From Concrete to Peacock Spit, how Washington got some odd names

There has been much in the news lately about names of geographic features in Washington that can nowadays be considered sexist or racist or otherwise culturally insensitive. In the most recent development, State Senator Pramila Jayapal announced last week that she will work with the Washington State Department of Natural Resources to change the names of nearly two dozen specific places.

Lost in the discussion and news coverage of controversial names that include words such as “squaw” and “negro” is the fact that there are plenty of other places – geographic features, streets and even schools around here – with interesting stories behind their, shall we say, fairly non-controversial names.

At the very least, the increased scrutiny gives us a perfect excuse to talk about some of these interesting names and to inject some local history into today’s other headlines. Of course, in this day an age, it’s likely that someone will take offense at something herein. If so, apologies in advance.

Native Americans, of course, had names for geographic features for thousands of years, but there’s very little in the way of a written record of these other than what Europeans documented, sometimes clumsily. Often, the spellings of Native place names varied widely, as did the pronunciations and, perhaps most importantly, the meanings of those names. In the records that do exist, many names bestowed by Natives feel simple, basic and descriptive, yet somehow can also sometimes be strikingly poetic. This is certainly true for what Seattle is believed to have been called in earlier times.

According to Edmond Meany, on May 23, 1852, Arthur Denny, Doc Maynard, and C.D. Boren agreed to name what’s now Seattle for Chief Seattle (or Chief Sealth, which is one of several alternate spellings). Before that, Meany writes, “[t]he Indians’ own name for the place was Tzee-Tzee-lal-itch, meaning “little portage” and referring to the trail to the large lake, so much shorter than the circuitous river route.”

And speaking of that large lake – known as Lake Washington since July 4, 1854 – early Whidbey settler Isaac Ebey called it “Lake Geneva” after the body of water in Switzerland. Territorial Governor (and railroad route surveyor) Isaac Stevens called it “Dwamish.” Meany says that another source, around 1890, reported that it had been called It-how-chug, or “large lake” in Native language.

Along with settlers who named things for practical purposes, there were several distinct time periods when geographic features were named here in the Pacific Northwest with more lofty goals. Europeans started coming by ship in the late 1700s, when what’s now Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and British Columbia were not yet controlled by a single political power.

Naming geographic features was, in those days, the best way to claim a river, mountain or other definable area for your country, or to at least begin to assert a certain kind of social and political dominance. During the late 18th century and early 19th century, explorers from Spain, Great Britain, and the United States began arriving in the Northwest and leaving layers of names on the landscape, or at least in their logbooks and charts.

In May 1792, American Robert Gray “discovered” (that is, successfully entered) the great river now known as the Columbia and named it after his ship (and, later, Gray’s Harbor was named for him). Technically speaking, Gray’s ship was named for Christopher Columbus, but let’s not go any further on that controversial topic.

Also in 1792, British Captain George Vancouver sailed through the area aboard HMS Discovery and named all kinds of things along the Washington Coast and in Puget Sound (which he named for crew member Peter Puget), including Mount Rainier, which he named for Peter Rainier, his old friend, and a foe of Americans during the Revolutionary War.

Mount Rainier has long been a controversial name for the picturesque volcano, and with the renaming in Alaska of The-Mountain-Formerly-Known-as-McKinley back to Denali last year, the controversy has likely not yet reached its peak.

Captain Vancouver, the history books say, made the blunder of a lifetime and somehow missed the mouth of the Columbia, as had an earlier Spanish explorer years before. Otherwise, eventual American claims to the Pacific Northwest might have been much murkier, and the border between the U.S. and Canada might now look very different. Either way, Vancouver ended up with a city named for him in both of those countries.

But we’re getting far too controversial here.

American explorers Lewis and Clark named Fort Clatsop when they camped at the mouth of the Columbia in the winter of 1805-1806. A fur trading company funded by American John Jacob Astor named Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River in 1811. A few years later, the British called it Fort George after the Americans sold out during the War of 1812. Even though the Yanks had transferred Astoria as a financial transaction, a British naval officer insisted on officially seizing it anyway. This led to all kinds of political ramifications that weakened British claims to what became the Oregon Country.

American Naval Lieutenant Charles Wilkes came through the Northwest in 1841 as leader of the United States Exploring Expedition. Wilkes and his crew surveyed, charted, and named dozens and dozens of geographic features. Commencement Bay was so named in Tacoma because that’s where the survey commenced; then-sleepy Elliott Bay in Seattle was named for a crew member. Wilkes is also famous for holding the first Independence Day Celebration west of the Missouri River.

Also in the 19th century, individual settlers and groups of settlers began naming the places they had chosen to site their homes and to create new communities as a way of differentiating locations and being able to receive mail. Many communities chose to adapt Native American names (including Seattle, as described above). The same was true in countless other settlements small and large, from Waiilatpu (from Native word for “place of the rye grass”) where the Whitmans built their Presbyterian mission near Walla Walla (another Native phrase for “many waters”) to Spokane (a name given by Europeans to the Native Americans in the area). In trackside railroad communities, riverfront boat landings and tiny agricultural outposts all around the Northwest, other settlers chose their own names to honor themselves, or the names of investors or supporters who never set foot in the Northwest.

Here, then, is a list of some interesting place names that, depending on your perspective, are fairly non-controversial.

Peacock Spit
This sandy protrusion near the mouth of the Columbia River in southwest Washington is named for the USS Peacock, a naval vessel that ran aground here in 1841. The Peacock was part of the United States Exploring Expedition, led by Charles Wilkes of the U.S. Navy, that traveled the globe in the mid-19th century, and did much to map and name what’s now Western Washington.

