The Klickitat post office opened in 1910, the earliest record of the town by name. Two smaller post offices, Klikitat (1870) and Wright (1904), opened inside today’s town and later closed.
First census: 417 in 20002020 census: 320116 years
Founding year: the first Klickitat post office (Blevins & Helbock, CC0).The full story ↓
What stands out about Klickitat’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
The site where the town is located was originally called "Wrights" after one of the original settlers. This was the name given to the rail stop there. The rail stop down the river at milepost 7.2 was named "Klickitat", after the Klickitat people and the railroad later switched the two signs when the carbonated beverage company Klickitat Pop (operating near the town) gained fame. On February 7, 1910, the name of the town post office was officially changed to "Klickitat".
Passages that mention Klickitat, cut from the printed page as they were published.
An illustrated history of Klickitat, Yakima and Kittitas counties1904Read the page →
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showed few signs of having ever been disturbed, except by the operations of troops and volunteers in the Indian war of 1855-6. The occupation of this region by whites began in Klickitat county in 1858, reached Moxee basin in i860 and the Kittitas a few years later. Of course, after the first settlements were established in the country near by, Kittitas valley, which for years had been seldom
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An illustrated history of Klickitat, Yakima and Kittitas counties1904 · page 528Read the page →
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time he was employed in railroad work, but later he moved to Idaho, still continuing his employment with the railroad. Ceasing this vocation in 1883, he came to Klickitat county, Washington, where, in July of that year, he secured a tract of railroad land, filing on it later when it reverted to the government. ' At the time of his arrival, there was but one settler in the valley, Peter
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Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Timeline
Klickitat, 1870 to 1957
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From Wikimedia Commons (4), Wikipedia, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System and old county and town histories (Internet Archive). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
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