Throughout 2023 the Sunday Olympian’s Looking Back theme was origins of area place names. The family of George and Isabella Bush arrived in Thurston County in 1844, among the first non-Indigenous American settlers. Bush Prairie, five miles south of Olympia, is named for the family, as is Tumwater’s Bush Middle School. Pictured here is son William Owen Bush. He was a noted agriculturalist and legislator, the first mixed-race member of the Washington Legislature.
Aldrich Photo, 1900, courtesy Washington State Historical Society, Capital Museum Collection, catalog 2015.0.75
Text © The Olympian and Deborah Ross 2023