Last week I posted some trivia about logging in the northeast corner of Washington and the Idaho panhandle. Our beloved WSGS Founding President, Alma Greenwood, contributed this memory:

Hi Donna,
Your description of the logging in North Idaho struck a chord with me. My 90-year old husband grew up in the area you are describing and his uncle had logging camps just like the one you mentioned. The nearest town was Meadow Creek (now a ghost town according to the sign) which was a few miles south of the Canadian border.    Glad you are staying busy and involved. So many of the old timers are not around but some of us keep plugging along. Thanks for all you do for genealogy in Washington State.  Alma

Today’s trivia is much different. Paul Turner, in his The Slice column in our Spokesman Review paper, posed the question about Spokane as a surname. WELL! Clicking to Ancestry, and doing a U.S. census search across all the years, the results were 19,990 persons surnamed Spokane! And 581 lived in Spokane. Most of them were Native Americans but still.

There were 5077 folks surnamed “Seattle.” And 1646 for Wenatchee. Tacoma was 2214 and Kennewick 1412. I was really surprised and it was something I’d never thought about. Thanks, Paul, for turning on a light.

Was your Washington town ever a surname????