Cheney, Washington — Town Asked Its Namesake for Money

Cheney began with names such as Section Thirteen and Willow Springs.

When the Northern Pacific arrived, residents renamed the settlement for railroad director Benjamin Pierce Cheney.

Then they asked him to help fund a school.

It worked.

The Benjamin P. Cheney Academy opened in 1882 and evolved through several institutions before becoming Eastern Washington University.

A frontier academy gradually turned Cheney into a college town.

The land around Cheney adds another identity. Ice Age floods carved the Channeled Scablands nearby, leaving basalt, wetlands and potholes now protected in places such as Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge.

The railroad supplied the name.

The school became the reason most people know it.