From Your Corner: Manson’s name
Photo courtesy of Kim Ustanik
This small village of roughly 3,000 in north-central Washington is located along the north shore of beautiful Lake Chelan, with acres and acres of apple and cherry orchards and vineyards surrounding it. Manson and Chelan, located at the southern tip of the lake, are popular vacation locales, especially during the summer, as many come there to enjoy swimming, boating and other water-related activities, and, of course, the sunny weather. The Chelan Valley’s largest concentration of boutique wineries surrounds Manson.
Manson was named in 1912 by the Lake Chelan Land Co. in honor of Seattleite Manson F. Backus, president of the firm.
For more info about Manson, Chelan and its namesake lake, go here, here and here.
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Manson’s biographer, N.R. Knight, writes:
Among the monuments to his financial ventures outside the Puget Sound area stands the little town of Manson on the north-eastern shore of Lake Chelan. Supporting this town, which was named in his honor and where the first-born child received the name of ‘Manson B.’, an irrigation project was developed for which several hundred thousand dollars of capital was supplied by certain New York interests and by Joshua Green, Manson Backus and J. A. Swalwell of Seattle. While Manson Backus took no active part in the management, his son Leroy came to own a considerable share of the capital stock and was in charge of the project for nine years. The Backus interests were disposed of in 1916.
I will add that Leroy Manson Backus was President of the Lake Chelan Land Company and the new town of Manson was announced in The Chelan Leader on June 22, 1911.
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