Thorp, Washington

Thorp ( ) is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Kittitas County, Washington, United States. In 2020, the population was 232.

The town of Thorp is east of Seattle, northwest of Ellensburg, and southeast of Cle Elum. It is located at the narrow west end of the Kittitas Valley, where high elevation forests of the Cascade Range give way to cattle ranches surrounded by farmlands noted for timothy hay, alfalfa, vegetables, and fruit production.

Thorp is named for Fielden Mortimer Thorp, recognized as the first permanent white settler in the Kittitas Valley. He established a homestead at the approach to Taneum Canyon (, ) near the present-day town in 1868. Klála, an ancient Native American village and the largest indigenous settlement in the Kittitas Valley at the arrival of the first white settlers, was located about one mile above the current town site.

thumb|upright|The Thorp Collective building

Geography

left|thumb|The Yakima River canyon near the town of Thorp.

Thorp is located in central Kittitas County at (47.068006, -120.672687). According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of , all of it land.

The town site of Thorp is above the flood plain of the upper Yakima River at an elevation of . It is situated near the river's west bank directly opposite the Hayward Hill slide area and Clark Flats, near the southeastern approach to the Yakima River canyon at the foot of Thorp Prairie. To the west of the town is Taneum Canyon, and to the northwest are Elk Heights, Morrison Canyon and the Sunlight Waters private residential subdivision. Ellensburg, the county seat, is southeast of Thorp.

Northwest of Thorp at the junction of SR 10 and Thorp Highway, the Yakima River emerges from a canyon parallel to a basalt flow, the uppermost layers of which have been dated to 10.5 million years. The Thorp Prairie sits atop the basalt flows and ends at a deep canyon of Miocene columnar basalt structures carved by Swauk Creek whose headwaters are at Blewett Pass along US 97 to the north. The Thorp Prairie deposits were also delivered by the Thorp Glacial episode.

The Thorp Gravels themselves are believed to be between 3 and 4 million years old. The whole structure is composed of individually layered belts of gravel and sand which are not well consolidated, continually weather, and are prone to continuing erosion and landslides averaging 30 degrees. The area is rich with wildlife, including bald eagles and osprey who hunt for prey along the river. It is also a crossing point for deer and elk who often can be seen at dawn and dusk heading to the river for water. Subsequent to the Miocene lava flows, the volcanoes of the Cascade Mountains actively erupted, depositing ash, cinders, pumice and mudflows that eventually inter-fingered with the alternating basalt layers throughout the region.

Interstate 90 drops through the Thorp Drift, which marks the oldest and furthest reaching known glacial moraine in the Kittitas Valley. Changes in the types of vegetation become more evident in this area. The changes are the result of a drop in elevation of about 1,400 feet from the summit of Snoqualmie Pass to Thorp, and a significant drop in precipitation of about 107 inches average a year at the summit of Snoqualmie Pass, to 42.94 inches average a year at Thorp.

At the bottom of the Thorp Drift moraine the view opens up into the Kittitas Valley which is deeply buried in river gravel deposited by the ancient Yakima River. This valley is a syncline that creates the Ellensburg Basin located between Mission Ridge to the north and Manastash Ridge to the south. The Ellensburg Basin, more formally called the Ellensburg Formation, holds nearly 4,000 feet of rock, sand, and gravel that accumulated over a period of 2 to 10 million years during the Miocene and lower Pliocene age.

Climate

The climate at Thorp is hot during summer when temperatures tend to be in the 80s, and very cold during winter when temperatures tend to be in the 20s.

The warmest month of the year at Thorp is July, with an average high of 77.2 °F and an average low of 51.8 °F. The coldest month of the year is January, with an average low of 16.5 °F and an average high of 34.3 °F. Temperature variations between night and day tend to be relatively large during summer with a difference that can reach 30 °F, and fairly limited during winter with temperatures hovering at or below freezing for most of the day, and often dipping below zero at night.

Temperatures generally drop significantly in October, while rainfall rises from less than half an inch to nearly 5 inches average per month. This trend continues through late autumn and winter, with a marked drop in precipitation beginning in April which coincides with a gradual rise in temperature into late spring and summer.

There is significant variation in rainfall throughout the year, with December and January receiving a mix of rainfall and snow, averaging 9.06 and 7.94 inches respectively. Rainfall during summer is, on average, less than half an inch each month with July receiving the lowest monthly average precipitation of the year at .07 inches.

