Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/East Selah, Washington

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus‎. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:20, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

East Selah, Washington[edit]

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Prod was declined based on naive reading of the newspapers. This is another of those communities that purportedly grew up around the train station. According to the Pomona, Washington article, The Selah train station was renamed Pomona. Additionally, This news article (https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-yakima-herald-east-selah/140757627/) about a bridge being built at Pomona station states the East Selah and Pomona station are the same. That article also makes no mention of a town being there.

East Selah is Grange district, a valley in the grange district and a river in the valley. The newspapers don't contain any mentions definitively proving this was a town. While many of the mentions of East Selah are non specific about the nature of the place. Many other mentions are specific, referring to it as a district and valley and the residents thereof being from East Selah. While none are found saying it is town.

Key examples: This news article https://www.newspapers.com/image/457179495/?terms=East%20Selah&match=1&clipping_id=94435529 gives some description of the East Selah valley in 1910 and describes it as "out in the sage brush." No mention of a town.

This is pretty decent example of an article where releative clear that it is just a valley where ranchers live. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-yakima-herald-east-selah-valley/141041529/ James.folsom (talk) 23:40, 15 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Geography and Washington. James.folsom (talk) 23:40, 15 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I realized that the first article about the bridge does mention a town in the area, it's just not called East Selah.James.folsom (talk) 23:52, 15 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
delete This is actually a nondescript area of a bunch of houses and such strung out along a road on the other side of the river from Selah proper. At best it may be a sort of neighborhood but not a notable settlement unto itself. Mangoe (talk) 23:36, 16 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Everything that I turned up, from maps to the biography of Frank Crowe, turned out to be related to the Bureau of Reclamation's 60-year Yakima Project, which someone really should write about at Yakima River#River modifications or somewhere. Pfaff's book, OCLC 49390736, is a good start and shows why it would be absurd to write about it in this article. There's pretty much nothing that I can find where East Selah is the topical focus, nothing verifiable to say in this article. Uncle G (talk) 08:26, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Uncle G is spot on here, and that Yakima project is a thing. It seem's like Wikipedia just attracts editors that want to OCD lists into many articles. And, people just write about crap that they think is important instead finding something that is important to write about. James.folsom (talk) 01:02, 21 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep the 1930 US census showed 324 people living specifically in East Selah, and a patent application from a resident there in 1936. And this is from late 2023 showing it's still at least some sort of community, even if not on GEOLAND grounds: [1] So a populated place at least once. At the same time there are a lot of references to "East Selah district" instead of a town - but it's the same with Moxee, which is clearly a current populated place. SportingFlyer T·C 23:39, 21 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- I can't find anything that specifically says there is a town. All the mentions are generic and could be talking about the residents of the zipcode by that name. Are zipcodes named formally? James.folsom (talk) 00:15, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- No there is a lot more evidence that Moxee was real. James.folsom (talk) 20:18, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  - Indeed. Moxee is both a city and a valley. That is not the case for East Selah. Uncle G (talk) 14:06, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Natg 19 (talk) 02:22, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comment In response to SportingFlyers new evidence. I have done additional searches of newspapers from 1925 to 1940. I found one mention of the east selah school district in 1926. I contend that a town existing in 1930 or 1936 would be mentioned in the local papers. Furthermore, I checked the archival images of the 1930 census on Ancestry.com. The forms filled out by the census taker has blanks for State, County, Incorporated place, Unincorporated place, and Township or other division of county. The census taker recorded State: Washington, County: Yakima, Township or other division: East Selah precinct #43. Incorporated place, and unincorporated place were left blank. Ancestry's drop down box categorized it as an election precinct. The 2023 reference, and the sources from a search I did around the PFAS incident all steadfastly refuse to refer to the place as town or a city or anything other than an "area". It is a zip code. I don't have enough info to find the patent application, but East Selah is probably the filers post office. And we know how much that counts for anything. I'm happy to look up the patent if Sporting Flyer would provide the patent number. Nobody has produced any sources that explicitly describe East Selah as a town/unincorporated place/city. It's impossible to prove it never existed, but we can't even prove it does.James.folsom (talk) 21:44, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Just to continue with the census research, because we really should consider them all. This doesn't appear on the 1950 census. The 1940 census describes it: ELECTION PRECINCT 43 EAST SELAH, UNNAMED ISLANDS, ISLANDS (PARTS). The map from 1940 (free with login) https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/3028/images/m-a3378-00069-00959?ssrc=&backlabel=Return. In 1940 it appears as other division and unincorporated place, but the map is clearly of a rural area. We've already talked about the 1930 census. For the 1920 census East Selah contains parts of East Selah extension. There is no unincorporated place option, incorporated place has an x. For the 1910 Census, East Selah contains parts of Selah and is listed as township or other division. Doesen't exist in 1900, 1890, 1880, 1870 had no divisions and State was territory.James.folsom (talk) 22:14, 25 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, The Herald (Benison) (talk) 03:04, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Weak Keep. My glances through genealogy sites turned up references to east Selah (lowercase E in "east") in "History of the Yakima Valley, Washington; comprising Yakima, Kittitas, and Benton Counties", published in 1919, and available at Archive.org, so I was ready to pass on this proposal without comment. However, I am bothered by the title of the book "The Selah story : history of the Selah, East Selah and Wenas Valley in Yakima County, Washington" with capitalized E in East Selah, published in 1984, in this catalog reference here. The book is not available online that I can find, but combined with observations above from SportingFlyer, who also posted links to capital-E East Selah references that I'm not able to wave it away as a simple railroad siding. All I have to go on is the title of a book, but it creates enough of a suggestion of WP:GEOLAND that I'm slightly on the keep side of the fence. RecycledPixels (talk) 09:39, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- That title indicates East Selah Valley as what it is denoting. There are a Selah Valley and a Wenas Valley.
