Echo, Oregon: Named for a Three-Year-Old

The small town of Echo, Oregon sits on the Columbia Plateau twenty miles west of Pendleton, where emigrants had been crossing the Umatilla River since eighteen forty-seven. In that year a pioneer party opened what became the primary Columbia Plateau route of the Oregon Trail. Settlers began drifting in around eighteen sixty, drawn by the flat, irrigable land.

In eighteen eighty, a former resident of Umatilla Landing named James H. Koontz platted the town officially. He named it not for any canyon echo or Greek myth, but for his three-year-old daughter, Echo Koontz.

The railroad reached Echo in eighteen eighty-three, and the town grew into a substantial shipping point for wool, cattle, and sheep. By nineteen oh seven it had a thriving business district. Today Echo remains a quiet farming community, though visible wagon ruts from the Oregon Trail can still be found in the meadows nearby.