Surrounding area

Demographics

As of the census or Upper Yakama tribe, as well as hunting and food gathering parties of Cayuse and Nez Perce. The area was rich in wild berries, fish and game, and neighboring tribes annually converged on the valley in April or May to harvest Indian onions (Allium spp.), Indian potatoes (Claytonia lanceolata), and breadroot (Lomatium canbyi). The various tribes engaged in horse trading with early British and American fur traders, and had peaceful relations with Jesuit Catholic missionaries who preceded them.

In the 1840s, white settlers began to pour into the Oregon Territory (and later Washington Territory), bringing with them a measles epidemic and other diseases deadly to the indigenous population. That, coupled with cultural differences such as plowing the ground, which was seen as desecrating the spirit of the earth, led to confrontation between Native Americans and white settlers.

Among the earliest records of Native American interaction with frontiersmen in the Kittitas Valley took place in 1858, the summer of the Yakima War, when a large contingency of Wanapum from Priest Rapids camped at the head of Taneum Canyon very close to where the town of Thorp is now located.

They were led by Smohalla, the legendary dreamer-prophet associated with the Washani or "Dreamer Movement" among the native peoples of the Pacific Northwest. Smohalla claimed that visions came to him through dreams, and he preached a return to the original way of life before white influences which included ritual music and dancing. His speaking was called Yuyunipitqana for “Shouting Mountain".

Rumors floated that Smohalla was preparing for battle. An exchange took place in which Rev. George W. Kennedy, a frontier Methodist preacher, traveled to the location of the camp in an attempt to make peace as he had become alarmed that such a large assembly meant hostility. By all accounts, Smohalla was not easily intimidated. "He looked like a king. Stolid as a statue," Kennedy said of meeting him. The preacher exhorted, "God had made us all brothers and not enemies" and "the Great Father want[s] us all to live together in peace on earth."

If that is true, Smohalla demanded, "Why has the white man taken our lands from us? Has the white man any rights here in [the] Kittitas that the Indian has any right to respect? The Indian came first."

It was, Kennedy conceded, "an unanswerable speech ... And I promised utmost friendship on the part of the white brothers. We gave them our hand shake and pronounced benediction of God on them, and Chief Smohalla agreed to accept that as the Pipe of Peace."

left|thumb|upright|Thorp is named for Fielden Mortimer Thorp (1822-94), the first permanent white settler in the Kittitas Valley.

Thorp pioneers

Until the mid-1850s, the Kittitas Valley saw little encroachment by pioneer settlers. But in 1853, the first immigrant wagon trains passed through the area led by David Longmore. During that same year, George B. McClellan conducted a survey of the valley on behalf of the Northern Pacific Railroad, and two years later Charles Splawn briefly passed through the area.

Andrew Jackson Splawn, who traversed the valley in 1861 on his way to the nearby mines with his cattle, wrote of his experience:

<blockquote>"It was on the fourth day out that we came to the beautiful Kittitas valley. This valley, as it looked that day to me, a boy of 16, was the lovliest spot I had ever seen. To the west stood the great Cascade range; to the north rose the snow-capped peaks of the Peshastin to guard the beautiful valley below where the Yakima River wound its way full-length, while from the mountains on the north flowed numerous small streams and the whole plain was covered with a thick coat of grass."</blockquote>

Fielden Mortimer (F. M.) Thorp is recognized as the first white settler in the Yakima Valley, prior to his subsequent move to the pleasant surroundings of the present-day town of Thorp. Rudimentary county government was formed in Yakima County in 1865, and business was transacted at the home of F. M. Thorp near Moxee until another suitable location could be found.

Settlers began to trickle into the Kittitas Valley with the opening of the Snoqualmie Wagon Road in 1867, which approximated the modern-day route of Interstate 90 past Thorp, from Seattle to Ellensburg. Among these first adventurous individuals were F. M. Thorp and Charles Splawn, whose families had united with the marriage of Charles Splawn, a brother of Senator Andrew Jackson Splawn of Yakima, to Thorp's daughter Dulcena in 1863.

