Story Photos
 According to several Internet search sites, this large green field in Benton County near a railroad track is Washington's other Longview. Bill Wagner / The Daily News
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The Mystery Longview: Some Web search results for 'Longview, Wash.' point to a field three hours away
Sunday, May 25, 2008 10:31 AM PDT
By Barbara LaBoe
Printable version
E-mail this articleThink you know where Longview, Wash., is? Don't say yes just yet.
You may believe it's the home of Lake Sacagawea, the Civic Center and lots of rain. But, according to several Internet sites there's another Longview in the state. Even people who live within sagebrush-blowing distance, though, don't know it exists.
One of the Washington Longviews, we'll call it the real Longview, is in Cowlitz County along the Columbia River. Just where you'd expect.
But the other, according to the Web sites, is an empty Benton County field in dry and dusty southeast Washington — also along the Columbia. Let's call that the mystery Longview.
It may be a field rather than a city, but that other Longview has established its place on the Internet, often on equal footing with the real Longview, and sometimes even serving as the first option when someone is looking for information on Longview, Wash.
Good luck to those misdirected Netizens, because all they're likely to find are driving directions to a telephone pole, "nearby" motels and restaurants and satellite images of nothingness.
Some sites, like MapQuest, automatically list both Washington Longviews during searches that don't include zip codes. Others, like Google maps, require a slight nudge. Type Longview, Washington, into Google and it will take you to Cowlitz County. Add Benton County to the search string, though, and Google also takes you to the Benton County field.
The National Weather Service and Travelocity list the Benton County's Longview first, possibly because the counties are listed alphabetically. And Travelocity, despite the lack of an actual town, will even book you into a nearby hotel room — in Hermiston, Ore.
If the second Longview is news to you, it also was a surprise to the residents of Plymouth earlier this month. The small town — less than 150 people — is the closest populated place to the Benton County Longview site.
"Longview? You're at least three hours away," said a puzzled and concerned Gordon Huntington on a Plymouth street when asked for directions to Longview. "It's a long way from here. ... It's down by Vancouver."
"I've lived here since 1972 and never heard of it," said Gilbert Gomez, at the Plymouth Tavern. "And my uncle used to live here before I did, and he never mentioned it."
In search of Longview
Undaunted by the lack of directions or local knowledge, The Daily News traveled to the exact coordinates listed on several of the Internet maps. It took some effort to find the site — mainly because nonexistent towns in the middle of a field don't have addresses.
Several telephone calls to Benton County offices finally yielded a location on Christy Road 3.2 miles from the Plymouth post office.
There, between the road and a railroad track is the mystery Longview.
The WashigntonHomeTownLocator.com Web site states "Longview is a populated place located in Benton County at latitude 45.929 and longitude -119.413." But the Web site must have a very generous definition of populated.
Unlike the "real" Longview, there is no lake, no planned city and no Monticello Hotel. In fact, aside from a stray dog and some chickens cackling in the distance there wasn't much of anything but alfalfa and a cherry orchard.
There is a Williams Energy Liquefied Natural Gas compressor plant nearby. And a power plant substation. But no signs of any town or community.
Three-tenths of a mile down the road and across the orchard there are two small trailer homes - but still no knowledge of Longview. Residents there said they live in Plymouth.
"Longview?" asked a perplexed Belem Mata, who lives with her family in one of the homes and works in the orchard.
"Aqui?," she said, using the Spanish word for "here?" Then she added, "No."
Mata has lived at the site for four years and never heard anyone refer to it as Longview, she said through her son Martin.
"It's just cherry and apple orchards ... and some alfalfa," said Brian Mains, of Washington Fruit Properties, which owns the mystery Longview property. Mains said he's never heard the area called anything but a field.
Told about the online maps, though, he quickly pulled a site up on his computer.
"Cool," he said in a telephone interview. "It's right there. What do you know?"
A tale of two Longviews
So what gives?
How can a state have two Longviews, especially when one of them is a field with no signs of human life?
Well, hold on to your hats, Cowlitz County.
It turns out the "mystery" Longview was actually the first one in the state, and we're the interlopers.
Also, the Benton County site is Long View, not Longview. It was named for the sweeping view of the Columbia.
A Long View Post Office existed in Benton County at a railroad siding (a short spur) from 1911 to 1923, according to "Benton County Place Names" by Jean Carol Davis and Vickie Silliman Bergum.
The area started as a Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway work camp and also has been called Gravel, Francis and Tuton, according to the book.
It's unlikely there was an actual post office building in Long View, but mail was delivered to the railroad landing and a post office name granted. The post office apparently served just three farm families within a mile and a half, according to Davis and Bergum, and wasn't widely known throughout the state.
