For 4 years, letters intended for Kennewick were mailed to Tehe, Washington

By Gale Metcalf for Senior Times

There was a time was when a letter sent to Kennewick did not arrive at a post office in Kennewick.

It arrived at a post office in Tehe, Washington.

It was the late 1880s and for nearly four years, the Post Office Department in Washington, D.C., did not accept “Kennewick” as a place of destination for mail.

To that government agency founded by Benjamin Franklin, the postal site that has been historically known as Kennewick, Washington, was Tehe, Washington.

All because of a woman’s incessant giggling, according to an historical account of Kennewick’s postal history by George Simmons, Kennewick’s postmaster for many years beginning in 1965.

Kennewick’s postal history began in 1885 during construction of a Northern Pacific railroad bridge across the Columbia River between Kennewick and Pasco. The construction camp was established on the Kennewick side of the river.

H.S. Hudson, resident engineer, was required to send daily reports to the company’s main office. To accommodate convenience in delivery of those reports, a request was made for a post office to be established in Kennewick. The request was approved and Kennewick’s firstever United States Post Office was opened for business.

On Jan. 21, 1885, Joseph Dimond became the first postmaster of Kennewick.

At the time, Kennewick, not much more than a village, was identified by the spelling “Konnewock,” as

Native Americans pronounced the word.

To the postal service, it soon after became “Tehe,” Simmons noted. It became so in the strangest way. The wife of an engineer employed in building the new train bridge was “addicted” to giggling and the “teeheeing,” as the men came to call her spells of laughter, led one to suggest the place be called Tehe.

“Incredible as it may sound,” Simmons noted, “a petition was cir- culated asking that the name be changed and although it had started as a joke, the Post Office Department in Washington, D.C., took the application seriously and the change was made.”

From Aug. 31, 1886, until Feb. 16, 1890, the village that was to become the city of Kennewick had the name of Tehe, as far as the postal service was concerned.

It was a sore spot for businessmen and merchants. It forced a change in advertising signs and letterheads.

Diamond held the postmaster position for less than a year when he was succeeded on Nov. 11, 1885, by Nora Knowlton, a widow and the first woman postmaster in Kennewick. She took over the position four years to the day before Washington Territory became Washington state on Nov. 11, 1889.

The Kennewick post office has a history of many locations during its existence.

When A.R. Leeper took over as postmaster in 1889, he operated it out of his retail store. So did Charles C. Conway, who followed Leeper as postmaster six months later and moved the post office into his store, uPOST OFFICE, Page 10