Tehe And Yakitat All But Lost In History Of Benton County

KENNEWICK - Yakitat isn't just a fun name to repeat out loud. It's also Washington's biggest town that never was.

The Tri-Cities, if not for a few blips in history, could be composed of Pasco, Benton and Tehe.

Those bits of history, plucked from the pages of the new book "Benton County Place Names," are just a few of the facts that can be mined from the thin but informative volume.

The book contains about 300 entries, each one attempting to explain how Benton County things, places, schools and geographical landmarks came by their sometimes intriguing names.

Jean Carol Davis, a longtime Benton County historian, and Vickie Silliman Bergum, administrator of the East Benton County Historical Society and Museum, wrote the book.

"A lot of people think this is a boring area and doesn't have a lot of history," Bergum said. "Well, this brings it to life."

That life comes from windows into the lives of the county's early settlers.

Take Yakitat, for instance.

The center of ill-fated Yakitat, said to be the largest original town ever platted in Washington, is 3 1/2 miles west of the Yakitat Road exit on Interstate 82.

Yakitat Road, roughly halfway between the Tri-Cities and Prosser, is all that's left of what Seattle promoter August "Gus" Smith advertised as a 500-acre city with 165 blocks and 5,300 lots.

Smith sold lots to investors from the Midwest, but Davis wonders in her book whether Smith ever saw the steep, rocky, uneven terrain that was obviously unsuitable for building.

Prosser and Benton County officials certainly did. They condemned Smith's promotional advertising, but continued for years to hear from investors inquiring about their nearly worthless property.

One lot in Yakitat, a combination of Yakima and Klickitat counties, was worth less than the 90-cent fee for recording the deed.

Fallon Bridge has a better ending.

The bridge, which connects Richland and West Richland, was the result of a determined mother, Lena Fallon, who petitioned county commissioners to build it so her children wouldn't have to take a rowboat to school.

The bridge eventually was built, then replaced with another bridge in 1923, but it wasn't Fallon's only fight with the county. She hired men to build a road connecting to the bridge, north of present day Van Giesen Street, and struggled to be reimbursed for the work.

The story is, because she was a woman, the county commissioners initially refused to pay her. Yet Benton County records show someone named Lula Falon - presumably Lena Fallon - was paid $40.62 in January 1906.

Whenever possible, the book answers questions that might be raised in the minds of anyone familiar with the area. For example:

-- Rattlesnake Mountain - surprise, surprise - probably was named for the Western rattlesnake, although there aren't a lot of them on the mountain.

-- Horse Heaven Hills probably was named by a camper who awoke one morning in 1857 to find his animals had strayed up a mountain to a beautiful plain full of lush grass. "Surely this is Horse Heaven," he said to himself.

-- Chemical Drive, the highway between Kennewick and Finley, is another obvious name. It was built in the 1960s to serve the companies locating along the Columbia River. Some of them were chemical companies.

-- Clover Island presumably had clover growing on it when it was discovered by William Clark in 1805.

-- Kiona, along the Yakima River, is the Indian term for "brown hills." Early cattlemen called the place Horseshoe Bend.

Benton County Place Names is the product of Davis' boundless curiosity, encyclopedic knowledge of Benton County, and two years of digging.

"I have long been fascinated with things like this," said Davis, who leafed through old county maps, newspaper clippings, family memoirs, land titles and whatever else she could lay her hands.

The result makes it easy for everyone else to quickly find out that Kennewick comes from the Indian name "Kone Wack" meaning a grassy place or glade, and that the name was switched to Tehe from 1886 to 1891.

Or that Richland was first named Benton, but later switched when postal authorities worried it might be confused with Bentson in Pierce County.

Trivial, maybe. But Davis is convinced a better understanding of Benton County will lead to a greater love of the area, no matter what name it goes by.