So it came as quite a surprise to R.A. Long and his Long-Bell Lumber Co. in 1922 when they applied for a Longview post office for their planned city in Cowlitz County — especially because they'd already promoted their Longview.
A Portland lawyer was dispatched to Benton County to meet with the farm families. The lawyer, according to John M. McClelland Jr.'s "R.A. Long's Planned City: The Story of Longview," was prepared to pay to secure the name, though no exact figure is mentioned. The Benton County book states the company was prepared to pay "a substantial amount."
"I hope they didn't pay too much," joked Plymouth resident Mike Pellissier last week. He then broke out in a belly laugh when he heard the final price — $25.
The cost was to build a covered area to keep the mail sack out of the rain. City Councilman and former Mayor Dennis Weber, who loves Longview history, said he's been told the company was prepared to spend $200 and thought $25 was a steal. Relieved Long-Bell officials promptly paid the bill and the name change petition was signed, according to both the Benton County and Longview books.
"That's not much," Plymouth Postmaster Bridget Fulmer said when told the story. Plymouth's post office dates to 1908, and Fulmer has no record of neighboring Long View. She's also never mistakenly received any mail meant for the "real" Longview in Cowlitz County.
"But maybe you're not the real Longview if you guys stole it from us," she quipped.
The farmers, either naive, generous or just not attached to the Long View name, changed their post office name to Barger. It closed the next year. The railroad siding closed in 1951.
And Long View faded so far into the past that it took some digging by workers at Benton County and the East Benton County Historical Society to find any mention of it. The physical site was only located by using the "new" name of Barger. No maps listing Long View could be found at the courthouse, and no known pictures exist of the post office or railroad siding, according to the historical society.
Long View is so unknown that neither Longview Mayor Kurt Anagnostou nor Kelso-Longview Chamber of Commerce Director Rick Winsman had ever heard of it — even as a mix up with our Longview. Winsman said the only other Longview he knows of is the one with the "big hats and cattle" in Texas.
Anagnostou said the news about Long View was "interesting," but he has no plans to launch any sister city programs just yet.
"Maybe we'll send out an invasion force to take over," he joked. "I'll have to think about it."
Resurrected by the Web
How does a historic community that almost nobody knows about appear on modern Internet maps? It's not entirely clear.
The quick answer is that most sites, including MapQuest and Google, say they rely on the same third party provider, a company called NAVTEQ headquartered in Chicago.
NAVTEQ, though, isn't accepting blame.
"We apply the Geographic Names Information System run by the United States Geological Survey to the NAVTEQ map database," the company wrote in an e-mail response to questions about the two Longviews. "In this specific case, Longview in Benton County does not exist in our database. It is interesting to note that there are instances wherein we might include hamlets or ghost towns that may not be critical to everyone who uses our map database, such details are part of the richness of our product offering."
Indeed, the USGS's Web site lists a Longview in Benton County, saying it's "isolated" but also a "populated place." The source of that information is "Place Names of Washington," a book written by Robert Hitchman and published by the Washington State Historical Society in 1985. The books has two Longview listings and Benton County's is first and longer. After discussing several name changes made to avoid railroad mix ups, the Benton County section ends "Since the establishment of Longview in Cowlitz County, there still exists a chance for confusion."
Terry Carr, a USGS cartography technician in San Francisco, acknowledged the Benton County site is on their Internet listing, but when he went to the corresponding map it wasn't there.
"Being that's a place that probably doesn't exist anymore, it's probably not on the most recent map," Carr said. He added that the USGS also tries to record historical listings and features for posterity, but was still puzzled why the Internet lists a Benton County site while the 1993 map does not.
That pretty much leaves those seeking Longview clarity at an apparent dead end — at least on the Internet.
Sites such as MapQuest and Google do offer customer feedback forms in which corrections can be requested. They warn, though, that corrections can take months. No one at MapQuest, Google or NAVTEQ knew of any correction requests about Long View, and as of late last week, it was still being displayed.
And even if the glitch is corrected, it still doesn't explain why Plymouth retirees like Ray Rogers could live there for 31 years and never hear a whisper of Long View, even while it was being beamed across the Internet. Rogers is a history junkie who's read up on the SP&S Railroad but never heard of a local Long View, he said from the Plymouth Tavern.
"You think you know what's in your back yard," Rogers said, "but sometimes you don't."
SFN wrote on May 25, 2008 1:17 AM:
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Diesel wrote on May 25, 2008 11:06 AM:
TK wrote on May 25, 2008 1:05 PM:
Jackal wrote on May 25, 2008 2:06 PM:
Gondolapete wrote on May 25, 2008 2:17 PM:
RayRatt wrote on May 25, 2008 9:15 PM:
Maybe you can do future articles about other local area towns and how they got their name.
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