Royal Brougham Way
Royal Brougham was a longtime and much beloved sportswriter and editor for the old Seattle Post-Intelligencer who went to work for the P-I as a copy boy in 1910. Brougham had a heart attack in the press box at the Kingdome on October 29, 1978 during a close game between the Seahawks and the Denver Broncos. The Seahawks lost in overtime 20-17. Royal Brougham died early the next morning at the age of 84. The street name was changed to Royal Brougham Way by the Seattle City Council in April 1979. If a protest was lodged by the Constitution State for the loss of what had been South Connecticut Street, no record of it has been found.

Concrete
The original pioneer settlement on what’s now Highway 20 in Skagit County was called Minnehaha sometime in the late 19th century, and was then renamed Baker in 1890. A community was settled on the other side of the Skagit River from Baker in 1905 called Cement City, in honor of a new factory where concrete was made for hydroelectric dams and other massive infrastructure projects. In 1908, the combined communities became known as Concrete.

Destruction Island
Destruction Island is off the Washington coast north of Kalaloch. On July 14, 1775, Spanish Captain Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra anchored his ship, the Sonora, near the mouth of what’s now the Hoh River. Seven men went ashore for wood and water and were all killed by Natives. The Captain called it “Isla de Dolores” or Island of Sorrows. In 1787, British Captain Charles William Barclay sent a crew of six ashore to explore the same river. All of those men were also killed by Natives. Barclay called it the “River of Destruction,” but the name stuck only to the island.

Starbuck
This community in Columbia County was named for General Starbuck, who was a 19th century New York-based stockholder of the local steamship company that ran boats on the nearby Snake River and up the Tucannon River to townsite (a “suburb” of nearby Dayton?). Washington State Place Names author James W. Phillips writes that General Starbuck also presented the town with its first church bell; he doesn’t mention whether it was a tall, grande or venti.

Juan De Fuca Strait
The body of water between Washington and Vancouver Island was named in 1787 by British Captain Charles William Barclay for a (perhaps) mythical figure whose real name may have been Apostolos Valerianos. The mysterious Valerianos was believed to be Greek, but the story says that he went by the name “Juan de Fuca” and supposedly sailed through the Strait under the Spanish flag in the 1500s. Much has been speculated about Juan de Fuca, but little is known for certain other than the fact that the name has stuck.

Decatur Junior High
Stephen Decatur is a great American naval hero from the War of 1812. A ship named for him came to Seattle in late 1855 to defend settlers from Native Americans in what became known as the Battle of Seattle the following January. Several children born in 1856 received “Decatur” as a middle name in honor of the ship that had come to the settlers’ rescue. In 1961, this Seattle School District building was named mainly for the naval hero and because of the presence of Navy kids in the student body, as well as the fact that it was built on surplus Navy land near the old Sand Point Naval Air Station (now Magnuson Park). But, authorities said at the time, the naming of a school in Seattle after Decatur was “particularly appropriate.”

King County
We might be treading on thin ice here by describing King County’s name as “fairly non-controversial.” The state’s most populous county was originally carved from Thurston County by the Oregon Territorial Legislature (before Washington state or Washington Territory existed) and named for William R. King in December 1852. King had just been elected vice-president on the Democratic ticket with Franklin Pierce. The pair was inaugurated on the old pre-FDR inauguration date of March 4, but King died just six weeks later from tuberculosis at age 67. King, who came in at Number Five on TIME’s list of “America’s Worst Vice Presidents” was described in 2008 by the magazine as a “foppish dresser who wore powdered wigs long after they were fashionable.” TIME says that King was our country’s “only bachelor vice president.” Many many have since speculated about King’s sexual orientation, which would have been considered taboo in that long-ago era some 160 years before same-sex marriage became recognized in the United States. William R. King, TIME says, “lived with James Buchanan, the nation’s only bachelor president, for more than a decade.” The name of King County was formally rededicated in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 2007.

Cape Disappointment
We mentioned Robert Gray’s “discovery” and naming of the Columbia River above. It is fairly remarkable how elusive the river was to European explorers in the 18th century. In 1788, Britain’s John Meares failed to find it where earlier Spanish explorer Bruno Heceta had come very close. Heceta gave Spanish names to several features at the mouth of what would come to be called the Columbia, including naming the bay after himself. He never could find the river. Meares also failed, and re-christened the area Disappointment Bay and the point of land on the north side he called Cape Disappointment. Maybe Captain Vancouver shouldn’t have been so hard on himself.

Nagrom, Lebam, Retsil and Yawanaps
Nagrom was a small railroad community in King County along the tracks west of Lester. It was named in 1911. Lebam is in Pacific County and was named by J.W. Goodell; Retsil is near Port Orchard. Can you guess what these three places have in common? Nagrom was named for mill company president E.C. Morgan; Lebam was named for Goodell’s daughter Mabel; and Retsil was named for Washington Governor Ernest Lister. That’s right – all three are given or surnames spelled backwards. Adding to this brand of non-controversial fun is Spanaway, which some believe, writes James W. Phillips, is the backwards spelling of the Native word “yawanaps” (meaning “beautiful water”).

If anyone is interested in naming (or perhaps re-naming) their community after Washington governors past or present, these names of recent Evergreen State chief executives are still available as of this writing: Eelsni, Eriogerg, Ekcol, Yrwol, Rendrag, Namlleps, Yar, Snave, lnillesor.