Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Kalama, WA

Kalama is a city in Cowlitz County, Washington, on the east bank of the Columbia River, and is part of the Longview metropolitan area.

According to Washington place-name historian James W. Phillips, Northern Pacific Railroad general John W. Sprague named the town in 1871 for the Indigenous word "calama," said to mean "pretty maiden"; the name is also associated with John Kalama, a Native Hawaiian carpenter who came to the Pacific Northwest in the 1830s.

Kalama was essentially a Northern Pacific Railroad creation: the railroad turned its first shovel of dirt there in May 1870, and within months the working population swelled to about 3,500 under the town motto "Rail Meets Sail."

Kalama was unofficially incorporated on November 29, 1871, and it served as the county seat of Cowlitz County from 1872 to 1922.

From 1883 to 1909, Kalama was the northern terminus of a railroad ferry across the Columbia River to Goble, Oregon; the 360-foot ferry Tacoma could carry 12 passenger cars or 27 freight cars and was a critical link in transcontinental rail service.

Kalama's population peaked at about 5,000 during the railroad boom, but after Northern Pacific moved its headquarters to Tacoma in 1874, only about 700 people remained by 1877.

Kalama grew steadily in recent decades, reaching 2,959 residents in the 2020 census, living in 1,198 households, up 26 percent from 2010.

The Port of Kalama is a major Columbia River grain-export terminal where TEMCO loads more than 125 oceangoing vessels a year; by tonnage it ranked 37th among U.S. ports in 2022, with about 50 times more cargo exported than imported by weight.

St. Joseph's Catholic Parish in Kalama was built in 1874, the year rail service between Kalama and Tacoma began, and is the city's first and only Catholic parish.

Kalama has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate, with warm, dry summers and no average monthly temperature above about 72 degrees Fahrenheit.