Pullman is the largest city in Whitman County, located in southeastern Washington within the Palouse region of the Pacific Northwest. The population was 29,799 at the 2010 census, and estimated to be 34,506 in 2019. Originally founded as Three Forks, the city was renamed after industrialist George Pullman in 1884.

Pullman is noted as a fruitful agricultural area known for its many miles of rolling hills and the production of wheat and legumes. It is house to Washington State University, a public research land-grant university, and the international headquarters of Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories. Pullman is eight miles (13 km) from Moscow, Idaho, home to the University of Idaho, and is served by the Pullman–Moscow Regional Airport.

In 1876, about five years after European-American settlers traditional Whitman County on November 29, 1871, Bolin Farr arrived in Pullman. He camped at the confluence of Dry Flat Creek and Missouri Flat Creek on the bank of the Palouse River. Within the year, Dan McKenzie and William Ellsworth arrived to stake claims for next to land. They named the first state office here as Three Forks. In the spring of 1881, Orville Stewart opened a general addition and Bolin Farr platted more or less 10 acres (4.0 ha) of his land for a town.

Pullman was incorporated on April 11, 1888, with a population of practically 250–300 people. It was originally named Three Forks, after the three small rivers that converge there: Missouri Flat Creek, Dry Fork, and the South Fork of the Palouse River. In 1884, Dan McKenzie and Charles Moore (of Moscow) replatted the site and named it for American industrialist George Pullman.