  This long narrow valley, for which no general name is recognized, is divided into several minor portions. About 20 miles east of where the Yakima crosses it there is a low divide, due to the same gentle north and south axis of elevation that determines the eastern end of Moxee valley; between this divide and Yakima river, the depression is known as Selah valley.
  […]
  Selah valley ends on the west at Yakima river, but the same geographic depression continues Westward and is known in part as Wenas valley and in part as Naches valley. The nomenclature that has been fastened on the country is widely at variance with the geologic structure as well as with the topographic relief, a fact which makes the task of describing the country difficult.
  — Russell, Israel Cook (1893). A geological reconnoissance in central Washington. Bulletin. Vol. 108. Washington, D.C.: United States Geological Service. doi:10.3133/b108., pp.60–61
  East Selah Valley is a geographic feature. The Selah Valley contains Selah, Washington much as the Moxee Valley contains the city of Moxee, Washington. But the only thing that I've found that is documented for East Selah is the pumping station, which is part of the aforementioned Yakima Project, and the tunnel for the Roza canal between the East Selah Valley and the Moxee Valley, which is not really about a purported "community" named East Selah.
  Uncle G (talk) 14:06, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  We literally have a news report from 2023 that Washington state is offering free livestock testing to East Selah residents. There's more to this than just a pumping station. SportingFlyer T·C 15:43, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  This whole line of reasoning is silly and not well thought out. Ask yourself who needs livestock testing? Why farmers who raise cattle do, don't you think. Gee, I wonder where Farmers with cattle live. OOH I bet they live in a rural area, don't you think. This source is literally telling you that East Selah is rural farming community. James.folsom (talk) 00:00, 2 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your feedback, Uncle G. I agree that the use of East Selah in the title of that book refers to the valley, not a settlement. Before changing my opinion, I decided to do a basic Google search to see what comes up. When you narrow the term "East Selah" to the site:yakimaherald.com the local newspaper, it does give a pretty good picture that the term East Selah (capitalized) does appear to be widely used to refer to a specific area distinct from the town of Selah, and there appears to be some degree of independent notability due to some water contamination issues from the Army. The Google link is here. Look at it and see what you think. One thing that holds me back about some of these articles is that it uses East Selah in the headlines, but some of the photo captions refer to the pictured people as residents of Selah, such as the articles "Army to install filtration systems for forever chemicals in East Selah homes this fall" and "Opinion: Has the Army forgotten about East Selah?" RecycledPixels (talk) 20:13, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just because an area has a name and people live there, doesn't make it a popoulated place. There are no reliable sources for this article, and no one has presented any proof this is anything more than a rural area. Nobody here has produced any shred of anything that plainly states that East Selah is a city, town, or community. All the sources I've seen, and that others have dredged up have never clearly indicated what they mean when they say the residents of East Selah. And, as RecycledPixel has pointed out, the residents have been described as being from Selah as opposed to East Salah. All these sources leave it unclear whether they mean the valley, the zipcode or city(if it exists). In my experience (and think this is plainly obvious to everyone not grasping at straws) if a community/town/village/city exists, you can find a source that says it's a community/town/village/city relatively quickly and easily. When you have to go to the extremes we have here, and only find sources that are non specific about the type of place, then you must conclude it either doesn't exist, or doesn't have enough sourcing to be an article on Wikipedia. If any one of those army news articles said "the citizens of the town of East Selah", then this would be case closed. But, not one article that does that has been turned up. I'm quite certain there would be at least one instance of that, if it were true. I should also point out that there are more than a small handful of sources that specifically say it's just a rural area. Like every census for example. James.folsom (talk) 23:54, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Final relist. Right now, it looks like a No consensus closure. I'm not optimistic of editors jumping into this discussion at this point but those are the alternatives I see, relisting or no consensus. Thanks to the editors who so far have searched high and low for relevant sources.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 03:57, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Delete After three weeks of diligent searching by multiple editors, no one has been able to find any reliable sources that devote significant coverage to an inhabited community called East Selah. Cullen328 (talk) 09:33, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's not true. These pop up immediately in a before search. [2] [3] [4] [5] The Seattle Times specifically describes East Selah as an unincorporated community. SportingFlyer T·C 10:34, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have to think that the Times got that phraseology from us. In a pre-WP era I would think they were more likely to have called it a "neighborhood". Mangoe (talk) 20:53, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's just conjecture. The term "unincorporated community" pre-dates us. SportingFlyer T·C 21:01, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

