Washington Trivia & Tidbits - Page 9

Settled around 1886 near a natural spring in a semi-arid desert area, Ephrata (pop. 6,808) is reported to have been named for the biblical description of an orchard in the middle of the desert. At the beginning of the 20th century, the town served as a staging area for wild horse roundups.

Volunteers donate more than 200,000 hours—the equivalent of 100 full-time employees—to 120 state parks every year, according to the state Parks and Recreation Commission. Volunteer duties include greeting guests, providing information, cleaning up parks and beaches, restoring trails, repairing buildings, planting trees and “adopting” parks for long-term care.

Actor Howard Duff, who appeared in the 1980s on the TV shows Flamingo Road, Knots Landing and Dallas, was born in 1913 in Bremerton (pop. 37,259). He began his career playing private investigator Sam Spade on radio.

NASCAR driver Derrike Cope, who grew up in Spanaway, Wash. (pop. 21,588), originally dreamed of becoming a professional baseball player. However, his plans changed in 1978, following an injury while playing catcher for Whitman College in Walla Walla (pop. 29,686).

Completed in 1928, the state Capitol’s Legislative Building in Olympia (pop. 42,514) features one of the world’s highest masonry domes, rising 287 feet and weighing some 30.8 million pounds. Inside, the five-ton “Angels of Mercy” chandelier—one of Louis Comfort Tiffany’s last major designs—is suspended on a 101-foot chain.

Established in October 1845 near a waterfall on the Deschutes River, Tumwater (pop. 12,698)—one of Washington’s earliest communities—originally was called New Market. It was named Tumwater in 1847 for the Salish Indian word tum-wa-ta, meaning strong or tumbling water.

When Mount St. Helens, east of Kelso (pop. 11,895), ceased erupting from its dome in October 1986, the lava flowing into the crater had formed a mound some 900 feet high. Because the shadows cast by the crater walls allow almost 50 feet of snow to collect behind the lava dome annually, they are creating an ice mass that could become America’s next glacier.

The 60-mile Hood Canal is a natural, glacier-carved fjord located in Jefferson, Kitsap and Mason counties. From Admiralty Inlet between Tala Point and Foulweather Bluff, the canal runs about 45 miles southwest to the Great Bend at Annas Bay, and then about 15 miles northeast, to the Union River near Belfair.

The bell tower at Tsillan Cellars, a 150-acre vineyard and winery in Chelan (pop. 3,522), stands 35 feet high and features a 650-pound cast bronze bell. The winery overlooks Lake Chelan, and was named for Tsill-ane—19th-century explorer Alexander Ross’s interpretation of the native word for the area. It means deep notch, or deep water, and later evolved into Chelan.

When the Capitol Theatre in Yakima opened in April 1920 as the Mercy Theatre, decorative murals by A.B. (Tony) Heinsbergen graced the vaudeville theatre building’s interior. After a fire gutted the theatre in 1975, Heinsbergen came out of retirement at age 83 to create new murals.

Daroga State Park, which covers 90 acres near the Columbia River north of East Wenatchee (pop. 5,757), gets its name from the first names of three brothers, Dave, Robert, and Grady Auvil, who began an orchard and ranch on the land in 1928.

–The Museum of Flight in Seattle has the largest and most comprehensive collection of aerospace artifacts in the western United States. The collection includes the first presidential jet (Air Force One) and a Concorde supersonic airliner. Visitors are allowed to climb into the cockpit of a Blackbird reconnaissance plane, considered the fastest high-flying jet ever built.

An ink bottle, silver dollar, and postage stamp are credited with giving Washington’s state seal its start. When a committee asked Olympia (pop. 42,514) jeweler Charles Talcott in 1889 to create a seal from a sketch showing the port of Tacoma, wheat fields, sheep, and Mount Rainier, he argued that the design was too intricate. He won the committee over to a simpler design by picking up an ink bottle and drawing a circle around its base. With a silver dollar, he drew another circle within the first one. Between the two he wrote: “The Seal of the State of Washington, 1889.” He then placed a postage stamp of George Washington on the inside. The idea was soon accepted by the Legislature.

The North Cascades National Park Complex is said to be the largest and most rugged alpine wilderness in the contiguous United States, with 8,000-foot peaks and more than 300 glaciers. Wildlife includes black and grizzly bears, cougars, wolves and mountain goats. Peaks in the park go by such names as Mount Terror, Mount Challenger, Mount Fury, Mount Despair, Mount Torment and Desolation Peak.

A flood of biblical proportions, known as the Bretz Flood, occurred about 15,000 years ago when glaciers damming up a 3,000-square-mile lake in western present-day Montana collapsed and released a torrent of water through Washington. In two days the lake emptied, with a river of water several hundred feet high traveling up to 90 mph, carving out deep channels and cataracts still visible today.

Northwest Trek in Eatonville (pop. 2,012) is a sort of zoo in reverse, where visitors ride trams through a 615-acre preserve to look for free-roaming bighorn sheep, elk, deer, bison, caribou, mountain goats, and other wildlife.

In 1811, John Jacob Astor’s Pacific Fur Company established Fort Okanogan near present day Brewster (pop. 2,189). It was the first permanent American settlement in what is now Washington state.

In 1775, Spanish explorers landed in the state and claimed the region for Spain. They wanted to stop the Russians from settling land further south than Alaska, which was called Russian America at the time.

Blueberries are the second most popular berry in the United States, and Washington is the fifth largest producer.

The American Indians of Puget Sound have been known as Puget Salish and Southern Coast Salish, and include the Duwamish, Nisqually, Skagit, and Snoqualmie. They also are known collectively as the Lushootseed peoples, a name stemming from the words for “salt water” and “language.”