成人X站

Though they are thousands of miles from the Pacific Northwest, there鈥檚 something familiar sounding about the communities called Takoma Park and Mount Rainier.

鈥淗ello,鈥� says the voicemail greeting when you dial city hall for a small town near Washington, D.C., in the state of Maryland. 鈥淭hank you for calling the City of Mount Rainier. Our hours of operation are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.鈥�

Yes, you read that correctly: Mount Rainier is a city in Maryland, and the local government is open for business every weekday. We鈥檒l come back to this part of the story in a moment.

The other Maryland city that has a familiar ring to it is Takoma Park. Takoma Park dates to the 1880s. It was a planned city created by a developer and real estate investor from New York named Benjamin Franklin Gilbert. The idea was to build a community where government workers could live since it was just a few miles away from Washington, D.C., and was conveniently already located on a rail line.

The nearby train station was originally called Brightwood, but since the area was actually a hundred feet or so higher than the swampy land of the nation鈥檚 capital, it gave the setting a mildly mountainous quality. That might be a slight exaggeration.

Jim Douglas is a volunteer archivist with a group called . Douglas says that this elevated feeling provided some naming inspiration in the community鈥檚 earliest days.

鈥淭his friend of Gilbert鈥檚 named Ida Summy is said to have suggested to Gilbert at dinner one night, 鈥榃hy don’t you call your new place, ‘Tahoma?鈥欌�� Douglas told 成人X站 Newsradio earlier this week. 鈥淭his being an Indian word meaning 鈥榟igh up,鈥� 鈥榟eavenly place鈥� kind of thing.鈥�

As recent debates about the name of the Cascade volcano have often highlighted, 鈥楾ahoma鈥� and 鈥楾acoma鈥� are variations on what鈥檚 generally believed to be the Indigenous word for Mount Rainier 鈥� which was likely in use for millennia prior to the arrival of name-bestowing Captain George Vancouver in 1792.

And though the 鈥渉igh up鈥� and 鈥渉eavenly place鈥� definitions might be somewhat apocryphal, our own city of Tacoma was on the rise as real estate development of the Northern Pacific Railroad around the same time that Ida Summy made her suggestion. If there is a direct connection between Gilbert鈥檚 friend and the Pacific Northwest, Jim Douglas of Historic Takoma doesn鈥檛 know what it is.

Douglas also says Benjamin Franklin Gilbert spelled 鈥楾akoma鈥� with a 鈥榢鈥� instead of a 鈥榗鈥� 鈥� perhaps to distinguish it, postally speaking, from Tacoma. Gilbert also added 鈥淧ark鈥� to make the community sound like a more desirable place to live.

Douglas 鈥� who鈥檚 originally from the eastern Washington community of Cheney, by the way 鈥� says regardless of the specific origins, not many people nowadays know about the Tacoma/Tahoma/Takoma Park backstory.

Even though, Douglas says, there is at least one visual clue still in plain sight.

鈥淲ell, yes, the city seal,鈥� Douglas said. 鈥淚f you go to, for example, the , you’ll see there that seal with the color of the orange mountain and the sun rays that dates back to 1890 when this town was first formed.鈥�

鈥淚n one of the first or second council meetings, they adopted that format for the city seal,鈥� Douglas said. 鈥淎nd it stayed that way ever since.鈥�

Just five miles southeast of Takoma Park is the city of . Unfortunately, there鈥檚 no organization there devoted to community history and no one like Jim Douglas who is able to share the origin story.

However, with help from Micah Connor, an employee of the statewide , one tantalizing clue emerged as to why a Washington, D.C., suburb is named for a Cascade volcano.

鈥淚 can provide some context to these places names you requested,鈥� Connor wrote in an email. 鈥淎ccording to Marion J. Kaminkow鈥檚 Maryland A to Z: A Topographical Dictionary, the entry for Mount Rainier reads: 鈥楾he land in the area had once belonged to some army officers from Seattle who gave the estate its name. Land was purchased to found the town in 1902.鈥欌��

Another staffer shared a scan of a page from another book about the origins of Maryland place names 鈥� believed to be Hamill Kenny鈥檚 The Place Names of Maryland: Their Origin and Meaning.

The author writes, 鈥淢any years ago, several army officers from Seattle subdivided 100 acres here and named them Mount Rainier for the 14,000-foot mountain in their home state. A syndicate of six men bought the tract in 1902; upon incorporation in 1910, the name became official.鈥�

It sure would be interesting to know more about who those 鈥渁rmy officers from Seattle鈥� were, their names, their Seattle history, and what they did next, but the trail is pretty cold. And, as it turns out, the trail is pretty muddy, too. That same source, Hamill Kenny, writes that in the early years of the Maryland town, the unpaved streets meant that in the rainy season, its nickname was 鈥淢ud Rainier.鈥�

One last fact: various sources (old newspaper clippings, plus some contemporary reports from Maryland) report that the pronunciation of the town in Maryland 鈥� 鈥淢ount RAY-neer鈥� 鈥� might be slightly different than how the name of the mountain is pronounced around here 鈥� 鈥淢ount ray-NEER.鈥�

No matter how you might say it, one stark difference between Mount Rainier, Md., and Mount Rainier, Wash., we can all be grateful for is those regular business hours. At last check, views of our homegrown Cascade volcano are available whenever the sun is up, and the mountain is out.

You can hear Feliks every Wednesday and Friday morning on Seattle鈥檚 Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O鈥橞rien, read more from him鈥�here, and subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast聽here. If you have a story idea, please email Feliks鈥�here.