That could soon change.
Sen. Jeff Wilson, R-Longview, wants to make the arrangement formal with Senate Bill 5000.
“What’s in a name?” said Wilson. “For 132 years, we’ve called ourselves the Evergreen State … It’s on our welcome signs — leave and come back and there it is.”
Washington became the 42nd state on November 11, 1889, the only one named after a U.S. president. The unofficial state nickname was coined a few months later by C.T. Conover, a Seattle Post-Intelligencer editor and realtor, to celebrate the state’s vast evergreen forests.
The nickname appeared in Governor John H. McGraw’s 1893 inaugural address. In 2007 it made its way onto the
