Biohazard Cleanup Near Baker Ridgefield, WA

Ridgefield is a city in northern Clark County within the Portland metropolitan area, set in rolling hills a few miles east of the Columbia River.

The city stands near the site of Cathlapotle, a Chinookan village occupied since about 1450 that held 700 to 800 people in at least 14 large cedar plank houses when the Lewis and Clark Expedition visited in 1805 and 1806.

A full-size replica of a Cathlapotle plank house, dedicated on March 29, 2005, stands at the nearby Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge to commemorate the area's Chinookan heritage.

The settlement began in the 1860s as Shobert's Landing, a steamboat landing and trading center, and was later renamed Union Ridge for the many Union veterans who settled there after the Civil War.

The town was renamed Ridgefield in 1890 at the prompting of a new postmaster from Virginia who did not want the name to honor the Union, and it incorporated as a city on August 26, 1909.

Shingle mills were Ridgefield's main industry until they shut down by 1957, and voters approved the Port of Ridgefield in 1940 to build a new economy on the river.

The 2020 census counted 10,319 people in 3,432 households in Ridgefield — more than double the 4,763 residents counted in 2010.

The Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge, created by Congress in 1965 on the floodplain between the city and the Columbia River, protects Canada goose habitat and is a primary reserve for migrating waterfowl on the Pacific Flyway.

U-Haul, the American truck and trailer rental company, was founded in Ridgefield in the summer of 1945 by Leonard Shoen.

Ridgefield High School's teams are the Spudders, a name honoring the area's potato-farming heritage, while Union Ridge Elementary School preserves the town's earlier name.