Auburn, WA news and local guide

Before Europeans arrived in the Green River Valley in the 1850s, the area was home to the Muckleshoot, who were temporarily driven out by the Indian wars later that decade. Settler families came in the 1860s, among them Levi Ballard, who homesteaded between the Green and White rivers and in February 1886 filed a plat for a town named Slaughter, after an officer killed in the Indian wars in 1855. Slaughter was incorporated on June 13, 1891, but newer residents disliked the name, especially after the town's hotel became known as the Slaughter House, and on February 21, 1893, the state legislature changed it to Auburn, after Auburn, New York, which shared the area's reliance on hop farming.

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The White and Green rivers shaped the town's history, and their frequent floods caused many problems until the Mud Mountain Dam on the White and the Howard A. Hanson Dam on the Green ended the flooding and let the city grow. In 1917, in response to its growing Japanese community, the city gave part of Pioneer Cemetery to the White River Buddhist Church, and a little over ten years later the Rev. Giryo Takemura and Chiyokichi Natsuhara raised money to replace its wooden grave markers with concrete ones. Between the world wars several Japanese American baseball teams from the area competed in regional leagues. Sources Wikipedia: Auburn, Washington