Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Dayton, WA

Dayton is a city in and the county seat of Columbia County, Washington, set along the Touchet River in the state's southeastern wheat country.

Dayton was founded in the 1860s; Jesse N. and Elizabeth Day filed the townsite plat on November 23, 1871, the city was officially incorporated on November 10, 1881, and it was named for Jesse Day.

Dayton has the oldest surviving train depot in Washington state, dating from 1881.

Dayton's Columbia County Courthouse has been in continuous use since 1887, making it the oldest continuously used courthouse in Washington.

In the 1980s and 1990s Dayton carried out a roughly $3 million restoration of its depot, courthouse, and Main Street, creating a National Historic District.

Dayton had 2,448 residents in the 2020 census, living in 1,099 households; the median age was 52.0 years, and the population has declined slowly from its 1940 peak of 3,026.

Dayton has a Mediterranean climate with hot summers, chilly but not severe winters, and moderate precipitation of about 19 inches a year, with a dry, fire-prone period from July to September.

The Dayton School District covers the vast majority of Columbia County.

Dayton's public library, the only one in Columbia County, grew from a 1919 reading room into a permanent building constructed in 1937 with New Deal funding.

In 2023 a ballot measure that would have dissolved the county library district over a dispute about children's books was ruled unconstitutional by the Columbia County Superior Court; the American Library Association said Dayton's would have been the first U.S. library closed over such a dispute.