs agencies directly under the control of missionaries of various Christian religions. “So arbitrarily did it divide them across denominations that Catholics got not the expected half but merely seven out of eighty-eight” (Burns, p. 366). In the Yakima Valley, Methodist minister Reverend Mr. J. H. Wilbur was put in charge of the Yakima. Wilbur, strongly anti-Catholic, forbade Catholic clergy from entering the reservation upon which the Yakima were being confined.
The rebuilt Mission at Ahtanum was closed. Father Caruana built Saint Joseph Church in nearby Yakima City (now Union Gap). The wooden church structure was moved, along with the other town buildings, to North Yakima (now Yakima) in 1884. In 1900 that church was replaced with a larger building: Many white settlers were flooding the region, and Catholicism in the valley kept pace.
In the early 1900s, the Knights of Columbus repaired the rebuilt Mission building at Ahtanum. The grounds around the Mission were converted to parkland. On December 22, 1970, the Saint Joseph Mission was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Today (2003) religious services are held there regularly.
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