A bit of Pacific Northwest history...
The first white American settlement north of the Columbia was in Tumwater, WA. The wagon train which arrived at the DesChutes River in the 1840s was led by George Washington Bush, a free black man from Pennsylvania. George Bush settled his family on a stretch of land southeast of what became Olympia. It is still called Bush Prairie. But as a black man, when Washington became a US territory in 1853, he was not allowed to own his land. It took two more years, but the territorial government got... Sign in to see full entry.