Is it time for Cheney to change its name?

I can still remember the cold winter day when my wife and I first saw Cheney. We had driven up from Portland in the late ‘80s for a job interview, and I recall that in the last 100 miles we had passed through a very dry and desolate country. I now know what a wonderful, unique place the channeled scablands are, but at the time it seemed only to be a lot of nothing all the way from the Tri-Cities north to the Spokane County line.

It was when a line of pine trees appeared on the northern horizon near the exit for Fishtrap Lake that we saw the Cheney exit sign and wondered if this university town...