Pasco, Washington

Originally Pasco was called Great Forks by Indians. The original site was south of the confluence of the Snake and the Columbia Rivers, near the present-day Burbank. Lewis and Clark first came to this site in 1805 on their journey to the Pacific Ocean. Six years later, a Canadian geographer, David Thompson, canoed down the Columbia River and staked a British claim to the site.

Many people came and went in the next few decades. But around 1850, John Commingers Ainsworth, the eventual founder of Pasco, arrived at Great Forks. Ainsworth had been orphaned at 13 and, through a series of jobs, became a sternwheeler pilot. The California gold rush brought Ainsworth west and eventually to the town that he would later found. He built the first sternwheeler of the area and later an entire fleet that plied up and down the Columbia, supplying gold miners in Idaho. In those gold rush days it didn't take long for Ainsworth to become wealthy. This original town, called Ainsworth, was southeast of modern Pasco near the mouth of the Snake River.

Pasco got its name for Virgil G. Bogue, a construction engineer for the Northern Pacific Railroad. Mr. Bogue had been working in Peru, cutting a railroad line through the Andes Mountains through Cerro de Pasco. The stark contrast between the cool mountains of the Andes and the hot desert prompted Bogue to name the town Pasco.

In 1885, Pasco was platted. Some buildings and businesses and nearly all the emloyess, including 300 Chinese who had worked on the snake river bridge were moved to Pasco. In 1889, the Northern Pacific moved their facilities from the Wallula Jucntion to Pasco. Wong How was Chinese contractor for Chinese labor. He was a prominent Pasco citizen and established a general store in 1884. His son attended school in Pasco, the only Chinese boy to do so. Japanese immigrant, Harry Yamauchi, was a bookkeeper for the Great Northern Railroad. He opend a grocery and fish store in Pasco near Wong How's store. Most Chinese lived in the same vicinity between Tacoma and First on Clark Street and across the tracks on the east side of town in shacks or covered caves. White relations with the Chinese were generally good except in labor issues. In 1895 a Chinese crew replaced a white crew and several attacks were made on their homes. A mob of angry whites entered the Chinese camp and marched the crew across the Kennewick bridge and told them to stay out of town. Two masked men assaulted three Chinese men in nearby Kennewick.

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Last updated: 4/20/06