The Horse Heaven Hills is a range of rolling hills in Klickitat, Yakima, and Benton counties in Washington State on the west side of the Columbia River, between the Yakima River and the Wallula Gap. The Horse Heaven Hills are an anticline in the Yakima fold belt, which was formed by north–south compression of Columbia River Basalt Group lava flows.
The Horse Heaven Hills were officially named in 1881 by James Kinney, a Yakima pioneer, "because the area offers excellent forage and comparative isolation". Large bands of wild horses once roamed the area. Kinney first unofficially named the hills in 1857 after seeing the knee-high grass of the hills for the first time he exclaimed "This is surely a horse heaven!"
See also
References
- http://www.rattlesnakehills.com/geography.htm
- http://www.co.benton.wa.us/html/county_history.htm
- http://content.wsulibs.wsu.edu/sid/bin/show.plx
- Place Names of Washington (1985), Hitchman
- Helga Anderson Travis: The Umatilla Trail. Exposition Press, New York 1951, S. 13–16.