Welcome to Northeastern Washington. Some call the area "The Forgotten Corner" of Washington State because so much attention is paid to the west side of the state -- "The Wet Side," as we like to call it -- that people tend to overlook the less populated northeastern region. Some like it that way, since the undiscovered country offers much for outdoor adventurers of just about any persuasion and for families on vacation -- without the crowds! The region between Spokane and the Canadian border is a place of mountains, lakes and rivers with a wealth of human history, geologic complexity, and scenic wonder.

Take the Kettle Falls for example. The Columbia River, the mightiest river in the Pacific Northwest, runs sixty miles south from the Canadian border before sweeping westward at the confluence of the Spokane River. Along the way it carves into the landscape broad valleys and deep canyons. Midway on its run to the Spokane River, the great river cascades over a series of spectacular falls. Here, hard layers of quartzite jut up through the softer rock to form a toothy barrier that has stubbornly resisted the erosion of the cold water for tens of thousands of years. This is what formed the great Kettle Falls, a series of spectacular cascades just west of the town of Kettle Falls.

For nearly 10,000 years, the Native People of the region fished for salmon at the Kettle Falls, which provided their major food source and formed the centerpiece of their life ways. Twice a year during the big salmon runs, tribes from all over the region gathered at the Kettle Falls to fish, feast and celebrate, generation after generation, in a yearly cycle which the Colville Confederated Tribes commemorate today during their annual powwow on the bench overlooking the falls.

During the Fur Trade Era of the early 1800s, the early trappers and traders came to the Kettle Falls in search of beaver and other furs. The earliest European visitors included David Thompson, the first European explorer to map the entire length of the Columbia. It was the early trappers who gave the falls their current name. They noticed that the powerful currents of the river worked the stones trapped in pockets of bedrock around and around until they ground smooth kettle-shaped basins below the falls. Fur traders eventually built Fort Colvile in 1825 on the flats east of the river. Named for one of the Scottish financiers of the Hudson Bay Company, who never actually visited the area, Fort Colvile with a revised spelling lent its name to the Colville River, the City of Colville, and the Colville Indians, known as Swhy-ayl-puh in their own language. Behind the fur traders came the Black Robes, Catholic priests who worked their way west to convert the Indians to Christianity in the years before the Civil War. The first church in the region, St. Paul's Mission, now restored, still stands today on the bench overlooking the site of old Fort Colvile and the Kettle Falls, just east of the river.

Following the fur traders and the Black Robes came the miners after the Civil War when gold and silver was discovered upriver from the Kettle Falls. Behind them came the settlers who farmed, ranched and harvested the lush timber, transforming Northeastern Washington into what we see today. One of the biggest changes to the landscape came with Grand Coulee Dam, built in the 1930s as a public works project to help lift the Pacific Northwest out of The Depression. Once the dam was finished in 1942, the waters backed up behind the dam until they silenced the Kettle Falls and brought the mighty salmon runs to an end, at least for now. During the spring drawdown, however, sometimes the water level is low enough to reveal the head of the great falls. Then, members of the Colville Confederated Tribes pitch their teepees on Hayes Island overlooking the Kettle Falls to commemorate the days of the great salmon runs when the river ran free. Then, too, you can see the outlines of old Fort Colvile on the sand flats east of the river. Grand Coulee Dam provides irrigation, flood control, and massive amounts of electricity for the Inland Northwest. With its 600 miles of shoreline, the reservoir behind it, called Lake Roosevelt after the president who orchestrated the project, becomes a recreation playground for boating, water skiing, fishing and camping today.

So, this one locale, besides being a great place to picnic and boat and fish, tells the story of the rich natural history -- and human history -- of Northeastern Washington. But the Kettle Falls isn't the only place to do that. Whether you dig in the fossil beds of Republic, horseback ride the Kettle Crest, boat Lake Roosevelt, ski at 49 Degrees North, or backpack in the Salmo-Priest Wilderness Area, you're in the midst of a region of great natural beauty, rich human history, and geologic wonder.

The only thing missing is the crowd!

Photo: Lake Roosevelt Sunset, courtesy of Sharon Engstrom.

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