The Peacemaker from Prosser
The Prosser Commercial Club president visits Kennewick to mend fences in the long-standing Benton County seat rivalry.
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Disclaiming that there are any just grounds for any partisan or unfriendly rivalry between Kennewick and Prosser, L. L. Lynn, president of the Prosser Commercial Club, in a short talk at the weekly Wednesday luncheon of the local club, made a strong plea for greater harmony and co-operation between the two communities. Mr. Lynn admitted that the two towns had just grounds for an open and honest difference of opinion upon the county seat question, but he insisted that this quarrel should come to issue only every four years and not be injected into every relation between the communities. He paid the citizens of Kennewick a high compliment when he said: 'I do not know the derivation of the word 'Kennewick' but should I trace its origin, I believe I should find that it meant 'hospitality,' for at all times and under all circumstances I have found true hospitality to be one of the characteristics of the Kennewick people.' Mr. Lynn declared that aside from the county seat question, the interests of the two ends of the county are mutual and that the full measure of prosperity can never be achieved except through a united Benton County. 'Instead of six or eight communities pulling along divergent lines, we should be one united county working together for those things which will benefit the county as a whole,' he said.
“I do not know the derivation of the word 'Kennewick' but should I trace its origin, I believe I should find that it meant 'hospitality'.”
Benton County's geography has often pitted its river towns against its interior ones, a dynamic that persists in local politics today. This 1914 plea for regional unity shows that even over a century ago, leaders understood that economic survival in the arid Tri-Cities region required looking past historic town rivalries.
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