Eugene Prince Family Papers, 1875-2015

Eugene Augustus Prince (1930 July 31 – 2007 October 13) was a Whitman County wheat farmer who ran his family farm his whole life. In 1974 he married Patricia Mae “Patsy” Kuehner (1933-2019). Outside of farming season, he began working as a bill clerk in Olympia in 1959 before seeking office and being elected to the state House in 1980, and then to the state Senate in 1992 after 12 years in office. He resigned from that seat in 1995 and served in appointed state roles until 2005.

Prince’s lifetime farm, located just east of Sunset, WA, had been acquired by his great-grandfather Nathaniel Josiah Prince (1820-1883) in 1880, and it was declared a Washington Centennial Farm (owned by the same family for over 100 years) in 1980. The farm was sold by the family in 2015, though as one of Burdette’s nephews retained some of the land, part of it remains a Centennial Farm as of 2026.

Circa 1950-1954, Eugene Prince’s father, Burdett Herron Prince (1905-1994), transferred the Sunset area farm to his sons and acquired land in Idaho, running southwest from Lake Waha to the Snake River. Over 11,000 acres of that land, the Prince Ranch, was sold to the state circa 1977-1979.