Touchet, WA

Touchet is a Walla Walla County CDP with a name that reaches back to the Walla Walla people who lived near the present townsite before removal to reservations. The earlier name, Tuushi, referred to baking salmon on sticks over coals and came from a coyote myth. That is a lot of place in one word: river-country food, story, and memory carried into a modern community name. The Columbia River belongs to the wider geography, but Touchet’s strongest local marker is its Walla Walla name and the history attached to it. This is southeastern Washington with an older story under a short town sign.