Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Winlock Winlock, WA

Winlock is a city in Lewis County that began around 1871 as Wheeler's Camp, a Northern Pacific Railroad construction camp on the line being built from Kalama to Tacoma.

The town was named in 1873 for territorial army general William Winlock Miller, who had promised to donate a school bell to the town if it took his name.

Winlock was incorporated on February 28, 1883.

Lumbering was Winlock's first economic driver, and by the late 1920s four mills in town employed about 350 men and produced more than 30 million board feet of fir lumber a year.

In the early 1900s Winlock pivoted to poultry, and a branch of the Washington Cooperative Egg & Poultry Association opened in town in 1920; more than 750,000 baby chicks were produced locally during the 1928 season alone.

In 1922, Winlock was reportedly outproduced in eggs by only one American city, Petaluma, California, and it was touted as the 'Egg and Poultry Capital of the World' and the 'egg nest of the West'.

Winlock is famous for having the World's Largest Egg, a roadside monument reflecting its former status as a major egg producer; the egg industry waned by the 1950s and the local cooperative shuttered in 1963.

Early in its history Winlock attracted many immigrants from Finland, Germany, and Sweden.

Winlock had a population of 1,472 at the 2020 census, living in 523 households and 351 families.

Olequa Creek, a tributary of the Cowlitz River, runs through the center of town, with the Willapa Hills rising to the west.