Bob Johnson
By Bob Johnson
Each fall for two decades, I drove 228 miles of U.S. Highway 395 in California – from the Mojave Desert town of Oak Hills to the eastern Sierras community of Bishop – to attend a wonderful three-day event called the Millpond Music Festival. Doing the math (opening the calculator on my iPhone), that’s 9,120 miles.
Over that many years and that many miles, one becomes intimately familiar with a road and, if one is open to the idea, how it informs one’s life.
For instance, in 1997, my favorite singer-songwriter, Tom Russell, released an album called The Long Way Around. On it was a song called “Manzanar,” which told the tale of a Japanese emigrant who was relocated to an internment camp after Pearl Harbor was bombed:
We picked your grapes and oranges
Made some money, bought a store
Until 1942
Pearl Harbor and the war
Came those relocation orders
They took our house, the store, the car
Then they drove us to the desert
To a place called Manzanar
Now a national historic site, Manzanar is an hour south of the Millpond Music Festival grounds along Highway 395. It was a truly powerful few minutes when Russell sang that song at Millpond.
Like many historic roads (think: Route 66), Highway 395 has a few stops and starts as it meanders from its far-south starting point in Hesperia, California, through Nevada, Oregon and Washington to the Canadian border.
Now that we are proud residents of the Inland Northwest, I figured it was time to refamiliarize myself with the road originally nicknamed the “Three Flags Highway” to promote the link it provided from Canada through the United States to Mexico – even though it never made it as far south as envisioned.
I learned that, as it enters Washington from Oregon, it serves the Tri-Cities area (Kennewick, Pasco, Richland) and continues north toward Spokane. Once there, it can be a bit tricky to follow as it finds itself mired in the North Spokane Corridor Project. When that project is completed (c. 2030), Highway 395 will connect at Wandermere. But for the purposes of my geographic edification, Google Maps made it seem as if Mead would be a much more logical starting point. So, the plan evolved to follow Highway 395 from Mead to the Canadian border.
Sounds like fun, eh?
The area in and around Mead certainly can be just that if one visits during a harvest season – as we’re in now. This fall, it’s mainly about apples, and the farmers known collectively as the “Green Bluff Growers” provide dozens of reasons to swing by and stay awhile
For instance, one can sip a glass of wine at Wildland Cooperative, a glass of beer at Bodacious Berries/Big Barn Brewing, or a glass of hard cider at Twilight Cider works. A little one (or a big one) could lick an ice cream cone while they feed the sheep at Walter’s Fruit Ranch. The whole family could ride the cow train at High Country Orchard. (Note to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals: These are not real cows.)
Foodies can compare pumpkin donuts at Hidden Acres Orchards and Beck’s Harvest House. One could further indulge a sweet tooth at Green Bluff Candy Company, part of the Halbig Family Farm.
Sufficiently sated and profoundly bloated, one can then proceed to the Waikiki Springs Nature Preserve to walk it off on the 1.4-mile Aster Loop Trail, named for the flowers now holding on for the final few days of their 2025 blooming season.
A final note about Mead: It was named after George Meade, who led the Union Army in the Battle of Gettysburg during the Civil War. Why? We have no idea. Nor do we know why the community did not include the “E” at the end of the general’s name in the town’s name.
Learning about the origins of town names along Highway 395 led to one inarguable conclusion: Being among the first to arrive somewhere, and to claim it, gave one a leg up in having their name be all or part of a community’s name. If only I’d lived in the Inland Northwest during the late 1800s or early 1900s. The map could be dotted with names like Bobville, Bobtown, Bobburg… or just Bob.
Herbert Dart would have agreed with that assertion. He was the first postmaster of the first town we encountered after getting back on the road: Dartford. (Note to self: Add “Bobford” to the working list of possible town names.)
Next was Deer Park, which came into being when a railroad siding was being built for the Spokane Falls & Northern Railway. According to historical documents, Deer Park got its name when surveyors for the railroad saw deer grazing nearby.
Given that inspiration (or lack thereof), we’re lucky there aren’t a thousand towns with “Deer” as part of their name. Let’s see… Deerville. Deertown. Deerburg. Or perhaps… Deerbob.
Clayton came next, and we learned it was named not for some dude named Clay, but rather for the clay deposits found there, which the Washington Brick Company utilized from its establishment in 1893 until a fire destroyed the company and most of the town in 1908.
Towns along Highway 395 also are named for bodies of water, often with no imagination incorporated. For exhibit A, we give you Loon Lake, which was named for… Loon Lake.
Fishermen (fisherpeople?) know that Loon Lake (the body of water) is where a state-record (27-lbs., 7-oz.) tiger trout was caught in 2022. Fishermen (fisherpeople?) also know that the 2025 season runs through Oct. 31, so there’s still time to go after that record and have a (true) big-fish story to share with friends.
Continuing north we find the town Chewelah, its name being the Kalispel word for water snake or garter snake. It’s now home to the Mistequa Casino, after originally opening as the Chewelah Casino in 1993. Many casinos offer craps among their table games, in which rolling a one on each of two six-sided dice is referred to as rolling “snake eyes.” Could the connection between the Kalispel word for water snake or garter snake and the term “snake eyes” be the reason the casino was renamed? Presumably not, since the casino offers blackjack and other table games… but not craps.
Back on Highway 395, we enter Blue Creek, named for Blue Creek; Addy, where nepotism played a role in its naming as postmaster E.S. Dudrey selected the nickname of his wife, Adeline; and Arden, which was named by an early settler named Jack Mooney — who obviously didn’t know he could have selected Mooneyville, Mooneytown, or Mooneyburg.
Another example of spell-checker not existing in the 19th century is Colville, named after the governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Andrew Colvile — with only one “L” in the second syllable, not two.
An early settler named Thomas Ward is the namesake of Ward, although he was not responsible for the community’s naming. Another early settler, Adam Boyd, is the namesake of Boyds, but it’s not known why the “S” was added to the town name. Between Ward and Boyds, Kettle Falls was named for the waterfall of the same name.
Barstow is not named for a body of water, but it does share a name with a California city that’s 42.7 miles northeast of where Highway 395 begins (or ends, depending on which way you’re going).
The origin of Dulwich is unknown, but it shares a name with a town in South Australia and a neighborhood in London, England.
Just 10 miles from the Canadian border, we pass through Orient, named after the largely Chinese placer miners who extracted large amounts of gold ore during the first decade of the 20th century. Then it was on to Goldstake, part of the Orient Mining District of today’s Ferry County – so we can safely presume how it got its name.
Finally, 106 miles beyond Mead, we reach little Laurier at the Canadian border, named after Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who was the prime minister of Canada from 1896 to 1911.
There, two things came to mind:
1. We will need to return one day and continue our journey north because, at the border, U.S. Highway 395 becomes British Columbia Highway 395.
2. Given the Mead-Meade, Boyds-Boyd, and Colville-Colvile conundrums we encountered, it’s apparent not all historians are detail-oriented.
And then there’s yet another reason I hate artificial intelligence. An AI search revealed this information: “No major, real-world city is named Bob.”
Bob Johnson has received 99 national writing awards over the course of his career in journalism. Now a resident of North Idaho, he enjoys sharing his observations and ruminations with Huckleberry Press readers.