Biohazard Cleanup Near West Othello Othello, WA

Othello is a city in Adams County that calls itself the 'Heart of the Columbia Basin,' at the center of the federal Columbia Basin Project's irrigated farmland.

The first settlers, brothers Ben and Sam Hutchinson, built a cabin on Crab Creek in 1884, two decades before the railroad arrived.

Othello's post office took its name from a post office of the same name in Roane County, Tennessee.

The Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad reached the site in 1907 and platted Othello as a division stop, complete with a railyard and roundhouse.

Othello was incorporated on May 31, 1910.

Irrigation remade the town: on May 31, 1952, 42 names were drawn from more than 7,000 entries for the chance to buy newly irrigated Columbia Basin farm units.

The 2020 census counted 8,549 residents in Othello, up from 7,364 in 2010, and Census Bureau survey estimates for 2020-2024 put the city at about 2,484 households.

Othello is a majority Hispanic or Latino community — Census Bureau survey estimates for 2020-2024 put that share at about 80 percent of residents.

The city's food-processing plants produce roughly 1.5 billion pounds of frozen potato products a year, about 15 percent of North America's total.

Since 1998, Othello has hosted the Sandhill Crane Festival each March, celebrating the roughly 35,000 sandhill cranes that stop over at the nearby Columbia National Wildlife Refuge.