In 1868, they became the first permanent white settlers in the Kittitas Valley, building the Thorp and Splawn homesteads at the head of Taneum Canyon on the banks of Taneum Creek. This location, not more than a mile from the present town of Thorp, provided ideal shelter for their wintering cattle, as well as offering water and fertile soils for agriculture. Tillman Houser, another early settler who brought his family over Snoqualmie Pass to settle on Coleman Creek, entered the valley on June 16 of that same year, Keneho, another friendly Indian of Yakama descent, was paid ten dollars by Charles Splawn for each trip to carry the mail over the Snoqualmie Trail to and from the Taneum Station post office.</blockquote>

Years later, according to the late Mrs. W. D. Bruton of Thorp, a marker was placed over the grave by Matt Pointer, who rode the area with his cattle, to mark it as a white woman's grave so it would not be vandalized. Eventually, a fence was built around it and rocks placed over it to protect it from livestock. After the death of his wife, Williams went to the Puget Sound area and operated a ferry at Nisqually River and eventually moved to California where his brother owned a stage line. John Ellison and Amy Childs of Thorp were both members of early settler families in the area, and at the time of their marriage in 1884, received the first marriage license granted in Kittitas County.

In the 1870s, the area that would become Thorp was known as Pleasant Grove and was part of Yakima County. On July 6, 1872, the Pleasant Grove post office on the west side of the Yakima River was established at the ranch of John S. Vaughn, and the Taneum post office was discontinued the following year on April 7 due to an unnecessary overlap in service. Despite being one of the earliest locations in Kittitas County to be settled, Pleasant Grove would remain sparsely populated for the next decade, with cattle ranching as the primary occupation.

By the early 1880s, farming was beginning to take hold in the area around Thorp, and the open range began to shrink. In 1880, the Pleasant Grove post office was moved close to where the small commercial center was beginning to form with the establishment of a sawmill and, three years later, a gristmill. The new settlement hoped for the eventual establishment of a railway depot as the Northern Pacific Railroad had made its intentions clear that it would soon come through the valley close to where the village was located. diverting water from the Yakima River to turn its wheels. The sawmill had a capacity of 7,000 feet daily.

To a great extent, the town of Thorp owes its existence to the arrival of the Northern Pacific Railroad. While some of the initial settlement was undoubtedly influenced by the convergence of wagon trails which would eventually cross Snoqualmie Pass, it was the location of the Cascade spur that ultimately determined the location of the town. when the railroad’s management built a sidetrack out one mile west of the current town site and named it after the intrepid pioneer F. M. Thorp and his family. to Thorp. Chinese laborers or "coolies" were brought in first to build the Northern Pacific spur, and again to extend the Milwaukee Road through the Kittitas Valley. A Northern Pacific section house was located at Thorp where men of the regular crew boarded, while Chinese laborers and other members of the work gang had their own sleeping cars.</blockquote>

In 1907, the energy from the water wheel at the North Star Mill was utilized to power a steam generator having a 40-horsepower dynamo, which furnished electricity for laundering clothes two mornings each week, and for lighting homes for a few hours each evening. This gave Thorp the distinction of being among the first towns in Washington to have electricity, and the smallest unincorporated town in the Northwest to have electric lights.

The addition of a Milwaukee Road depot in 1909 meant that Thorp was the first rail stop where the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad and the Northern Pacific Railroad crossed paths, making it an important shipping point at one time. The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad operated its headquarters for building operations in the Lower Kittitas County, including the shipping in of supplies for the area, out of its Thorp depot. The pay office of employees and the commissary were also located at Thorp. A daily passenger train ran east to Ellensburg and points beyond, stopping in Thorp around 11:30 a.m. and returning around 4 p.m., followed by another westbound train at 11 p.m.

This coincided with the establishment of Camp Taneum as Company 4771 of the Civilian Conservation Corps at nearby Taneum Canyon, bringing as many as 189 young men from as far away as New York to work at the camp, many of whom frequented the town of Thorp for shopping and entertainment. Camp Taneum was disbanded in July 1938, and its enrollees transferred to Fort Snelling, Minnesota, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and Little Rock, Arkansas for reassignment.

The boost in the economy brought workers into the town, spawning the need for social venues which, with the absence of liquor during the Prohibition era, made Ellison's Hall a great attraction. Located at the corner of Railroad Street (Thorp Highway) and First Street, Ellison's offered lively smokers on Saturday nights. and "Pinky's Roamers".

