Colville City

Stevens County, Washington

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Colville City Hall is located at 170 South Oak Street, Colville, WA 99114.
Phone: 509‑684‑5094.

The town of Colville was founded in 1882 when Fort Colville was abandoned.

Colville as described in 1941 [1]

Colville, the seat of Stevens County, is enclosed by peaks of the Okaganon Highlands and the Calispell Mountain Range on the northeast and south. On the west the city slopes down to the floor of Colville Valley. The business center of tidy brick and stone buildings rises from a 60-foot plateau in the shadow of Mount Colville. Towering grain elevators and church steeples give the city an aspect of compactness. In a fringe of hills at the base of Church Flat plateau are the clustered dwellings of the residential district. The main street is paved and 12 acres have been set aside for a public park.

During the gold rush days, Colville saw much brawling and gun-fighting. In 1861 soldiers from Fort Colville, an early military post, raided the town's laundry, ran off the Chinese proprietor, and took all the clothing. The next year a lieutenant killed a civilian in cold blood, but was acquitted because no one dared to testify against him. To check pilfering and murder, Major Curtis, commanding officer of the post, dismantled the town's distillery, confiscating all of the whiskey. To the depredations of the soldiers were added those of roving desperadoes who occasionally visited the town.

  1. Works Progress Administration, Federal Works Agency, Federal Writers' Project, Washington: A Guide to the Evergreen State, Washington State Historical Society, 1941.

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