Latourell: From Timber Town to Ghost Town

The hamlet you are passing is Latourell, named for Joseph Latourell, a young French immigrant who homesteaded along the Columbia River in the eighteen fifties. He filed for land near Rooster Rock, opened a mercantile, ran a fish wheel, and piloted boats on the river. The town's first post office opened in May eighteen seventy-six as Rooster Rock, and Joseph became postmaster that August; the office was renamed Latourell Falls a year later.

At its peak in the eighteen eighties, Latourell had five saloons and a celebrated brass band, sustained by commercial logging and steamship cordwood. Then the timber played out, the steamboats gave way to the railroad, and the town quietly emptied. Today it is nearly a ghost town, just a scatter of homes in the shadow of the Gorge.