Albion, WA

Albion is a Whitman County town in eastern Washington’s Palouse country, with 550 residents in the 2020 census. Levi Reynolds settled here in 1871, the town was platted in 1883, and it was called Guy until 1901, when the name changed to Albion in honor of Sir Francis Drake’s Nova Albion. The town incorporated in 1910. Rolling wheat country and nearby Pullman give Albion a wider regional setting, even as its streets remain small-town.

Albion’s community memory gathers at the Guy-Albion Historical Society’s Dee Harrison Museum, on the second floor of the community center. The collection includes early photographs, letters, and documents, while the society’s Pie Social and annual potluck keep the calendar local. Education left its own mark: the Edwards College Building hosted high-school classrooms and an auditorium, a red-brick school followed in the 1890s, and another high school opened around 1927. Town council records from 1912 through 1962 add a paper trail to that story. Albion is a Palouse town where a changed name, old schoolrooms, museum gatherings, and a town hall still line up on one compact map.