Native American for “prairie in the town”, this sleepy-looking but prosperous village, supported by the farming and dairying activities of the valley, is built, like an early fort, around a large square.

Col. S. A. Black, superintendent of Pacific division of the Northern Pacific Railway, chose the name. A prior name was Gunson’s Prairie. A post office was established as Carbon on November 16, 1877 and the town renamed Orting on March 13, 1878. Orting has been noted for its location which would be inundated by a lahar from Mount Rainier and local efforts to develop evacuation routes.

The areas was once home to the Von Zonneveld bulb farm, a 120-acre tract, one mile northwest of Orting. It was the largest bulb-producing land unit in the valley by the 1940s. Of the 54,000,000 daffodil bulbs produced annually in Washington in the 1940s on approximately 830 acres, this valley yielded 25,000,000 bulbs from 500 acres. Growers never used the same piece of ground two years in succession for bulbs; every other year the ground was planted to green vegetation, and commercial fertilizer added. Bulb planting started in August and ended in September, and the new bulbs were harvested during the following July. On bigger farms the bulbs were dug by power cultivators. Most of the bulbs produced in the State were marketed in the East and in European countries.