Washington Trivia & Tidbits

One of the West's earliest forts was established near the present-day town of Walla Walla (pop. 29,686). Built by fur trappers to protect their trade, the fort eventually was abandoned. A second fort was built in the area in 1856 by the U.S. military and used by soldiers throughout most of the 19th century, being formally deactivated in 1889. A Fort Walla Walla museum complex now occupies ground near the site of the former forts.

Washington is a rather presidential state. Of its 39 counties, six bear the names of presidents: Adams, Garfield, Grant, Jefferson, Lincoln and Pierce. A lake is named after Franklin D. Roosevelt. Evergreen State counties bear other historic names as well, including Franklin, Clark and Lewis.

Originally named Moses Lake Army Air Base and later Larson Air Force Base, the complex includes runway facilities-dating to the base's role as a World War II training facility-that now are part of Grant County International Airport. The airport near the town of Moses Lake (pop. 14,953) has one of the nation's longest commercial runways at 13,500 feet, or more than 2.5 miles long, and is an alternate landing site for the NASA space shuttle.

A violent earthquake along State Highway 97 near the present-day town of Entiat (pop. 957) shook much of western Washington in December of 1872. The quake at Ribbon Cliff, called Broken Mountain by American Indians, split the mountain to form a cliff and caused a huge rockslide that reportedly stopped the flow of the Columbia River for several hours.

Folk singer Judy Collins was born in Seattle in 1939. The popular singer and songwriter began her career as a classical pianist, but soon made the guitar her favorite instrument. She turned to performing folk music with the release of her first album, A Maid of Constant Sorrow, in 1961 at the age of 22.

The State Archives has worked with the State Library, Washington State University and the University of Washington to collect hundreds of maps relating to Washington history. Some of these date to times when the Pacific Northwest was considered "parts as yet unknown." More modern maps are concerned with geography, transportation, climate, population, cultures, politics and tourism.

Roosevelt elk, the largest of all elk species, are found throughout the Pacific Northwest and are common on the Olympic Peninsula, where adult males can weigh up to 1,000 pounds. The peninsula's Quinault Rain Forest is home to several Roosevelt elk herds, which are essential to the rain forest community. By foraging and treading, elk control shrub and brush growth, maintaining and creating open areas in the forest.

Humptulips (pop. 216) is situated on the banks of the river of the same name. Originating in the Olympic National Forest, the Humptulips River derives its name from an American Indian word meaning "hard pole" or, more likely, "hard to pole." The river is noted for its excellent Chinook salmon fishing.

Gary Golightly, of Seattle, who's known as the Bubbleman, has spent the last 30 years delighting children around the world with his one-man bubble festival. He calls Seattle "bubble heaven" because of the perfect weather for blowing bubbles: cool, calm and cloudy. Often, using recycled products from thrift stores to create his bubble displays, he can produce millions of bubbles at a time or bubbles the size of baby elephants.
Sailing in the ship Santiago out of Mexico, Capt. Bruno de Hezeta (1744-1807) landed on the shore near what is now Washington state on July 12, 1775, and claimed the land north of Alta, Calif., for Spain. In making his landfall near the future Grenville Bay, Hezeta became the first European to make a landing in the Evergreen State.

—The Big Four Ice Caves, just off Mountain Loop Highway, 25 miles east of Granite Falls (pop. 2,347), have been formed by melting snow from glacial debris and glacial avalanches. Some of the glacial caves, or "ice tunnels," are as much as 250 feet long with 80-foot-high roofs. They are part of the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.

—According to the latest official U.S. Census, Garfield County in southeastern Washington has just 2,397 inhabitants in its 712-square-mile area, making it the state's least populated county. By contrast, King County on Puget Sound, with the state's largest population, has 1,737,034 inhabitants living in an area of 2,134 square miles.

—The hundreds of grassy humps at the Mima Mounds Natural Area preserve, just south of Olympia (pop. 42,514), present scientists with a mystery. The acres of mounds sharing similar shape and size, packed in clumps like eggs in a carton, have fostered a number of theories about their origin-from glacial formation to creation by a tsunami-but scientists have yet to reach a consensus on these unusual formations.

—Established around 1904 as a logging community south of Mount Rainier, the town of Kosmos was abandoned by about 500 residents when the Mossyrock Dam was built. The Cowlitz River rose behind the dam, which was completed in 1968, forming Riffe Lake and submerging Kosmos and a number of towns along the river. Kosmos' remains are periodically exposed when the lake recedes during regional drought.

—Founded in the mid-1980s by Jeffrey Pedersen, Seattle's General Petroleum Museum contains one of the country's largest collections of privately owned service station memorabilia. Among the museum's collection are old-fashioned gas pumps bearing such names as Red Crown, antique gas station signs such as Mobilgas, and a collection of Shell Oil jewelry.

—According to the 2000 census report, nearly half of Seattle's 563,374 residents were born in a state other than Washington (239,977), and nearly 17 percent of its residents are foreign born (94,952). Of family ethnic backgrounds reported in the census for the city's total population, German leads, with English and Irish reported as close seconds.

–Washington State Library, the first American library north of the Columbia River, was established in 1853. The library's collection began with some 2,000 volumes collected by first Territorial Gov. Isaac Stevens (1818–1862) and shipped around Cape Horn of South America. Located in Tumwater (pop. 12,698), the library has since grown to number more than half a million books, periodicals and documents and still retains hundreds of items from the original territorial collection.

—Nearly 29 years after the catastrophic eruption of Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980, which devastated some 230 square miles of forest, scientists are surprised at the rapidity of the land's recovery. Shrubs and plants such as lupine and fireweed recently have been joined by fast-growing trees such as red alder and lodgepole pine. Elk, deer, gophers and mountain bluebirds are among animals that are returning to the area, which was wiped nearly clean by the eruption.

—On June 6, 1889, a fire in the basement of a downtown building spread rapidly to cause Seattle's Great Fire. The conflagration-its smoke plume visible 30 miles away in Tacoma-burned 29 blocks of buildings, including practically the entire business district. In the months following, the city quickly rebuilt, transforming Seattle from a town of 25,000 to a city of about 40,000 in a single year.

—With artifacts dating back to 1377, the Naval Memorial Museum of the Pacific, also known as the Bremerton Naval Museum, in Bremerton (pop. 37,259), focuses on the history of the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and the U.S. Navy. Founded in 1954, the museum is staffed entirely by volunteers and includes cannons, uniforms and Japanese swords among its collections.

—Incorporated in 1891, Kettle Falls (pop. 1,527) is not where it began. Originally located on the bank of the Columbia River, the town was flooded in 1940 by the building of Grand Coulee Dam. Most of the town’s 300 residents moved to Meyers Falls, which, in time, was renamed Kettle Falls.

—After news broke last year of Joel Armstrong helping a mother duck and her 10 ducklings move from a nest on the ledge of his second-story office to the Spokane River three city blocks away, he received hundreds of letters and e-mails from duck lovers, including several marriage proposals. Sterling Bank where Armstrong works also noted his compassion, commending him for exemplifying the bank’s motto, “Hometown Helpful.”