Tono, Washington

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Tono, Washington is a ghost town in Southwest Washington. It was a company-owned mining town founded in 1907 by the , a subsidiary of the Union Pacific Railroad to supply coal for their steam locomotives. Tono was located in southern Thurston County about 20 miles south of Olympia, Washington, 5 miles south of Tenino, 2 miles east of Bucoda at the end of a railroad spur.[1] The town was named Tono in 1909 by one of the many Japanese railroad workers.[2] Folk etymology states the name is a contraction of "ton of coal".[3]

At its peak in the 1920s Tono had over 1,000 residents, 125 houses, a hotel, a hospital, a general store, and a school. The town flourished until 1932 when the railroads began switching to diesel locomotives and the Union Pacific sold the mines to the . Afterwards the mines operated intermittently while most of the residents moved away. Many of the vacant houses were sold and moved to nearby communities. By 1950, there were only a few buildings and residents left in Tono.[4] The last full-time residents of Tono were John and Lempi Hirvela, who moved there in 1923. The Hirvelas lived in the last surviving home, the former mine superintendent's residence, until 1976.[5][6]

In 1967 the Pacific Power & Light Company revived operations at the Tono field, now known as the Centralia Coal Mine. PP&L purchased the property including the town site (and the Hirvela's home) and began strip mining the area to supply coal for the Centralia Power Plant in nearby Lewis County[7] Mining operations obliterated most of the former town site in the 1980s. All that remains of Tono are a few overgrown foundations.

Footnotes[]

  1. ^ Arthur Dwelley, "Community Rose and Vanished on Bed of Coal" Daily Olympian, 14 October 1987
  2. ^ Guy Reed Ramsey, Postmarked Washington: Thurston County 1988, pp. 95-96
  3. ^ Meany, Edmond S. (1923). Origin of Washington geographic names. Seattle: University of Washington Press. p. 313.
  4. ^ Mona Johnson, "Lempi and John Hirvela Bid Tono Farewell" n.d. Olympia Timberland Library Historic Clipping File.
  5. ^ Ruth Johnson, "Tono" in Coal Mining Finns of Washington State Finnish American Historical Society of the West v9 no 2(December 1976.)
  6. ^ Mona Johnson, "Lempi and John Hirvela Bid Tono Farewell" n.d. Olympia Timberland Library Historic Clipping File.
  7. ^ "Tono Ghosts to Get a 150,000kw Jolt" The Daily Olympian, 5 January 1967.

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Coordinates: 46°46′28.3″N 122°49′28.3″W / 46.774528°N 122.824528°W / 46.774528; -122.824528

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