Auburn, Washington

1 Conversation

Auburn, Washington (pop. 52,371) is a smallish suburb of Seattle, located some 20 miles south of that city at the border of King and Pierce Counties.

EARLY HISTORY
Originally, Auburn was named "Slaughter," after a Lt. William Slaughter, who had founded an Army outpost on the banks of the Green River. This small and useless outpost developed into a small and useless town, which in turn developed into a small and useless smoking hole in the ground when the local Native American population decided against allowing the settlers to live there. There is still a small monument to this massacre, located just off Auburn Way North. A KinderCare day care center now sits on the spot where the massacre took place, giving rise to speculation of an unsavory nature.

This being the West in the 19th century, the US government acted in a predictable fashion by sending waves of heavily armed troopers in to the region to make their case, and eventually the point was, in fact, made, at the cost of several hundred Indian lives. The settlement was re-established, and with the addition of a rail stop, Slaughter began to thrive again.

The name of the city was changed when the wife of the then-mayor took objection to the name of the town, seeing as how the first thing arriving rail passengers saw when they disembarked from the platform was the local hotel, unfortunately named "The Slaughter House." The mayor's wife was originally from Auburn, New York, and so the city was renamed.

AUBURN GROWS
Auburn remained a fairly sleepy little hamlet throughout most of the last 19th and early 20th centuries. It was primarily a place for children to attend school and for local farmers to ship crops and receive goods.

The vast majority of the town was settled by Japanese immigrants. A cursory examination of Auburn's Pioneer Cemetery (also on Auburn Way, across the street from the Fred Meyer Super Store) confirms this, as virtually all the names are Japanese in origin. What this town, with its large Japanese population, must have been like, we shall never know, since at the advent of World War II, all the Japanese were rounded up and herded off to internment camps for the duration. Their land, property, and goods were seized at pennies on the dollar by opportunistic locals. Most of the Japanese population of Auburn, some of which were families who had thrived over three or four generations, left and never came back.

AUBURN BEGINS TO SUCK
With the departure of the subtle and elegant influence of the Japanese, the beginnings of redneck culture began to take hold and thrive in Auburn. Trailer parks began to sprout like weeds, burtsing at the seams with ill-kempt, loud, and often drunken boors. Boeing built a large assembly plant in the area, prompting unscrupulous developers to level forests and drain wetlands in order to plant row upon row of bland, cookie-cutter tract homes. An unseemly number of Camaros and Trans Ams began to prowl the streets, piloted by guys with names like "Rob," "Ron," "Dan," and "Todd." Hordes of girls named "Kristi" and "Cindi" haunted the halls of Auburn High School, sporting big, heavily teased hair and blue eye-shadow. This was in 1981, when I went to high school there, and it hasn't really changed much since.

TO VISIT AUBURN
God alone knows why you'd want to, but Auburn can be reached by car from State Highway 167.

As you travel into Auburn from any direction, be sure to look for the endless morass of strip malls, auto dealerships, and fast-food emporia that pockmark the landscape like spots on a teenager. There are many fine places to eat; however, none of them are in Auburn. (Well, okay, Cubby's is pretty good. Auburn Way, again.) The weary lodger seeking rest and relaxation can check into a wide array of Motel-6-places, where the costs are low and the help are surly.

NIGHTLIFE IN AUBURN
Nightlife in Auburn consists of driving around aimlessly.

AUBURN: SUCKING IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Whither Auburn? No one knows, really. The city fathers, in their infinite wisdom, recently built a very large mall on the outskirts of town. This had the two-fold effect of a) turning the downtown retail area into a ghost town almost overnight and b) turning the mall itself into a giant money pit, since there are already two very nice shopping centers, SeaTac and Southcenter, within five miles.

With brilliant leadership like this, one can rest assured that the proud traditions begun by Lt. Slaughter all those years ago will continue well into the new century.

Bookmark on your Personal Space


Conversations About This Entry

Entry

A518654

Infinite Improbability Drive

Infinite Improbability Drive

Read a random Edited Entry


Written and Edited by

Disclaimer

h2g2 is created by h2g2's users, who are members of the public. The views expressed are theirs and unless specifically stated are not those of the Not Panicking Ltd. Unlike Edited Entries, Entries have not been checked by an Editor. If you consider any Entry to be in breach of the site's House Rules, please register a complaint. For any other comments, please visit the Feedback page.

Write an Entry

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. It has been compiled and recompiled many times and under many different editorships. It contains contributions from countless numbers of travellers and researchers."

Write an entry
Read more