Monday, February 16, 2009

Tenino

A young zoophile from Tenino
When accused by the zoos there would cry "No!
The zebra's eighteen,
I asked the wolverine,
And I never looked at that rhino!"

Tenino, WA (pop. 1,447 in 2000) is a small town southeast of Olympia (Wikipedia). In its first years as a settlement, it served primarily as a stop on the railroad, but from the late 1880s to about 1920 its primary industry came from sandstone quarrying (Tenino History by Dwelley). Today, the town acts largely as a bedroom community for larger cities such as Olympia and Tacoma (Wikipedia). Local folklore has it that the town's name comes from Ten-Nine-Oh, claimed to be either the local railroad station number or the number of a train that regularly came through, but the name Tenino actually derives from the Chinook word for "fork", in reference to a fork in an old trail near the town (Washington State Place Names).

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