White Salmon: Klickitat Country

The town of White Salmon takes its name from a river Lewis and Clark named when they watched local Klickitat fishermen pull pale-fleshed salmon from its waters in eighteen oh five. Archaeological evidence shows at least twelve Klickitat villages in this valley, with the village of Nakipanic near Husum Falls carbon-dated to at least nine hundred years ago. After the Klickitat were removed to the Yakama Reservation in the eighteen fifties, settlers moved in, and the first orchards went in by the eighteen seventies.

White Salmon incorporated in nineteen oh seven. The Hood River Bridge, connecting it to Oregon across the Columbia, opened in nineteen twenty-four and remains a toll bridge. A bi-state authority formed in twenty twenty-three to plan its replacement.