Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Inchelium, WA

Inchelium is an unincorporated census-designated place in Ferry County, on the Colville Indian Reservation in northeastern Washington.

In the Okanagan Salish language, the place's name is rendered N̓čaʔlíwm̓.

The original community, Old Inchelium, stood on the banks of the Columbia River and had to be relocated in the early 1940s as the waters of Lake Roosevelt rose behind the newly built Grand Coulee Dam and flooded the old site.

Lawney Reyes, a member of the Colville Tribes, chronicled life in Old Inchelium's last years and the forced move in his memoirs, including 'White Grizzly Bear's Legacy: Learning to Be Indian.'

Inchelium is the demographic heart of the Inchelium School District and of the Inchelium Legislative District of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation.

The 2020 census counted 431 people in Inchelium, up from 389 in 2000; 357 of its 2020 residents were Native American.

The Inchelium CDP spreads across about 26.6 square miles of high country at roughly 2,379 feet in elevation, giving it a population density of only about 16 people per square mile.

Inchelium has a dry-summer humid continental climate with cold, snowy winters — about 55 inches of snow falls in an average year — and warm, dry summers.

The 2000 census recorded 389 people in 153 households in Inchelium, with an average household size of 2.54 people.