Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Toledo, WA

Toledo is a small city in Lewis County situated on the Cowlitz River in southwest Washington.

Toledo is not named for the Ohio or Spanish cities: it took its name from the side-wheel paddle steamer Toledo, which began running the Cowlitz River in 1879 for Captain Oren Kellogg's steamship line, and settler Celeste Rochon was given the honor of choosing the name.

The Kellogg steamship company bought the entire town in 1886 for $2,350, and Toledo was officially incorporated on October 1, 1892, by a vote of 39 residents in favor and 12 opposed.

The area's settlement reaches back to Simon Plamondon, who settled near present-day Toledo in 1820 and is considered the first white settler in southwest Washington, and to the Hudson's Bay Company's 4,000-acre Cowlitz Farm, established nearby in 1838.

The Saint Francis Xavier Mission, established on Cowlitz Prairie near Toledo in 1838, was the first Catholic mission in what is now Washington state.

The 2020 census counted 631 residents in Toledo living in 258 households.

Toledo is known as the 'Gateway to Mount St. Helens': it lies on State Route 505 about 35 miles northeast of the volcano, and the towering column of the 1980 eruption was photographed from the town.

Toledo celebrates its dairy heritage each July with Cheese Days, a festival that began after a cheese processing plant opened in 1919 and was held for the 100th time in 2021, even though the cheese factory itself burned down in 1945.

Since 2018 Toledo has rung in the new year with a Giant Cheese Ball Drop, one of several traditions developed out of the town's annual 'Big Toledo Community Meeting,' first held in 2011.

Kemp Olson Memorial Park, the city's main park, holds a Veterans Wall of Honor built in 2012 from roughly 400 memorial bricks, and just south across the Cowlitz River the South County Regional Park offers boating on Wallace Pond.