Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Bickleton, WA

Bickleton is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in northeastern Klickitat County, south of the Horse Heaven Hills and about 22 miles north of the Columbia River.

The community was first settled by Charles N. Bickle, who ran a trading post and livery stable and served as the area's first postmaster; the town was named for him when it was established in 1879.

Bickleton's early economy rested on cattle ranching and wheat farming, and fires in 1937 and 1947 destroyed many of its original buildings.

The Bluebird Inn, a tavern that first opened in 1882, is the oldest surviving building in Bickleton and is billed as the oldest functioning tavern in Washington; it still has a 1903 Brunswick pool table used by regulars.

Bickleton is known as the bluebird capital of the world: in the 1960s, visitors Jess and Elva Brinkerhoff put a tin can in a tree as a nest box, the idea caught on locally, and residents have since built and maintained thousands of birdhouses for mountain and western bluebirds.

Profits from bluebird souvenirs sold at Whitmore's Whoop-n-Holler Ranch Museum in Bickleton help fund the annual work of cleaning and maintaining the town's bluebird houses.

The town has held its annual picnic and rodeo continuously since 1910, and the festival features a 1905 Herschell-Spillman carousel that Bickleton bought from Oaks Amusement Park in Portland, Oregon, in 1928, now preserved in the town's carousel museum.

Bickleton is one of Washington's smallest census places: the 2020 census counted 92 residents, up slightly from 88 in 2010, and it first appeared as a census-designated place in the 2000 census, which counted 113 people in 49 households.

It is an aging community — the median age at the 2010 census was 56.2 years.

The CDP covers about 4.7 square miles of high, dry plateau at roughly 3,160 feet elevation, with a warm-summer Mediterranean climate bringing about 15 inches of precipitation and some 31 inches of snow a year.