Welcome to Ephrata: A town that didn’t exist until 1886, which makes it younger than my great-grandmother’s gravy boat. The first settler was a horse rancher named Frank Beezley, who set up camp near a spring. For a while, the area was called Beezley Springs, which sounds less like a town and more like a brand of artisan tonic water.
The land around here is dry, dusty, and not what you'd call lush. But thanks to a few acts of Congress and the promise of land (and possibly a shovel), folks slowly trickled in. When Grant County was created in 1909, Ephrata was not the obvious choice for county seat until, legend has it, someone got the rival town’s representative drunk before his big pitch. Small-town politics, am I right?
The name “Ephrata” comes from a biblical reference to an orchard in the desert, which feels wildly optimistic for a place that sees about 9 inches of rain a year. Still, it stuck, and so did the town.
Oh, and Ephrata made national news in 2003 for a tragic murder case involving two of the youngest people in Washington’s history to be tried as adults. So… not exactly the claim to fame you hope for.
