Why is it called Fremont?
It’s a simple question but one a lot of folks don’t know the answer to. Seattlest is doing a cool series called Naming Rights where they trace the origins of each neighborhood in Seattle. They looked into Fremont’s past to find out why it’s called that and not, say, TaffyTown, and found out.
Turns out, it has a lot to do with Fremont, Nebraska.
This small city 35 miles northwest of Omaha was the hometown of Carrie and Edward Blewett (sometimes spelled Bluett), who owned the tract of land before it was developed. According to historian Paul Dorpat (read his essay over at HistoryLink.org), the couple chose a firm called Ward & Griffith as the agents for the new development. Local “superdeveloper” Luther Griffith also hailed from Fremont, Nebraska, making it fairly easy to decide on a name for this new Seattle suburb. Fremont is yet another example of pioneers borrowing names from their hometowns.
So there you go.
I looked into our Nebraska counterpart to find out if they’ve got their own Troll or Center of the Universe sign. They don’t, though they did recently ban illegal immigrants from renting and working in the town. So, probably best not to draw to many more comparisons…