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Adams County, Washington

Historic newspapers, landmarks, and county history layers for genealogists and local historians.

—newspaper titles

—digitized titles

12historic places

—earliest paper

1883formed

20,613pop. 2020

11cemeteries

—CW battlefields

At a glance

Summary

The National Register of Historic Places includes 12 listed properties in the county, first listed in 1975. Most listings are in or near Ritzville, Washtucna, Othello.

Summary generated automatically from the source data on this page.

Newspapers

Library of Congress

Newspaper directory data for Washington is not yet loaded on this site. Browse Adams titles at the Library of Congress.

National Register of Historic Places

NPS NRHP

10 of 12 listings mapped; some locations are restricted by NPS to protect sensitive sites.

12 listed properties

Property	City	Type	Listed
Adams County Courthouse	Ritzville	Building	2018
Bassett Hardware Co. Store	Washtucna	Building	2022
Burroughs, Dr. Frank R., House	Ritzville	Building	1975
Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad Business Car No. 101	Othello	Object	1988
Greene, Nelson H., House	Ritzville	Building	1980
Ritzville Carnegie Library	Ritzville	Building	1982
Ritzville High School	Ritzville	Building	1994
Ritzville Historic District	Ritzville	District	1990
Seivers Brothers Ranchhouse and Barn	Lind	Building	1979
Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway Company Bridge 291.4-O.W.R.&N. Crossing-Washtucna	Washtucna	Structure	2018
Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway Company-Cow Creek Viaduct	Ankeny	Structure	2018
Strap Iron Corral	Hooper	Structure	1975

Source: National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places. Property links open NRHP nomination files at the National Archives.

County formation

Newberry AHCB

Adams was formed in 1883 (1883-11-28) from Whitman.

ADAMS created by Washington Territory from WHITMAN.

Source: Newberry Library, Atlas of Historical County Boundaries.

Population by decade

Census

Adams County population from 1890 to 2020 (Census historical series).

1890	1900	1920	1940	1950	1960	1980	2000	2020
2,098	4,840	9,623	6,209	6,584	9,929	13,267	16,428	20,613

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau historical county population (Forstall 1790–1990) and public-domain / CC0 county population series through 2020.

National Park Service sites nearby

NPS

Park units within about 40 km of the county centroid (from NPS Public POIs; no API key).

Site	Type	Dist.
Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trail	Park unit	13.0 km

Source: NPS National Datasets / Public POIs. The NPS Developer API requires a free key and was not used.

Cemeteries & historical places

USGS GNIS

11 cemeteries and 0 historical populated places (ghost towns / former settlements) recorded in USGS GNIS for this county.

Cemeteries — 11 of 11 listed

Name	Lat	Lon
American Legion Adams Cemetery	46.87042	-119.13352
Bemis Cemetery	46.92428	-118.30172
Bess Hamilton Memorial Gardens Cemetery	46.81852	-119.13728
Delight Cemetery	46.7955	-118.54641
Emmaus Cemetery	47.24561	-118.87423
Kansas Prairie Cemetery	46.90866	-118.81426
Lind Cemetery	46.98394	-118.62027
Memorial Cemetery	47.13209	-118.39385
Michigan Prairie Cemetery	46.7507	-118.66185
Paha Cemetery	47.02299	-118.48962
Washtucna Pioneer Memorial Cemetery	46.76773	-118.30396

Source: USGS Geographic Names Information System (public domain). Cemeteries from the 2021 NationalFile archive; historical places from GNIS HistoricalFeatures topical extract.

Historical markers

HMdb link

Marker text and photos from the Historical Marker Database (HMdb) are not embedded here. HMdb allows non-commercial reuse with attribution, but commercial/compensated use needs written permission; this is a commercial site, so we only link out.

Search HMdb for Adams County, Washington

Terms: hmdb.org/copyright.asp. Linking is encouraged by HMdb.