Ask locals how Spanaway got its name and you'll get a smorgasbord of oft vehemently defended choices. 

   Adopting Native American names is popular, but no word that sounds like Spanaway has been found in a review of local tribe place names. So some claim a Nisqually word for the lake that means "shining water" - yawanaps - was simply spelled backwards by pioneers to name the town. Ingenious (some say ridiculous) idea, but a Nisqually tribe historian knows of no such word resembling "yawanaps" in their language.

    A few folk ascribe to the mule span theory. A team of two mules (called a span) could pull a loaded wagon about ten miles before they had to be rested or replaced. So great-grandpa also used "a span" as a measure of distance. "Gotta haul this load of hay three spans (roughly 30 miles) into town." The first mule-changing station between the city of Tacoma and points south was just east of the southern end of (Yawanaps? Bushalier? Spanaway?) lake. So the question "How far is the lake from Tacoma?" was answered "A span away." And with common usage this location became "Spanaway." Maybe.

    Other oldtimers claim Spanaway was a white man's perversion of the word Spanuch. The first known reference to this area was a Hudson Bay Company journal entry: "two plows sent to Spanuch and Muck." (Muck Creek still exists.) But skeptics have trouble creating Spanaway out of Spanuch. The town of Spinach - that leafy, green vegetable - might make more sense. However, an 1847 map recently found in Hudson Bay Company archives labels the area around the south end of the lake, where the HBC ran cattle and sheep and raised grain, as "Spanueh Station." So it appears the "c" in Spanuch has been misread, and is really an "e." And Spanueh, phonetically, does sound like Spanaway. Mystery solved?

   Not quite: Is Spanueh a Native American word? No such place name has been found by a professional research firm in a current study. The Hudson Bay Company archivist cannot determine if Spanueh was the name of one of the well-documented company's founders or factors. And more puzzling, no record exists of when, how, or why the official platted town name of Lake Park reverted to the original Hudson Bay Company's Spanueh. Or why map makers decided to spell it "Spanaway."