Sen. Jeff Wilson speaks on the Senate floor Wednesday. To see video, click here.

OLYMPIA – For the third year in a row, the Washington Senate voted Wednesday to correct a 132-year oversight and declare Washington to be “the Evergreen State.”

Sen. Jeff Wilson, R-Longview, said he hopes the House will follow suit this time and make the state’s longtime nickname official. Though Washington has been calling itself The Evergreen State since 1893, no record exists of the nickname’s adoption by the Washington Legislature.

The Senate voted 49-0 to pass Wilson’s measure, SB 5000, and send it to the House for further consideration.

In brief remarks on the Senate floor, Wilson related the history of Washington’s nickname, coined by 27-year-old real estate promoter Charles Conover of Seattle for an advertising circular. The nickname caught on quickly, and in 1893, newspapers reported that the state Senate passed a resolution adopting it as an official moniker for exhibits and advertising at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. But if that vote occurred, it was not recorded in official records, no copy of the resolution has been found, and there is no indication that it was ever considered by the House.

“Let’s just take a moment to think if the nickname was penned otherwise,” Wilson said. “What if we were called the ‘It Rains Too Much State?’ Or the ‘It’s Too Hot State’ or the ‘It’s Too Cold State?’”

It’s the rain, the sun and the snow that keep the state evergreen, he said, and it is hard to imagine a more fitting name.

“After 132 years, we have an opportunity today to correct an oversight,” Wilson said. “We can do this, Mr. President. We can make this a forever nickname for everybody, today and tomorrow.”