The story
Lester was a Northern Pacific Railway town founded in 1892 near Stampede Pass, built to service steam trains crossing the Cascades and named for a company telegraph operator. Its population peaked near 1,000 in the 1920s, and when railroading declined it reinvented itself around logging.
The town's death was slow and unusual: it did not run out of money so much as it was bought out from around its residents. Starting in 1963 the city of Tacoma acquired property in Lester to protect the Green River watershed that supplies its drinking water, and it worked for years to close off access — a fight remembered locally as the Battle of the Lester Gate.
One woman refused to leave. Gertrude Murphy, a former schoolteacher, stayed on as Lester's last resident and fought for the town until she died in 2002 at the age of 99. With her gone, Tacoma finished the job; the last remaining buildings were demolished in 2017, and the site now sits inside a closed watershed.
What remains today
Almost nothing standing — the last buildings were demolished in 2017. Foundations and clearings remain within Tacoma's closed Green River watershed.
Questions from the field
- Can you visit Lester, Washington?
- Not really — the townsite lies within Tacoma's closed Green River watershed, which is off-limits to the public, and the last buildings were demolished in 2017.
- Who was the last resident of Lester?
- Gertrude Murphy, a former schoolteacher who fought to keep the town alive and remained its sole resident until she died in 2002 at age 99.
From the field
The most valuable part of this record is the part only visitors can write.
Stamp your passport
Check in at Lester — GPS-verified visits earn an inked stamp.
File a field report
Road conditions, what's still standing, what's gone — your report joins the record.
Add photographs
Credited, dated, and preserved as part of Lester's permanent record.
No field reports yet — sign in to file the first.
Primary sources for this record
- — USGS GNIS feature 1522035
- — HistoryLink.org — Lester, Washington
- — City of Tacoma / Tacoma Water — Green River watershed records