:::::Well, none of those articles that you posted actually state that this is an unicorporated community. It would be happy to concede if any one could produce proof that it's an unincorporated community. Those newspapers articles could easily be talking about a a rural area or a Yakima suburb. James.folsom (talk) 23:44, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's literally in the Seattle Times article: Over the past week, Army officials and contractors visited households in this Yakima County unincorporated community to discuss the installation of point-of-entry-treatment system filters ... SportingFlyer T·C 23:49, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

~~:::::::Well if it is an unincorporatedDo you realize that is literally the only source on the entire internet James.folsom (talk) 21:14, 9 March 2024 (UTC)~~[reply]

Keep - WP:GEOLAND is permissive towards unincorporated communities and that's how sources have described this place. ~Kvng (talk) 15:58, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What sources? James.folsom (talk) 23:38, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Seattle Times. Stop WP:BLUDGEONING. ~Kvng (talk) 14:45, 10 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The Seattle Times article above and other sources clearly identify this as a distinct, identifiable, and notable unincorporated community, not just a scattered rural area in a certain compass direction from the city. Reywas92^Talk 01:21, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No those articles never state that it is an unincorporated place as opposed to a neighborhood or rural area. James.folsom (talk) 21:03, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You're being ridiculous, the Seattle Times article literally calls it that and has a map showing its location. There's no functional difference between any of those, and there's clearly enough sources to identify this as a notable neighborhood, area, or place. Other sources over many decades that use the name to specify a distinct place where people live include [6][7][8][9]. I'm the guy who started going after non-notable places years ago including many fake ones in WA made by the same editor as this, but this place certainly has enough coverage that a standalone article is appropriate. Reywas92^Talk 21:54, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
comment Out of who knows how many untold hours that have been spent (I've probably spent at least 8) to establish the the actual identity of East Selah, there is a single primary source that refers to it as an unincorporated community. That source being the Seattle times, a non local paper. There are numerous sources that make it clear that in the past it was simply a rural area. Even, the PFAS news articles that the keep voters are citing as proof of legally recognized place point out that part of the problem is damage to the East Seleh cattle growers (The area on satellite even now, is just rural farmland). But at the end of the "hair splitting", of course it's unincorporated, because everywhere that isn't incorporated is unincorporated. Unincorporated places are not legally recognized and not presumptive notable per WP:GEO. Therefore all the Seattle times article proves is that this location must meet WP:N. Since the current keep argument is about the modern day East Selah being a legally recognized place, the sources about the Valley and grange district East Selah don't apply, and modern day East Selah doesn't have sufficient sources to establish notability. The news paper articles cited are primary sources, and there are no secondary sources so it is not possible to meet WP:GNG. The PFAs event while likely notable, this notability is not transferable and East Selah would only warrant a mention in the article about the PFAS event.James.folsom (talk) 21:52, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I came to this process as an uninvolved admin intending to close. In the nomination, I noticed the nominator chided as "naive" the reading of editor who removed the prod. I thought this characterization unwarranted. Seeing some issues in the discussion, I've read both the Pomona discussion and this one and have decided to make a keep assertion in both processes. User:James.folsom was wise to strikethrough some of their comments above. User:Kvng was quite correct when they warned of BLUDGEONING, which could be reasonably charged against the nominator, who has drawn a number of conclusions not proven by the sourcing. BusterD (talk) 20:53, 11 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Your points are well taken, and I'm learning as I go. But, they are not the basis for a keep vote. James.folsom (talk) 23:05, 11 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.