George, Washington — Joke With Zoning

George, Washington, was named deliberately.

Developer Charlie Brown embraced the joke while laying out a new Grant County town during the 1950s.

The humor had serious infrastructure underneath it.

The Columbia Basin Project was creating irrigated farms across formerly dry country.

Those farms needed residents, businesses and service centers.

George was planned as part of that new agricultural landscape rather than accumulating accidentally around a mine or old rail stop.

The civic joke continued through celebrations involving an enormous cherry pie.

George, Washington, sounds inevitable once somebody says it.

Engineers had to move a great deal of water before there was any practical reason to build it.