There are 39 counties in Washington, and the county has a county seat, or the city where the courthouse is located and where other official county affairs are held.
Each county and capital of Evergreen State receives a call from someone or something, and each call represents a facet of time and position where and where each county was first organized.
The territory of Washington was created from the territory of Oregon in 1853 and, first, had only a handful of massive counties in its first incarnation. As more and more non-Aboriginal people arrived and more and more parts of present-day Washington state have become home to newcomers and their properties, those giant counties were divided and their barriers were redesigned to create new, smaller counties.
The concept was to organize the counties into geographical sets where a resident can pass to the head of the county without more than a day’s travel, at the speed of the nineteenth century, on horseback, by boat or on foot. Becoming the capital of a new county has been thought of as a challenge for any community, for jobs and other related economics, including the fundamental number of workers needed to manage the fundamental functions of government.
During the few months, KirO Radio’s All Over The Map will explore the origins of the names of the 39 counties and Washington County seats in alphabetical order.
Adams County was carved from already-existing Whitman County and officially created by the Territorial Legislature in December 1883. Anyone who’s driven I-90 through Eastern Washington between Moses Lake and Sprague has driven through Adams County.
It is named after US President John Adams. Several counties around the “Big Bend” of the Columbia River are named after what one historian described as “the greatest patriotic statesmen of the past,” adding Ben Franklin, Ulysses Grant, Abraham Lincoln, and Stephen Douglas.
An Adams County reminder named Samuel A. Wells, who got one of the best jobs at the county headquarters when he was Adams County’s first auditor, is identified for opting for the name.
And what is the seat of Adams County?
In 1881, the North Pacific Railroad passed, building a line to Tacoma.
A settler named Philip Ritz hired across the North Pacific to point out 10 miles of right-pass. When it came time to call the station on this stretch of track, the railroad told Ritz that he could decide. That’s how Ritzville was born.
A crazy theory presented through an unreliable radio historian wonders if Philip Ritz knew what to say. His last call followed by the brief editing of his first call would look like “Ritz Phil” (which is close enough to sound like “Ritzville”). This is a theory that will never be proven or, unfortunately, refuted.
Asotin County nearly called it “Lincoln” as the Territory Legislature about to cut it through Garfield County in October 1883.
Asotin County is located on the southeast corner of the state on the Snake River, across from Idaho, six miles upstream from Clarkston, Washington. The domain colonized through American Europeans since the 1860s.
The call comes from the Aboriginal term Nez Perce “heesutin”, which translates as “Eel Creek”. There were spelling diversifications, adding Assotin and Hashotin, before existing spelling was the accepted standard.
The county seat is called Asotin, formerly Asotin City. This is where the creek once known for its eels enters the Snake River.
Benton County, in the Yakima River Valley southeast of Ellensburg, was carved from Yakima County in 1905.
The new county was named after this “Manifest Destination” promoter and a sponsor of the law to create the territory of Oregon in 1848, Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri. Benton died in 1858; had slaves, historians will notice that their perspectives on slavery evolved in the 1850s. When the new county was first proposed in 1902, it was planned to be named after William McKinley, the recently assassinated president.
Prosser was named the county seat of Benton County in 1905, though Kennewick and Benton City also vied for the prize in at least one inconclusive ballot. A history published around 1918 said the county seat designation was still up in the air, which meant delays in siting and building the Benton County Courthouse. That courthouse, now on the National Register of Historic Places, was finally built in 1926.
Prosser, also known as Prosser Falls for a piece of water on the Yakima River, was officially founded and named in 1885 through William F. Prosser, a Civil War hero who later became a historian. Documents show that the city belonged to Mr. Prosser and named it for him and his wife Flora Louise Thornton Prosser, which turns out to be another of other urban subdivisions of that time.
One theory: perhaps the idea of the couple that Mrs. Prosser would survive Mr. Prosser. When they married in 1880, Flora 18 or 19 and William Prosser forty-five or 46.
In the September episode: Chelan, Clallam and Clark counties.
In the meantime, it’s fun to pretend that we’ve released a limited edition published washington map and a series of 39 colorful collectible stickers, one for each magical county in Evergreen Playground. Find your copy at Pay-n-Save, SportsWest, Ernst Hardware, Lamont’s, Valu-Mart, JAFCO or any other favorite Northwest company that is still bankrupt.
You can listen to Feliks every Wednesday and Friday morning at the Seattle Morning News and get more information about him here. If you have an idea for a story, email Felikshere.