Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Cathlamet, WA

Cathlamet is a small town on the Columbia River in southwestern Washington and the county seat of Wahkiakum County — in fact, it is the only incorporated town in the entire county.

Before white settlement, Cathlamet was one of the largest Native American villages on the Columbia River west of the Cascades, home of the Kathlamet people; Lewis and Clark found a village of cedar houses with some 300 to 400 inhabitants there.

Lt. W. R. Broughton sighted the Cathlamet site in 1792 while verifying Captain Robert Gray's reported exploration of the Columbia River.

James Albion Birnie, a retired Hudson's Bay Company trader, became Cathlamet's first permanent white settler in 1846, setting up a trading post he called Birnie's Retreat; the name was changed to Cathlamet in 1851.

Cathlamet was officially incorporated on February 18, 1907.

The 2020 census counted 560 people in Cathlamet, up from 532 in 2010, when the town had 258 households and a notably old population with a median age of 52.9 years.

The Julia Butler Hansen Bridge, built in 1938, carries State Route 409 from Cathlamet across the Cathlamet Channel to Puget Island, and from the island the county-operated Wahkiakum County Ferry crosses the main Columbia River to Westport, Oregon.

Cathlamet sits along State Route 4, the Ocean Beach Highway, about halfway between Longview to the east and the Pacific Coast to the west.

The town hosts all of the Wahkiakum School District's K-12 schools, which draw roughly 430 students from across the county, including Puget Island and the Elochoman and Skamokawa valleys.

Each July since 1982, Cathlamet has celebrated Bald Eagle Days, a two-day festival with a parade, street vendors, a farmer's market and children's activities.