Voting Station

Republic, Washington

Please vote to return to collections.

Location

The Resume

    (May 22, 1900- )
    Located in Ferry County, Washington
    Population: 1,073 (as of the 2010 census)
    Site of the Stonerose Interpretive Center and Fossil Site (est. 1989)
    Town Motto is 'You Only Live Once'
    Came to national attention for successfully getting Sarah Palin as a commencement speaker for Republic High School, after a viral social media campaign waged by its graduating class of twenty-six (Jun. 2013)

Why Republic, Washington might be annoying:

    It was founded by gold prospectors and miners.
    Town residents originally wanted to name it Eureka, but the Postal Service rejected the idea.
    As such, its population died down to half between 1900 and 1910, largely attributed to the gradual ending of the Gold Rush.
    It became a hotbed of widespread media speculation after its local high school mounted a successful campaign to win Sarah Palin for a graduation commencement speaker (so much so that several students were caught trying to sell their commencement tickets for up to $300).
    This included one Seattle Weekly news headline wryly titled 'It's Come To This: Sarah Palin To Address Graduating Class of 26 in Republic, WA,' reading 'and wasn't it along way down' (that earned a rebuke from Palin herself, with accusations of elitism closed with 'sorry Seattle Weekly, you, as usual, miss the point').

Why Republic, Washington might not be annoying:

    The Republic High School Tigers won the Washington State 2003-04 Basketball Championship in the 2B Division.
    It attained fame for the Eocene fossils found in a 49 mya lake bed at the north end of the territory.
    It gets its name from the Great Republic Mining Claim of 1896, the highest producer of gold up to that point in history that also occurred in the territory.
    The commencement made for a feel-good story about students reaching for the impossible and succeeding.
    Part of Palin's reasoning for accepting the high school's invitation was that, shortly after she was born, her father's car had broken down en route to Alaska from Sandpoint Idaho.
    Facing engine trouble, he stopped in a small town, which - she revealed - turned out to be Republic, where the local mechanic fixed his station wagon for no charge and sent her family on their way.

Credit: BoyWiththeGreenHair


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 5 Votes: 40.0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 5 Votes: 20.0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 11 Votes: 72.73% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 19 Votes: 5.26% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 3 Votes: 33.33% Annoying