Hay, Washington — Yes, the Farm Community Is Actually Called Hay

Hay sits in Whitman County's Palouse country, and the name is so perfectly agricultural that it sounds as though somebody made it up after looking out the window.

The surrounding landscape has long supported grain, hay and livestock. Small rural settlements once supplied schools, mail, transportation and gathering places to farm families who could not casually drive to a larger town.

Mechanization changed the density of that world. Farms grew, machinery improved and fewer people were needed to work the same rolling acreage.

Hay stayed tiny while the agricultural landscape around it remained enormously productive. There are more poetic names on the Palouse. Few are more efficient. If a community surrounded by fields was going to be called Hay, Whitman County was a pretty good place to put it.