The Martha Inn and Cafe

A pharmacist named Charlie Brown bought 339 acres of Washington scrubland at a government auction in the 1950s and did what any reasonable person would do: he built a town and named it George. Not after himself, but after the first president, creating a place whose full name would forever read George, Washington.

Brown had paid $100,000 for the land as the auction’s only bidder, then set about turning sand and sagebrush into a town. He laid water lines, divided the property into lots, and gave its streets names like Bing, Lambert, and Royal Anne after varieties of cherries. To give travelers a reason to stop, he built the Martha Inn, naturally named for George Washington’s wife.

The truck stop soon became the center of town life. Farmers made business deals around its tables, truckers pulled off the highway for meals, and residents gathered beneath a towering roadside sign advertising “Family Dining and Lounge.” George was dedicated on July 4, 1957, complete with a half-ton cherry pie, and incorporated exactly four years later with Brown as its first mayor.

The Martha Inn closed in 2006 and was demolished three years later, but its giant highway sign still stands beside I-90. George survives too, carrying on Charlie Brown’s unusually literal tribute to the first president, in a town where even the cherries became part of the punchline.