To find a place on this ever crowded planet where you can slip right into a parking space, conveniently do your shopping and have the clerk greet you by your first name?

Or where you can drive over a rolling country side on your way home or to a modern medical facility and see llamas grazing beside the road?  Not to mention horses and cows and sheep?

Or catch a glimpse of majestic Mount Rainier while waiting to pick up the kids from one of the many local schools?

Or find a spot minutes away to take a swim and a picnic at a local fresh water lake?

Or to buy a home within your means that not only puts a roof over your family's head with plenty of room to grow, but also gives you a backyard big enough for flowers, vegetables, play equipment, tree houses and a cat and a dog and dandelions?

Or find a fairway that has no waiting time to tee up?

Or people that aren't teed off and fed up with tension, crime and graffiti because there isn't much?

To live where you can admire a rainbow (sometimes two) on a rainy, warm, and sunny day in March?

To find a community that is close to work, has easy access to major freeways and highways yet offers a wide array of conveniently located retail stores and shops, realtors and restaurants, auto service, supplies and crafts and Christmas trees? And beauty shops, builders, and banks... fire and police protection... library services and schools ...and video stores and veterinarians, too.

Is there such a place?  Why, yes there is, and it's called Covington, Washington.

Covington is a new city but the history and spirit of the Covington area extends back over 100 years. The original Covington area was called Jenkins Prairie and was used as an annual gathering place for the Indians.  The name continues with Jenkins Creek, there is even a Jenkins Creek Elementary School.

In the 1880's the Northern Pacific Railroad commissioned a surveyor by the name of Covington to develop a railroad line between Auburn and Kanasket. Along the way a stop was named for him and a community was born.

In 1890 the Covington Lumber Company was formed at the junction of Soos Creek and the Northern Pacific Railway just southwest of the Covington depot. A dam thirty feet high was built to create a logpond. Even back then the Game Department required that they put a fish ladder in for the salmon. The lumber mill could produce 6,000 board feet of lumber per hour and also housed a shingle factory. The company and mill town of Covington were located about four miles southwest of what is now QFC.

An abundance of timber and water in the area soon lured other lumbermen to build in Covington. Charlie Meredith built a mill on Jenkins Creek just north of the whistle stop and the Award Lumber Company was located about three miles east of Auburn. One of the best known mills in the area was started by three partners and was named the Covington Creek Mill.

Services were soon to follow and by the 1900's the area had a school, store, post office, loan office, feed mill and fire station. The cooperative store, Granger's Co-Op, was formed because of high prices and a feud with Kent merchants. A cemetery was started around the same time, Meridian Cemetery, and the land was purchased for $5 per acre.

Phone service was introduced to Covington by this time as well. The cost was $12.00 per year for the "Farmers Party Line" and a refund was offered each year if there was little or no trouble on the lines. A Covington telephone directory was printed as early as 1911.

After the trees were logged off, the "Soos Creek stump ranchers" arrived to work the land. They cleared the stumps and brush turning the area into valuable dairy pastures.

In 1937 Covington had it's own school district number 138. It was housed in a building on the Kent-Black Diamond Road. On school days you could hear the school bell ring for miles. When the building burned down the bell was refurbished and donated to Covington Elementary School on Wax Road. It is still there today.

The area has continued to grow with neighborhoods of single housing units giving it a unique family atmosphere. An additional 5,000 family units are expected to be built in the area in the next 20 years.

Covington was built by the type of hard working, caring people that we still have here today.  And as history has continued to show, so has the strong community spirit.  As one community resident put it, "Covington... a touch of America".