On the morning of May 24, 1938, a serious fire burned several small businesses to the ground, including the Thorp Hotel, and a mercantile along with the clubhouse on the second floor above it which was home to the Thorp Odd Fellows and Rebekahs lodges.

The Thorp Hotel had been operated as the "Tanum House" first by J. F. Duncan The name was changed sometime in the 1920s, and subsequently operated by Harrison and Nancy Barrett from 1924 to 1930. At the time of the fire it was operated by Ray Long.

None of the businesses destroyed in the 1938 fire were rebuilt, and the business district of the town was again struck by fire on the afternoon of August 16, 1943, when another commercial building was burned. The blaze threatened a serious conflagration, and was extinguished by state forestry crews with the assistance of a pumper from Ellensburg.

The realization that the fire might have been more serious, coupled with the previous fires in the town, gave impetus to a movement that had been underway at Thorp for some time regarding the purchase of fire equipment. An emergency meeting of the town residents was held on the evening of August 19, 1943, to discuss the town's response to the problem.

In 1967, ground was broken at the site of the 1938 fire by the Ellensburg Telephone Company which acquired the land to build a local telephone exchange office for the Thorp area. The building, which cost $25,000 to complete, was cut into service in May 1968, and is still in use. The exchange office was originally equipped to handle 400 subscribers.

The construction of a two-lane steel truss bridge over the Yakima River west of Thorp in 1936, prepared the way for the designation of the Thorp Highway, from State Route 10 (SR 10) to US 97, as SSH 3M (Secondary State Highway 3M) in 1937. In 1953, the highway through Thorp was deleted from the state highway system.

The location of U.S. Route 10 (now State Route 10) north of Thorp in 1926, and the eventual opening of Interstate 90 in 1968, all played vital roles in the changing population and economic conditions that shaped the small community.

In 1980, Interstate 90 from Seattle to Thorp was designated the Mountains to Sound Greenway to protect its outstanding scenic and cultural resources.

left|thumb|Thorp Cemetery is said to be haunted by the ghost of a young Indian woman who met a tragic death around the year 1890.

Thorp Cemetery

The Thorp Cemetery is located about a mile south of the town along Thorp Cemetery Road. Herman Page, a farmer who came to Thorp from New York, gave land for the cemetery and he is buried there. Markers denote graves dated as early as 1890, however Herman Page started Page's Grove, a 10-acre timber culture, and claimed his 160-acre homestead as early as 1875.

The title was transferred to the Thorp Methodist Episcopal Church in the late 1880s, and it was subsequently operated by the Thorp Odd Fellows Lodge until 1940 when the lodge folded.

Local legend holds that the cemetery is haunted by the ghost of a young Indian woman by the name of Susie, who was tragically lynched around the year 1890 at Thorp, by persons unknown in the area. Documents held by the Kittitas County Genealogical Society confirm her death as "caused by hanging by unknown person," listing her father as Salmon La Sac. It is reported that she has been seen riding a white horse, and weeping sorrowfully among the tombstones on moonlit nights. The cemetery is often listed among "haunted places" in Washington state.

The cemetery is restful and well cared for, and remains an active place of burial for departed loved ones of the Thorp community. Visitors, especially those fascinated by the legend of the Indian girl and her ghost, are encouraged to show respect for those resting there, and for the rights and privacy of visiting families.

{|border="1" cellpadding="5" width="200px" align="right"

! scope="col" | Thorp Church of Christ<br />Charter Roll of 1895

The first services were held at the Thorp school house, with a permanent church structure being erected in 1897. Early ministers signed one-year contracts to serve the community with most moving on to other congregations after only a short period of time.

In 1949, Teddy Leavitt formed a short-lived Bible college at Thorp, which was affiliated with the Thorp Church of Christ. The church structure fell victim to fire on April 13, 1950, and as a result the college was relocated to Selah, Washington, where it continued as the Central Washington Bible College until 1977. After the 1950 blaze, the Thorp Church of Christ was quickly rebuilt in the same location.

References

External links

Thorp Mill Town Historical Preservation Society
Thorp School District No. 400
CWU Brooks Library, Thorp Historical Photograph Collection A collection of photographs dating from the late 19th century to the early 20th century consisting of various historical images of town of Thorp.