page_title: Thorp, Washington
section_title: Mill town and railroad era
hierarchical_section_title: Thorp, Washington / History / Mill town and railroad era
caption_attribution_description: English: Tanum House ca. 1915, Thorp, Washington.
context_page_description: Thorp is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Kittitas County, Washington, United States. In 2015, the population was 317 according to statistics compiled by Data USA.
  The town of Thorp is 100 miles east of Seattle, 8 miles northwest of Ellensburg, and 17 miles 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.
context_section_description: In 1878, James L. Mills traversed the trail over the Cascade Mountains from Puget Sound by foot, and saw great possibilities in the Kittitas Valley. He built a sawmill west of the current town site in 1879, diverting water from the Yakima River to turn its wheels. The sawmill had a capacity of 7,000 feet daily.
  Not content with the sawmill, Mills devised a way for the same wheels to power the North Star Mill, a gristmill that Oren Hutchinson had built at the town of Thorp in 1883, to provide feed for livestock and flour for the local residents. The mill was best known for its leading brand "Tip Top".
  The Pleasant Grove post office was moved in 1880 to a site near the mills and changed its name to Milton post office to reflect the name of the small settlement that had sprung up at that location, which was named for Milton Young. It was housed in several farm houses northwest of the current town site of Thorp until 1884, when it was re-established at the Thorp gristmill through the instrumentality of James L. Mills, who named it "Oren" after Oren Hutchinson. In 1889, the name of the post office was changed to "Thorp" to conform with the name used for the settlement by the Northern Pacific Railroad, and, in 1895, the post office was moved just down the road to the location of the depot that was built there and the town site that had been platted around it.
  It was the system of water delivery that made the mills at Thorp possible, and the farming lands around Thorp are the oldest irrigated section in Kittitas County. The Manastash Canal was completed in 1875, followed later in the same year by the Taneum Ditch Company. The Westside irrigating canal that runs just south of the town of Thorp was begun in June 1889, and water was first used in 1890. Utilizing water diverted from the Yakima River, it is about 14 miles long and averages 12 feet wide. The original cost for building the Westside Canal was $30,000.
  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. In 1887, the Northern Pacific Railroad reached the town of Thorp, 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.
  It took two years to build the Northern Pacific line from Old Town, now Union Gap, 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.
  In 1895, with the extension of the main line to the site of the current town, the railroad station was moved and the town was laid out. The town of Thorp developed around this depot, with the first developments including the construction of maintenance facilities, shipping facilities and warehouses.
  The current town site was settled by the Newman family in 1878. On July 9, 1895, a three-block town site was platted around the site of the Northern Pacific depot by John M. and Sarah Isabel Newman. In May 1900, Milford A. Thorp, a son of F. M. Thorp, added Thorp's Addition, incorporating into the town site the land he had purchased in 1885 from James McMurray. Houses and businesses quickly sprang up, and small farms appeared around the edges.
  The first store in Thorp was opened by J. E. Veach in about 1895. The first hotel was the Thorp House, established by A. St. John in 1893. The hotel was superseded by the Tanum House  [sic] in 1903, which was built and operated by J. F. Duncan.
  The Ellensburg Dawn newspaper wrote in the spring of 1901 of the promising little town:
  "The little village of Thorp, nine miles up the road, is one of the nicest litt
caption: The Tanum House hotel, later renamed Thorp Hotel, was destroyed by fire in 1938. (Photo ca. 1915)
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