Town may reclaim its name

VADER, Wash. – More than 90 years ago, the Northern Pacific Railroad forced one south Lewis County town to change its name.

This November, the people of the town will finally get the chance to voice their opinion over whether to continue to call the community Vader, or to go back to its original name of Little Falls.

Vader citizen Dave Holland, owner of the historic Ben Olson house, received notification last week from the Lewis County Auditor’s Office that the Nov. 8 ballot will include a question to the voters of Vader over the town’s name.

Holland has championed the idea for some time because he believes the original name Little Falls would give a better direction for the future of the area.

“People quite often look at what is, they don’t look at what could be,” Holland said.

If the ballot measure is successful, it is believed, Vader would become the first incorporated Lewis County city to change its name, although Centralia was originally platted as Centerville prior to its incorporation.

It would also become the first incorporated Washington city to change its name since 1951, when the city of Tolt changed its name to Carnation.

Town of many names

Petitioning for a ballot issue actually came out of the Vader Community Action Plan, which was drafted by community members three years ago with funding from a U.S. Forest Service grant. Changing the town’s name back was one of the goals listed by plan participants.

“They felt the name Little Falls conjures up visions of the Pacific Northwest and our rivers and streams and fishing and hunting and logging industry,” Holland said. “Vader does not.”

Since being founded, the town has actually been known by about four names. The name game started in the early 1870s, when the first post office there was established under the name Kraft, after the first postmaster, Paul Kraft.

The town was officially incorporated in 1906 with the name Little Falls, after the feature along Olequa Creek that is located on land recently donated to the city of Vader.

But the Northern Pacific Railroad, from which much of the town had drawn its lifeblood since the 1870s, refused to acknowledge the incorporated city’s name. Railroad officials already had a Little Falls, Minn., on their route, and claimed the new addition had caused freight to be delivered to the wrong place.

Northern Pacific began referring to the town as Sopenah, and inscribed the name on the side of a new train depot.

Local residents reportedly continued to refer to their town as Little Falls, though, and the Northern Pacific set up meetings with townspeople to essentially force them to pick a new name they would use. At first, they suggested Toronto, but were told there were already five cities by that name. Next, they chose Vader after Martin Vader, one of the town’s elder citizens who was a Civil War veteran.

In 1913, an act of Legislature officially renamed the city Vader. A long-standing rumor in town is that Vader was upset by the honor and moved away to Florida in anger. Holland said the real story is that Vader was very old at the time and fairly quickly was moved to Orting to an old soldiers’ home, where he lived out his final days. He is buried in the Little Falls cemetery outside of town.

“I’ve never heard he got mad, and I’ve never heard he moved to Florida,” Holland said of researching the town’s history. “There’s so many rumors. I think people have more fun with rumors than fact.”

But perhaps the rumor was started about Vader because little else is known about the person for whom the city is named. It is known Vader was married and that he came from German ancestry. But as far as when he came to the town is concerned, from where and what he did for a living, those kind of things were not recorded about the man.

Very few photographs of Vader even exist today.

Many cities are named after people because of a significant role they played there. Holland noted Vader was simply a revered elder who the townspeople honored.

“The town was forced to change its name,” he said. “It didn’t want to change its name, but it was forced to.”

A few issues exist

According to the Revised Codes of Washington section dealing with changing a city’s name, a vote can be suggested either by a citizen petition or a city council ordinance. Holland said he chose a petition to make it a real grass-roots effort and less of a political one.

At last count, there were 212 registered voters in Vader. The petition required 10 percent of that, or about 22 signers. Holland got 53. In the November election, a simple majority of Vader voters may pass or fail the measure.

Holland said he feels good about the potential for the name change to take place because he’s heard a lot of positive feedback from people. But he said there are some he expects to dislike the idea.

“People who have lived here for two or more generations, their families grew up in Vader, their children went to Vader school, their family history is very much tied to the name Vader,” Holland said.

One of the other issues Holland had heard about changing the town’s name has to do with mail, credit cards, checks and any other personal paperwork that may have Vader on them.

Holland said the problem experienced by the railroad in the early 1900s no longer exists today. The city of Vader is the only area with the 98539 ZIP code, which essentially means the name of the town next to it is less important.

“You could write Timbuktu, Washington 98539 and it would get here,” Holland said. “All the credit cards, checks, things like that won’t have to be changed right away.”

The November ballot issue concerns the formal name of the city only. It would not affect the name of Vader Elementary School or any businesses in the city limits.

With the election still five months away, Holland said, he doesn’t have any specific ideas for education he’s going to have available to voters about the name change. He said at this point, he gives the issue a 50 percent chance of being approved. But his personal opinion is the name Little Falls could be another step in what he sees as a turnaround of the city of Vader from nearly a ghost town to a vibrant community.

Beside, Holland noted, changing the town’s name might squash a number of old jokes. “I’m tired of having people say, ‘You mean like Darth Vader?’ ” Holland said with a laugh.